Previously, I mentioned my intention to become a steem witness.
I spent a lot of time looking at used servers on eBay. Some of them are fantastically cheap (less than a new desktop computer from walmart), fully refurbished, and come with a warranty from a top rated plus seller with 99.9% positive feedback.
The key advantages of using a server (over a desktop computer) for this kind of home server setup are:
- hardware redundancy: If a hard drive or power supply goes down, you can swap it out and replace it while the server keeps running.
- speed: These servers have lots of memory and faster hard drives than a comparably-priced desktop machine.
The drawbacks of using a server as a home server are:
- Higher power consumption
- Noise
- Heat
- Not easy to repurpose or resell locally
- Installing a GPU/video card can be problematic, particularly for older hardware
Therefore, I decided to buy a used $600 workstation to run as a proof-of-concept steem witness. If it works as a witness, and there's an advantage to upgrading the hardware, I'll buy a real server. It it doesn't work out for any reason, I'll have a nice workstation to use for other purposes.
Here's a system like the one I purchased: 