Aether mining: how to build your data center
I am being taken to the building of a former factory on the outskirts of Tallinn. Fortunately, not in the trunk, but the destination address was asked not to disclose and not to photograph the building from the outside - so that those interested in the photos could not determine where the new mining farm HashFlare is located. Surprisingly, for some reason, there are quite a few who want to find out.
It is unlikely that there are people in the world who, on waking, decide: what if I should not build a personal data center today. Usually, a chain of events and conditions leads to such decisions, which lead to such a decision.
HashFlare brought a whole combination of factors to this, and it all started with a rush around the new cryptocurrency Ethereum, which just over a year soared to a capitalization of almost a billion dollars. Of course, HashFlare customers wanted to get the opportunity to mine a new crypt.
Mine "Ethereum" best of all on video cards. Why mining on video cards is faster than mining on processors , quite a lot has already been written , and some cryptocurrency features make this a completely hopeless task - for example, when a currency uses several encryption algorithms and they go in a certain sequence, then as the algorithm changes, the ASIC will stop working. The same “Etereum” due to its cunning algorithm cannot yet be mined using ASIC. On the GPU, you can mine any currency.
However, the video card will not work just put in the rack in the data center. Their main problem is cooling. Cases of modern servers are clearly sharpened for the most efficient cooling: on the one hand - air intake, on the other - return. Even ASIC miners have long been manufactured in standard cases suitable for placement in server cabinets in a data center. The creators of video cards do not care about this at all, because they were not prepared for the fact that it would occur to someone to deploy entire farms based on them. They cannot be put in a rack, because all video cards look in different directions, but if something goes wrong (it happens that fans are flying, etc.), you can simply turn off and remove the broken link.
At such moments, you begin to appreciate maintainability
You can, of course, of course, install video cards in computer cases, but this will increase their price and complicate the convenience of repair and replacement. This solution is for 1-2 video cards, so it is not of industrial interest. In addition, data center administrators are not trained and do not want to work with them.
So: a mining farm is required on video cards, which cannot be deployed in a normal data center. You already know the solution to this problem: build it yourself. About how this is done, and will go on.
In early March, HashFlare announced the launch of a mining mining broadcasting program, and began collecting pre-orders, with the funds from which they collected the first Etehereum mining farm on video cards, which was launched in early April.
For the arrangement of the farm, the company rented premises on the territory of the former Soviet factory on the outskirts of the Estonian capital. A deserted and cool building warms sharply as it gets closer to the room where mining magic is going. Inside is so hot that admins in T-shirts and shorts do not look convincing - I want to remove not only clothes, but also skin.
Cooling is the cornerstone of its own data center: right now, HashFlare is redoing the ventilation capabilities of its premises to fit its needs.
Standard ductwork and close to cope with the needs of the mining farm
If you ever conceive to sell his soul to the devil for his work in a hot climate, be sure to specify that it should be Thailand, not mayningovaya farm, not risking to find yourself in shlopkah and shorts in the middle of Estonia:
For work on the beach
Engineers calculated that to maintain the temperature of iron, which consumes 100 KW / h at least at the level of + 35 °, with an estimated outdoor temperature of + 25 ° C, air exchange of 35,000 m³ / h is required. This means that for the intake of fresh air, a hole of at least 5 m² is required, and for discharge, two air ducts of 630 mm each with fans.
As long as the ventilation is being altered, no help will prevent
Against this background, the organization of the farm itself does not look any more complicated than Lego assembly: Asrock H81 Pro BTC motherboards, AMD R9 380 video cards, R9 380x (Sapphire / MSI) video cards, PCI-E risers, which are needed for a limited number of connectors are located on ordinary metal racks for a GPU on a standard motherboard, connect several video cards at once, and an EVGA SuperNOVA 1300 G2 1300W power supply.
The demand for mining of Etherium is growing, so only in Tallinn HashFlare is preparing to populate the second such room next door: for now, there are only empty shelves with dozens of connected outlets, but everything will change soon.
Another data center on the 50 GH soon will open on one of the Estonian hydroelectric power plants. Which one is also a secret, but the data center at the hydroelectric power station sounds cool.
Perhaps this hydroelectric station looks something like this. But most likely not, because the photo is not even Estonia
Building your data center, after the equipment and cooling you will need to think about security. Information is money, and in this case information is money. Let and virtual.
Of course, the farm is viewed from all sides by cameras:
And you can watch what is happening on it online even from the phone:
Now more than a thousand video cards are being plowed to HF customers, washing more than 20 gigabytes per second in search of valuable coins. The scale is constantly growing: the total performance of all HashFlare farms must exceed 100 GC / s. You can start the ethereum cloud mining today: ether.hashflare.eu
Of course, the possibilities of the farm are not limited to one ether. This is the advantage of mining on the GPU - you can mine any currency, no matter how clever the mining algorithm it possesses, therefore HashFlare uses part of the power of its farm to experiment with new promising and just curious currencies like Dashcoin and others.
