*I put this in hardware, but it also deals with software and mostly p2pool*
I've recently been working on a p2pool node. For the past 4-5 months, I've been running a node for myself which ended up being for myself and a friend. This might expand a bit more too.
The setup has been a dedicated older HP touchsmart tx2500 with a QL-60 at 1.9GHz, 3GB of ram and a 60GB vertex 2. I was hoping to reduce getblock latency with the SSD but it didn't help that much - still under a second though. Running windows 7 because I already had it on there. It is wired. My connection is a 30up/2down.
So recently I tried adding litecoin support. I successfully got the node set up and everything was running fine. Except for some reason the getblock latency for bitcoind shot up above 10 seconds and bitcoin-qt interface became unusable. So for now I've had to remove litecoin support.
Which brings me to the purpose of this thread, which is twofold.
1. I'm looking to set up a dedicated p2pool server that will start out supporting Bitcoin and Litecoin and perhaps add some alt-coins later. So I would like some suggestions from those of the community more familiar with p2pool.
What I am considering (please respond and comment):
- I want this machine to be cost-effective. I'm looking to spend under $500 total for sure but lower is better.
- AMD A4-5300 for $50. Enough cpu muscle?
- I will be running Linux. Likely Fedora Core. Filesystem recommendations, anyone?
- I intend to use a WD Black 1TB drive as a compromise between price, performance and capacity for the bitcoin blockchain over the next few years.
- 8GB of ram
- There are two possibilities. 1) Everything on the host. 2) Run each node inside a separate VM. Suggestions?
2. Some questions for those more familiar with p2pool than myself:
- Could the getblock latency I am getting be related to my CPU at all (1.9GHz AMD dual)? It starts out low, but often can hit as high as 5 seconds, normally. There are large spikes but not much constant cpu usage (graph ends up looking like a messy sine wave).
- Does anyone else have any suggestions as to why my getblock latency is so high?
Additional information as requested by users in this thread:Thanks in advance. If I add more questions, I will change them to a different colour so you know they are new.
