Update on my path to steem witnesshood

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: