Topic: POLL: Would you use a mining-only datacenter facility? (Read 4566 times)

I think you're misunderstanding the proposed purpose of the facility.  It would simply be to house mining rigs that are already built/owned by other people.  It would be a place for people to put their mining rigs if they have high electrical costs in their area, or if they are tired of the heat, or if their landlord won't allow it anymore, or any other number of reasons.

I wouldn't be managing the mining operations themselves - that would be entirely up to the users.  The most I would do is unpackage their rigs, place the video cards in the appropriately labelled slots, turn it on, and perform hard resets upon request.  And, if they can't access their rig remotely, I would probably help troubleshoot that as well.  The rest is up to the owner of the rig.

(back on the main subject): Yes, if prices to rent a server were $50/mo...instead of paying $X/mo per Mhash/s, you can have a bunch of people pay $50/mo and get a machine running 2.4Ghash/s and give them their money back (weighted per person on how much they invested) + interest.
Sounds more like the GBLSE, but faster and over-time could make more money.

Thanks, I may take you up on the offer.  I'm more of a programmer than a networker, and have only managed small networks in the past (< 256 computers) with nothing more complicated than an external VPN.  Definitely have a lot to learn in that area.

Now you've got the idea.
If you have any questions about pfSense, let me know.
I've got one running at my house and one at my moms, as well as access to 2x pfSense box'es of the GSP I work for.

I was talking about using a dedicated router in place of a pfSense box, not realizing that pfSense can utilize a managed switch.  I've always used unmanaged switches in the past, so I didn't realize the capabilities of a managed switch.

Now that I understand what pfSense and a managed switch would be able to do, I would go with:
Internet <> pfSense box <> Managed switch <> Unmanaged switches for renters with more than one computer

pfSense is the firewall/router [in/out], you would still need to setup a switch to attach all the computers.

The heat here IS pretty atrocious during the summer, though it's not so terrible to keep a data center cool so long as you're not foolish enough to have giant southern-exposure windows or something (like my apartment complex, the morons). I pay 11.28 cents per kW/h flat rate (unlike the crappy tiered pricing I had in CA) so electric costs are reasonable enough.

Where did I say I didn't know what a switch is?

Sounds good.  A managed switch is a heck of a lot cheaper than 4-port NICs.

That was me, I wasn't sure and think I said that.  

That's the only way I know how to do that.  You'd need the managed switch to vlan outside the pfsense box.

nvm I'm not buying rack space from a guy who doesn't know what a switch is.

Oh really?  I misunderstood how it worked then.  Someone earlier on in the thread said you needed a port on the pfSense box for each individual VLAN.

EDIT:  Would it require a managed switch?
EDIT2:  Some quick research shows that it would require a smart switch at a minimum.  This is all starting to make a lot more sense to me now.  Connect pfSense box to smart switch in order to have control over each port on the switch, and what it can and cannot do.

I think I'm done with questions about networking then.  Will continue to do more research on my own now that I know the basics of a VLAN setup.

So back to the poll!

I'm quite sure the pfsense box only needs 2 NICs and then you put that on a 40-port switch.

I realize this, but it would be incredibly expensive to do more than 10 or 12 ports on a pfsense box.  Probably a lot more expensive than buying a 24-port router suited for the purpose in the first place.
That's good to hear that it would be cake for someone!  I would definitely appreciate input from someone who has set up such a configuration in the past.  Again though, I don't want to go with a pfSense box (unless pfSense can be used on a 24 or 48-port router), just because of how expensive it would be to set up one with more than 10 or 12 ports.  It would run into the thousands for a 24-port box.  May as well buy an enterprise router at that point.

I'm located in Eugene, Oregon, and the facility would be as well.  It's a very moderate climate, being on the west coast and so close to the ocean.  We see 100 degrees once or twice a year, if that.  Mostly, during the summer, it's around 80 or 85.

Iceland would be pretty epic.  I have a feeling my wife wouldn't approve a move to there. 

I don't know if I like being restricted from directly accessing my machine. I spoke with a linux network guy I know last night and he seemed to indicate it would be cake to setup vlans and vpn.  I urged him to join the forum here and jump into this discussion, I dangled some hardware discounts to lure him in.

He's currently not working and would probably make a great admin/tech for this kind of operation.

@SgtSpike where are you located? 

Here in Colorado you'd only need to cool ~12 hours day for 3 months a year.  My initial idea for something like this was North Dakota.

