Throwing this out there for those considering becoming a new Node Operator and for existing SNOs to benchmark…
27 months ago, I deployed a new server that I knew was (at the time) over-provisioned on its storage subsystem. I allocated 10TB to Storj and left it running 24x7x365 on a 600/400Mbps unmetered, fiber connection.
Today, after more than two years, I hit 99% usage (or 9.9TB+) in my node’s dashboard. Generally speaking, the node has maintained at least 98.5% monthly availability across all Storj satellites, but I did have one month where I hit 97% due to some hardware issues and an extended power outage in the same month. As many others on the forums and elsewhere have pointed out, running a Storj node is not a “get rich quick” proposition.
For those who are curious, my node is running Ubuntu 22.04 with a modern, 12 core processor and 64GB ram. Storage subsystem is 4x8TB SATA HDDs configured as a ZFS striped mirror with compression enabled and a 256GB SATA SSD read cache; for a while, I was using a NVMe partition as a write-cache, but I removed it from play as I’ve never had much by way of IOWAIT time or other disk bottlenecks (other than during the Storj filewalk on startup or ZFS scrubs). (Again, I have other business use cases that necessitate better disk fault tolerance vs. the 1-disk, 1-node that’s often recommended for Storj nodes.) The server is still underutilized for its original purposes, so Storj is happily consuming much of its resources.
I am curious from other SNO’s–does that metric–10TB in a little over 2 years–seem consistent with your experience? Is my node under-performing? Over-performing?
And kudos to the Storj team! The Storj software has played nicely with the rest of the server’s software, keeps itself updated, and is very, very low maintenance from this SNO’s perspective.
27 months for 10 TB seems excessive. This averages to 0.37 TB/month. Where in the world are you?
My first node started in Aug 2022 now has 9.0TB stored (averaging 0.6TB/month)
Another node started in Dec 22 now has 6.5TB (0.6 TB/month)
The third one started in July 23 has 2.3TB (0.5TB/month).
All three are on the US West coast, in California (first two) and Arizona (last one). all run on variety of old servers. Mostly super micro x9.
There were a bunch of large deletions in the past, so that may skew the results.
I think the recommendation is that if you want to run three nodes, your array shall have at least three disks, to share expected IO load. Otherwise it makes no sense.
+1. Literally money printing machine. I did have to create an updater for freebsd, because the original one is broken, but that’s the extent of my invasion into its internal working.
Looking at past data points to estimate the future is not always a good idea. There are many uncertainties when it comes to STORJ. A lot of things have changed since 2 years ago.
Start a node because you have unused resources, not because you trust some earnings calculator! Thank you for pointing out that you will not get rich hosting a node. But it is a lot of fun!
I have 24 nodes actually, for end of this month i create other 6 nodes . i have 5 location of the nodes are position in Italy with 2 pubblic ip for every location. obviously not all the nodes are currently on 42 months but the nodes have been created gradually over the years. the youngest today is 4 months old and the oldest is 42 months old, everyone else is in between
