We have chosen to base your Stakepools on Baremetal hardware here in NZ.
It would be easier, much less technically demanding and significantly cheaper to run the entire operation in the cloud. However, at its most basic, "the Cloud" is really just somebody else's computer so it's not exactly decentralized. Unlike NZ which has to be one of the most geographically decentralized locations on our beautiful planet. So NZ Baremetal it is!
In addition to our baremetal infrastructure we also run an entire Failover system in the cloud along with relays in Asia, North America and Europe. Our Failover servers are also very high specification and would be an outstanding permanent home for the pool operation. The failover system automatically activates in the event that our baremetal block producing nodes stop or lose internet connectivity.
Here's a summary of infrastructure that we have in place to offer the best staking experience possible:
Baremetal:
✅ Enterprize Grade Routers & Switches paired with fibre WAN
✅ Modern Enterprize Grade Servers totalling 128+ CPU cores & 600GB+ RAM
✅ 1x Relay nodes
✅ 3x Block Producing nodes
✅ 1x Testnet Relay nodes
✅ 5x Testnet Block Producing nodes
Cloud:
✅ 5x Modern Enterprize Grade 'VPS' Servers across the globe totalling 58+ CPU cores & 180GB+ RAM
✅ 3x Cloud/VPS Relay nodes
✅ 3x FAILOVER Block Producing nodes
✅ 1x Monitoring Server
✅ We don't, and never will, use highly centralized cloud services such as those provided by Google, Microsoft or Amazon!
Previously our baremetal hardware has been specifically optimized for 'energy efficiency'. With computational demands increasing and set to increase further we are now optimizing for 'power' and have purchased around NZD$25K worth of new Enterprize grade server hardware. The new hardware still offers energy efficiency but, when needed, can ramp up to blazingly fast processing speeds. 🥝Kiwipool Staking is now almost certainly running the most powerful server hardware in the entire Cardano staking ecosystem 💪.
We have plenty of capacity available for future growth as well as for adding blockchain functions such as WMT 'Earth Nodes'.
We have knuckled down during the wet and wild "Crypto Winter' and invested heavily in infrastructure.
🥝Kiwipool Staking is a 'foundational' Stakepool Operation having commenced operations the first week of the Incentivized Testnet (ITN) way back in late 2019. We are one of the most longstanding and experienced stakepool operations with some of Cardano's most experienced stakers. We're almost three years in but we're here for the long haul and we're only just getting started. Onwards and upwards! 🌍 Together, WE are 🥝𝘒𝘪𝘸𝘪𝘱𝘰𝘰𝘭 𝘚𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