Setting up a mining pool

[meta.p02]

I am interested in setting up a mining pool for several coins, and am looking into different hosting packages.

Usually, do mining pools use Website Hosting or VPS hosting?

[jdebunt]

if you want to start out small, you can use a VPS droplet to create and run a pool.

However, you'll also need DDoS protection, which most VPS servers don't have included.

A dedicated server is probably the best way to go

[meta.p02]

Hmm... I had considered a dedicated server, however the prices were rather... out of my price range, so to speak. So VPS or Website hosting were my remaining choices. (Reseller hosting seems to not be for self-hosting purposes)

What is the difference between website hosting and VPS hosting that justifies their large price difference?

[lucasjkr]

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but if you're running your pool on a vps, you had better have an extraordinary amount of trust in your service provider; once they realize what you're doing, it's not at all a challenge for an employee to swipe yiur Wallet or just to change the payout address... I seem to recall hearing of this over and over...

[meta.p02]

Bump

Anyone have any recommendations for VPS?

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but if you're running your pool on a vps, you had better have an extraordinary amount of trust in your service provider; once they realize what you're doing, it's not at all a challenge for an employee to swipe yiur Wallet or just to change the payout address... I seem to recall hearing of this over and over...

Thanks for the tip.

[dreamwatcher]

Oh what the hell:

1. You need a VPS period. A VPS (Virtual Private server) is just that, a complete server. You will be compiling and running coin daemons, Back-ends (Stratum/LP) and front-end software. You will need a database server (most commonly Mysql) to serve the database to both the front and back ends. The sever will be processing thousands of hashes, checking them , storing them and accounting them. All this is on top of the front end web page which will be running crons to account for all the data, payments, logging...etc..etc...

2. You do not need to worry about DDoS protection, at first . Unless you make it big where shutting down your pool would be enough for somebody to begin a 51% attack or MOST likely manipulate market prices, nobody is going to DDoS your small pool. I run 4 pools myself now and have run a few more in the past. I have never been DDoS because I am small potatoes, not worth the time. You can always add DDoS protection later.

3. No system admin is going to try and steal your pools coins. The small amount of coins (Even if they know what they are) are not worth the reputation hit and possible legal action the hosting company would face. Most likely these stories are made up by shady pool operators as an excuse for "losing" their miners coins which in all likely hood they stole themselves.

4. Litehosting.org is a good place to start. They have reasonable prices. Their top end VPS can handle two coin pools comfortably (8 cpu 3 GB RAM and 200 GB HD). If you pay quarterly, it is even cheaper and they take a number of cryptocoins for payment.

[meta.p02]

@Dreamwatcher:

Thanks for the recommendations. I'll look into it.

By the way, kudos to you for setting up the GPL pool!