Awesome! I knew we had a good group going into this, but this just confirms it.
jungle_dave is correct we do need to keep in mind security esp. as awareness of BTC continues to rise. HashFast may actually have been on to something though, with a mid tower form factor, this probably *won't* look much too different from your usual water cooled gaming PC (not that that makes it immune to being overlooked for theft).
If there is such a thing as a perfect home host location it would be:
- Someone vetted and trusted implicitly
- IT background
- Some available to go press the darn reset button nearly 24/7
- Pre-installed security system
- Low crime area
- Big dogs
- No smoking
- A/C
- of course, ultra cheap electricity
- (Bonus!) Works as a cop, armed security guard, or MMA instructor (ehehe)
According to this govt. site:
http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_5_6_aWashington (Hydro), Louisiana (Oil refineries), and West Virginia (Coal) have *the* lowest electricity rates in the US. Perhaps we should focus on these 3 states or ones near their ranking if we intend to scale up profitably as a co-op.
I do like phillip will be around or have someone around, and I can live with that electricity rate.
Since we're discussing options: Anyone know of any reputable DataCenters in these Washington or WV? I think Louisiana suffers from too many storms to be a viable host site. We can work together on this to get quotes; teaming up & splitting up states by region could yield us a gem of a quote.
We're looking for:
Colocation Mid Tower Hosting (which not all DCs take; which is why I warned HashFast designers about that as soon as I heard back from cypherdoc), usual server services, 24/7 steady bandwidth but does not require huge bandwidth needs (no torrenting; no video/music streaming) so lower levels of the data plans are acceptable. We obviously can't afford something like Tier III/IV-type service guarantees, but we still need something that's up more then 99%+.
We do have another miner I'm assisting that could help with colo costs if we can get a volume discount.
I'm awaiting payment on the last 2 shares from a user (I think he sent it to the escrow wallet, I need to check) but after that: I say we open it up to a vote. Our first.
We can vote for professional colocation hosting or home hosting by a co-op member.