It is unlikely that there are people in the world who, on waking, decide: what if I should not build a personal data center today. Usually, a chain of events and conditions leads to such decisions, which lead to such a decision.
HashFlare brought a whole combination of factors to this, and it all started with a rush around the new cryptocurrency Ethereum, which just over a year soared to a capitalization of almost a billion dollars. Of course, HashFlare customers wanted to get the opportunity to mine a new crypt.
Mine "Ethereum" best of all on video cards. Why mining on video cards is faster than mining on processors , quite a lot has already been written , and some cryptocurrency features make this a completely hopeless task - for example, when a currency uses several encryption algorithms and they go in a certain sequence, then as the algorithm changes, the ASIC will stop working. The same “Etereum” due to its cunning algorithm cannot yet be mined using ASIC. On the GPU, you can mine any currency.
However, the video card will not work just put in the rack in the data center. Their main problem is cooling. Cases of modern servers are clearly sharpened for the most efficient cooling: on the one hand - air intake, on the other - return. Even ASIC miners have long been manufactured in standard cases suitable for placement in server cabinets in a data center. The creators of video cards do not care about this at all, because they were not prepared for the fact that it would occur to someone to deploy entire farms based on them. They cannot be put in a rack, because all video cards look in different directions, but if something goes wrong (it happens that fans are flying, etc.), you can simply turn off and remove the broken link.
At such moments, you begin to appreciate maintainability
You can, of course, of course, install video cards in computer cases, but this will increase their price and complicate the convenience of repair and replacement. This solution is for 1-2 video cards, so it is not of industrial interest. In addition, data center administrators are not trained and do not want to work with them.
So: a mining farm is required on video cards, which cannot be deployed in a normal data center. You already know the solution to this problem: build it yourself. About how this is done, and will go on.
In early March, HashFlare announced the launch of a mining mining broadcasting program, and began collecting pre-orders, with the funds from which they collected the first Etehereum mining farm on video cards, which was launched in early April.
For the arrangement of the farm, the company rented premises on the territory of the former Soviet factory on the outskirts of the Estonian capital. A deserted and cool building warms sharply as it gets closer to the room where mining magic is going. Inside is so hot that admins in T-shirts and shorts do not look convincing - I want to remove not only clothes, but also skin.
Cooling is the cornerstone of its own data center: right now, HashFlare is redoing the ventilation capabilities of its premises to fit its needs.
Standard ductwork and close to cope with the needs of the mining farm
If you ever conceive to sell his soul to the devil for his work in a hot climate, be sure to specify that it should be Thailand, not mayningovaya farm, not risking to find yourself in shlopkah and shorts in the middle of Estonia:
For work on the beach
Engineers calculated that to maintain the temperature of iron, which consumes 100 KW / h at least at the level of + 35 °, with an estimated outdoor temperature of + 25 ° C, air exchange of 35,000 m³ / h is required. This means that for the intake of fresh air, a hole of at least 5 m² is required, and for discharge, two air ducts of 630 mm each with fans.
As long as the ventilation is being altered, no help will prevent
Against this background, the organization of the farm itself does not look any more complicated than Lego assembly: Asrock H81 Pro BTC motherboards, AMD R9 380 video cards, R9 380x (Sapphire / MSI) video cards, PCI-E risers, which are needed for a limited number of connectors are located on ordinary metal racks for a GPU on a standard motherboard, connect several video cards at once, and an EVGA SuperNOVA 1300 G2 1300W power supply.
The demand for mining of Etherium is growing, so only in Tallinn HashFlare is preparing to populate the second such room next door: for now, there are only empty shelves with dozens of connected outlets, but everything will change soon.
Another data center on the 50 GH soon will open on one of the Estonian hydroelectric power plants. Which one is also a secret, but the data center at the hydroelectric power station sounds cool.
Perhaps this hydroelectric station looks something like this. But most likely not, because the photo is not even Estonia
Security
Building your data center, after the equipment and cooling you will need to think about security. Information is money, and in this case information is money. Let and virtual.
Of course, the farm is viewed from all sides by cameras:
And you can watch what is happening on it online even from the phone:
Now more than a thousand video cards are being plowed to HF customers, washing more than 20 gigabytes per second in search of valuable coins. The scale is constantly growing: the total performance of all HashFlare farms must exceed 100 GC / s. You can start the ethereum cloud mining today: ether.hashflare.eu
Of course, the possibilities of the farm are not limited to one ether. This is the advantage of mining on the GPU - you can mine any currency, no matter how clever the mining algorithm it possesses, therefore HashFlare uses part of the power of its farm to experiment with new promising and just curious currencies like Dashcoin and others.