The beginning of a new era: https://blockchain.info/tx-index/6be69ab8b3faad4ee99c2323a25402413f00409efa0bc4641e84cd416dedab13
The first live block solved with the new software. It has been deployed on 2 of the 4 public servers now. I'm also comparing two slightly different variations of the backend on those servers to compare CPU load on the primary thread (network i/o processing).
These new servers are wired in very heavily to the alarm system so that they will alert me if they become unresponsive (not just crash). After a few days, the remaining backend servers will be updated once the benchmarks between the two variations have enough data available.
I gotta say Elu, I'm litterally shocked at how involved you are... mind you not in a bad way but a good one. Don't get me wrong though, other pool ops are the same way. However, with he pools I have playd around with you seem to be the highest on the ladder with your involvement. That said, I'm just a small miner right now using two AM USB sticks, and while I could ever so slightly increase my payments by going to a "slightly smaller" pool. It's your involvement with this pool tha makes me want to stay, not that I had any thoughts on leaving or anything lol.
Either way, I'm def sticking around for the forseeable future, so soon as my 600Gh/s shows up, I'm gonna plug in in to a few sites for 24hrs to cash out owed balances but they will ulimately be living here !
Ps; That email about low worker warnings, might you add a text message option for phones so we can be alerated while away from home / not near a PC.
BTC Guild has been my primary source of income for a little over a year and a half now. That's one thing that's a bit different with BTC Guild compared to larger pools. I quit my day job/career to pursue the pool in April 2012. Additionally, I keep no staff. It's not due to cost, but due to trust/efficiency. Bitcoin is so dangerous when it comes to how readily available the money is, almost like a petty cash drawer in a small office working on the honor system, but instead of $100-200, it's $500,000-1,000,000 and it constantly gets refilled. An 8 hour lapse of time (like for example, sleeping) with somebody else with any access to core functionality is literally a million dollar or greater liability.
As a result, I continue to work on additional monitoring, efficiency improvements, etc., to allow the pool to continue to scale to more users and more servers without the additional requirement of more staff.