Last night I heard a story on BBC about Iceland making more power than they can use trying to attract businesses like smelters and other electricity hogs to take advantage of all their geothermal.  We have any forum members from Iceland that wants to cash in on their cheap, cheap kWh's?

pfSense is a firewall/router/cache/dns all in one.

I've considered this for my own personal experience (setting up a 'bitrack' here at my location).

Anyways, here's the idea -- just have them fill out a form that asks them what they want to have their machines doing. Have them submit tickets for updated things (such as solo mining..etc).

Here's a couple of examples I came up with:

A non-tech user wants to help the community and wants to start mining. He doesn't know much about hardware/software. He decides instead to sign up for your service, and fills out a form.
This form will contain data for everyone -- everything from the most advanced user to the most basic user.

After the form is filled out and emailed to you -- and the payment sent is when you'd order the parts/process it.

After a couple of days, you receive the parts, build the machine? Now what? You'd refer back the form. What did you put under the "How to mine" section. Oh, he left most of it blank/default options! Great! Simple, you do a stable/fast/easy overclock, and set it up for the pool of your choice. He should of filled out at least the bitcoin address field for you. You setup the machine to mine on your own pool/a public pool, and send him the profits his machine makes, every week.
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A very tech savy user is maxing out his house -- all the computers are causing him to pop circuits left and right. He needs another location for his bitcoin miners. The tech savy user would fill out the exact same form as the non-tech savy user. Instead of sending money for a rig to be built, then he sends the rig to your shipping address, and emails you the form/tracking number.
A couple days later, you get the machine. On the form in the "How to mine" section, he filled out the software is already installed, the username/password is listed there and the shell script files are ready to be ran. You would double check it -- making sure no external processes are running. Remember, your firewall may not catch everything. Even though each user is on it's their own vlan, and ACLs are setup at the routing level, you double check everything. It passes your check.
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A some what savy user that has a small apartment and doesn't want the heat to kill him. He fills out the exact same form the other users filled out. He had a small mining rig which was shipped to you as well. This time, on the form he paid for the extensive overclocking feature. In this feature, you test each card, and push them to their limits. On the form, he filled out basic information -- as in mine at "pool", but he didn't give the commands. Obviously, he wants the best performance he can get. You'd do some research and enter the best commands you could for the miner.
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Anyways, that is how I'd handle it tbh. Hopefully I helped a bit. I'm honestly not connected enough to really find any investors into me setting up a bitrack service (even though, I have cheap electricity in my location and tons of commercial lots for lease/sale).
[Just a little advertising here -- if you are an investor interested in my services/location -- toss me a PM, we can discuss further options there]

Thanks for reading,

~bluefirecorp

Ok, so if I understand you correctly:
- Set up PHP backend that only forwards certain SSH commands to the server(s) on the users account.
- User can login and send commands that are necessary for configuring and starting a mining operation, but no other commands are allowed (to prevent them from haxing on the LAN).

It seems that there would be other potential conflicts with an actual LAN as well though.  I couldn't have people configure static IP's on their rigs before sending them to me, and I wouldn't want to deal with configuring a static IP myself, so I would have to issue dynamic IP's.  This could be a problem when I also want to give them steady access to their server via SSH or VNC.

I think I like the idea of a virtual LAN for each user, whether that user rents a single slot or multiples.  I would like to know what router would be necessary to accomplish this though.  Not real keen on creating my own router, as it seems like it would be expensive and a headache to configure.  Bonus if the router has decent built-in DDOS protection so I don't have to use a pfsense box in front.

What I meant was you setup a web interface and have people login to control their server.

NothinG - if a person has SSH access to their rig, even through a web interface, couldn't they still wreak havoc on other machines on the network if they knew what they were doing?

It would be physically located in or around Eugene, OR.  I suppose if you want to make a road trip, you could hand them off. 

If successful, I could of course consider creation of satellite facilities, but the ideal location has low summer heat and low electric costs, neither of which (I believe) Las Vegas or surrounding areas have.

At the very least I'd be happy to pay the monthly premium during the summer months. I live in Las Vegas and my air conditioning isn't as up to the task as I'd like

As long as mining profitability stays high enough to make it worth the price (which is looking questionable these days) I would love a service like this.

Edit: Where would this be physically located? I'd be much more likely to partake if I could physically hand my rigs to someone instead of ship...