If you'd asked ole KLYE in the late 90's if he'd ever need a system with over 100GB of RAM (Random Access Memory) he'd likely have giggled at you and went back to screwing around on IRC or Ultima Online.. But lo and behold the day has come to deploy a system that my 15 year old self wouldn't have even thought of trying to attain, let alone operate for a decentralized blockchain database we know as the STEEM network...

128 Gigabytes of DDR3 ECC RAM... whut?

As you sit there and mumble to yourself "Well, clearly KLYE's lost his last f**kin' marble deploying such a massive system" it would certainly seem like that to the untrained eye. However given the somewhat bulky and demanding nature of the program used to run the STEEM network ( which is called steemd by the way ) and the want to have a new main witness server that may not need upgraded for another handful of months it was decided that "Go big or go home" was the only course of action... And with that I found a decent deal on a MONSTER of a server to take the brunt of my witness campaign duties.

Server Specifications

CPU:

Intel Xeon E5-1650V2
6 core / 12 thread @ 3.50 to 3.90 GHz
12MB Smart Cache

RAM:

128GB
8 X 16384 MB DDR3 ECC
(Error-correcting code RAM)
1866 Mhz Front Side Bus

Storage:

Dual 240GB Solid State SATA Drives

Network:

Intel I350 1 Gbit Connection

Cost:

~$150 CAD a month

_{( a screencap from "htop" showing how frickin' monstrous this new server is.. click for full size )}

Needless to say this is the largest, most powerful server I've ever deployed for ANYTHING up until now... The CPU specs aren't terrible but that sweet sweet RAM is where the money maker resides (and by money maker.. I mean expense) allowing me to essentially have the ENTIRE STEEM blockchain in the servers RAM, allowing it incredibly fast access to data as needed. Initially I was going to turn this server into a full fledged API offering but I'll mull that thought over again in a month or so after seeing how this one performs as a witness. Pretty darn excited to be upgrading my infrastructure in order to provide the best block production and keeping service I can for our network!

The new server is roughly 90% synced and should be operational in the next 30 minutes..!

If you like what I'm doing here on STEEM and would like to help me not end up a hobo again due to server bills and endless development costs please consider voting me as witness. Every vote matters and I sure do appreciate each and every one.

Check out https://steemit.com/~witnesses and click the upvote icon beside my name!

Have a good and productive week everyone!

IT LIVES!!! Sync completed.. Time to sign to this block signing key and make many blocks!

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	VOTE KLYE