On this day, 06/14/2020, we have our first relay node for the Cardano blockchain live in the USA.
What is the idea behind having a relay node in the USA?
- Better global coverage for the ability to forge blocks.
- Achieve decentralization to secure the network.
- Reduction of a single point of failure, running relay nodes from one location on one data center.
Installing and making the new relay node operational, took us less than half an hour. Updating the topology, restarting the pool and other relay nodes was the most time consuming, but all went smoothly.
Preparation of the VPS machine took about an hour of, installation and configuration of a user, SSH, firewall, chrony, docker, docker-compose, system tuning and security hardening. This is something we can further optimize in the near future, once we get our infrastructure fully deployed by using Ansible. This could save us valuable time if we have to do this task over and over again.
With all being said, we are very happy with the result!