Our primary server is in the U.S. – East Coast (West Virginia),
with backup servers in the EMEA (Bahrain) and Asian (Japan)
regions. The U.S. server is dedicated contracted server in a local
data center. The backup servers are also dedicated leased servers.
As Solana is still a young network, it’s important we be flexible
in running our validator. Our hardware requirement constantly
being monitored. Initially GPUs were thought to be very important,
this is not currently the case as it is not the main requirement.
Fast storage has come to the forefront. In the future, when smart
contracts are executed in parallel across GPUs, we think GPUs will
become important again. Thus, the key is to be able to change
hardware and setup quickly; we are capable of this. We've been
with Solana from the since 2021 and believe it will be around for
a long time.
About Security
We do the necessary things. We have a firewall, no password logins
to servers, public or private keys only, monitor using our
internal systems with alerts. We understand that security
requirements are constantly changing. We have employees monitoring
our validator. Using a machine in the cloud is generally more
reliable (hardware) and secure (DDOS attacks), which sounds great
until you need to make a rapid hardware upgrade the cloud provider
doesn't support. Our monitoring persons are able to respond to
alerts and swap out hardware faster when needed.
If you are a delegator, delegating to multiple validators is
always the safe method and set up alerts on your phone to stay
updated with them. Delegators can use the following websites to
check on/lookup validators:
NEVER delegate to validators above the "Halt the Network" line, as
it is important the network be as decentralized as possible. If a
validator is down for a long time and no longer synced, make sure
to redelegate.
If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to reach out to
us at info@crosstech.llc.