Lessons Learnt Setting up my SmartNode

It wasn't a warm day in Calgary, but in my mind it was warm and beautiful like a summer day at Idaho falls. It was 14 days since I had set up my first #smartnode using Linode I was proudly one of the first 400 nodes set up. The 25th of January had just come by and #smartrewards had been paid and thanks to winning some smarts on a previous article - When The Going Gets Tough and the "generous rain" I now had enough for a second smartnode hurray! Setting up the second node was a charm as there was now a SmartNode in 10 minutes Guide in place. This time I used Vultr as my account was now approved and I wanted to really test out the smart Node in 10 minutes. It worked! No surprises there. It was created by the smartcash Dev team - what can I say they rock. The real test was if I could pull it off and not make any stupid mistake seeing I had to translate my IT skills from a Windows environment to Mac (a steep learning curve). My nodes were up and running and life was good - all that was left was count down to Block 300000.

THIS IS NOT HAPPENING

Sometime on Saturday the 27th I decided to check on node. My first node on Linode had stopped 14 hours ago! What the ....
there goes my early start advantage! I might as well have waited to earn my #smartrewards on this too. Calm down I say to myself. I launch my smartcash qt wallet with the intention to re-start my smartnode. That should fix it I tell my self. Two hours later and no change - status is still "Pre Enabled" I decide to reboot from the console of the server and decided to add some cron jobs - (automated scripts to carryout set task) it was at this point I found out I could not execute a a simple task because my storage was full! Storage full? With what? We had not even started. Further investigation showed that my storage on Linode was filled up with backups they had taken pretty much every other day. As my node was 14 day old there were at least 7 copies and one of the snapshot I had paid to take. This should be a problem. I will just delete the backup an switch it off leaving just a current snapshot. The funny thing here was the portal that was supposed to allow me manage images was in beta so nothing showed up.

DECISION TIME

So here I was with a smartnode that had been set up on the first day not running because the server was out of storage. It should not be because I had 30GB
The portal on Linode to manage images was not accessible
I needed to get my node up and running as soon as possible

I decide to move my first node to Vultr where the second one had been set up a few day back. I logged on to Vultr took a snapshot of the node already running and deployed it to a server with the same specification. I only had to edit one conf item on the server and update my local conf file with the new IP and it was up and running.

LESSONS LEARNT

Be patient there is no hurry
Life happens and you just have to go with the flow
Do not reinvent the wheel. - Stay with a proven solution - Vultr
Never cry over spilled milk - keep moving
Challenges are opportunities to learn. I can now spin off new nodes in minutes
Take advantage of the cron jobs to automate important jobs if you set up your nodes earlier on
Be prepared
Always have a backup plan.

Did you have any unexpected challenges setting up your smartnodes? Please upvote and leave a comment.

Learn More About Smartcash:
Smartcash.cc