Hey Steemians! Welcome to my STEEM Witness Intent post!
I have spent some time learning the system, the SteemIt platform, and the technology behind it. Now that I have a firm grasp of the underlying tech here, I have decided to invest more in STEEM Power and enlist myself as a witness! Read on to learn a little more about me, my background, my plans for the witness server, and more.
Previous STEEM related projects
- SteemApi Ruby Gem
- (FIRST ANNOUNCED HERE -- and downloads are already over 300!)
- MinnowSupport Delegation Helper
- User Script: Filter by Reputation
- User Script: Add Color to Follow/Unfollow Labels
- User Script: Unhide Downvoted Comments/Posts
- User Script: Hide Newest Posts - New
- User Script: Hide Oldest Posts - Trending
- User Script: Hide Resteemed Posts - Blog
My Background
Electronic Arts (Origin) - QA Manager
I have been involved in the crypto community since around 2010 when Bitcoin was still mineable with CPUs and average consumer GPUs. During this time, I was working for Electronic Arts as a manager of the EA Download Manager team, (later known as Origin). My job was to manage a fleet of 25 computers, each running 6 types of Operating Systems. Due to how frequent the testers created issues on the computers, I quickly realized the need for imaging the hard-drive and creating a very simple, one-click backup restore.
Tesla Offshore - Offshore Surveyor / Offshore IT
After Electronic Arts, I pursued a career in Oil & Gas as an offshore surveyor. I quickly learned all of the equipment used by the company. Within a short period of time, I started teaching current and new employees and taking on more and more responsibilities in my job. When you live on a 110 foot long boat with 12-14 other people, having entertainment was a necessary commodity. Therefore, when the satellite internet would go out or have issues, I would service the unit myself while offshore. Thankfully I never caused any damage .. but I did save the day internet several times.
Cicada 3301 - Hacking - Security - Programming
Once I realized Oil & Gas was not my calling, I set out to master computer programming and land a new job. Having been on computers and around technology my entire life, picking up programming came naturally. I stumbled across a cryptography challenge posted online and actually solved it to the end. This sparked a true interest in merging programming and security for me. Ever since then, I have been going a million miles an hour learning and developing as a programmer and systems administrator.
Techflavor - Information Security Specialist
Working at Techflavor was definitely fun and exciting. A small startup offers one the ability to carry many responsibilities that are important to making the business succeed. My dedication and passion for information security quickly became obvious when I was put in a role where I could demonstrate my knowledge and capabilities. Learning how computer systems work from the inside out, and figuring out how to exploit their vulnerabilities, really opened my mind to how technology operates in general. This level of insight has led me to think about things in ways not immediately obvious to most people and makes me a qualified security aware systems admin.
Autobrain - Full-Stack Developer / Systems Administrator / QA Manager
Fast forward to today and you will find me working a full-time job as a full-stack developer and systems administrator. On top of those duties, I also perform as the QA manager. In my current position, I manage a network of 30-50 servers, 20 developers, multiple global partners, and 10 repositories. This might sound like gibberish to some people, but in summary it means I have my hands in pieces of every working aspect of the organization.
I manage security, deployments, scaling, issue resolution, and future development planning. I am responsible for upgrading the code base and dependencies at regular intervals while maintaining backwards compatibility of all of our internal applications. The knowledge that I have gained from these responsibilities and experiences makes me particularly well-suited to be a STEEM witness. My average Apdex score for the production, client-facing website is 99% and error rates well below 3% per month.
My Claims
From my servers, I can promise 99.999% uptime with load-balancing, autoscaling, and geographical DNS resolution. On top of this, if any one portion of the global internet goes down, my network will be able to autoheal itself into the regions that are not experiencing any issues. Should the server need to upgrade or handle anything, the downtime will be minimal as I will prepare the upgrade on a server that is not within the fleet and merge it in when it is functional.
Qualifications
- systems administrator
- full-stack developer
- QA manager
- security researcher (OSCP certification in progress)
- crypto enthusiast since the beginning
- STEEM investor
- early crypto miner
- ruby/rails expert
When your job is your passion; it isn't a job
My Witness Servers
Before we get into the specs, let me briefly explain what a Spot-Fleet is on Amazon AWS. Amazon charges users a set rate for their virtual private servers (VPS) when they select on-demand. A user can also select reserved instances with a 1 year or 3 year term. Within these 1-3 year terms, the user can further decide how much of a % to pay upfront. An example of this looks like this:
However, there is yet another option users can choose and that is Spot Instances. The problem with spot instances is that you have to bid on them, and when the price goes above your set maximum, the instance will be terminated. However, with a savings over on-demand of around 80-90%, an experienced user can get 8-10x the amount of servers for the same cost as ONE!
Yes, you read that correctly. Using pricing options built into AWS as opposed to just choosing the default on-demand, you could save over 80%. That is drastic. On top of these overall savings, a user doesn't have to purchase the hardware upfront, host it in a high availability center, or ensure it is updated and running 24/7 since they can rely on autoscaling.
With that out of the way... I currently have a Spot-Fleet request that is active for the next 2 years and is choosing server from the r3 and r4 instance family. The range of stats for any server in my fleet at any given time are as follows:
- 30-60GB RAM
- 2-4 core vCPU
- up to 10Gbit/s network
- 200GB HDD for storing the blockchain (infinitely scalable with zero downtime)
Witness configuration
- Interest is at 0% for SBD
- Account creation fee 0.20 STEEM
How to Vote for me
- Go to the witness voting page on SteemIt.com
- Scroll to the bottom of the page and locate the vote box (shown below)
- Input my name (netuoso) and hit vote.
- Give yourself a high-five for making such an awesome decision
Important Facts
- You can vote for 30 witnesses at one time
- The more votes a witness receives, the more reliable their setup should be
- Witnesses support the STEEM network and are highly necessary
- Witnesses need 99.999% uptime to be worthwhile and take a large time/effort commitment
- Witnesses get paid in STEEM Power to further incentivize their re-investment
Roadmap
- Continued promotion of STEEM and SteemIt: timeline - ongoing
- Continued development on the SteemApi Ruby Gem: timeline - ongoing
- Acquire servers in multiple datacenters for redundancy: timeline - 2 weeks
- Create a website for Witness server status: timeline - 2 weeks
I will try to make it a point to give weekly updates as well as any time a change or update happens that is worth mentioning. You should be able to count on me to make it obvious that I am still available and managing the witness.
Any support and love I receive will be shared with 
I am asking you to lend me your vote and allow me to put my years of experience with managing servers to benefit for you, me, STEEM, and cryptocurrency in general.
Come chat in the Peace, Abundance, Liberty (P.A.L.) discord channel
Remember to ensure that your witness votes go to people that are qualified, reliable, and active. Having active users working as witnesses further helps promote the entire network, benefitting everyone in the long term.
Thanks to 
Share one of your witness votes with me and leave a comment on here saying you did and I will follow you and keep a close eye on your posts for quality content to curate!
As a thank you for reading this post and sharing a witness vote with me, if people comment with a good idea or project that can benefit the STEEM community I will add it to my Roadmap and begin developing it as soon as possible!
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