Hi Steemian friends! :)

There are some great news about DSound community witness that we want to share with all steemians.

@dsound witness update

Upgrade of storage to SSDs 512GB

Steem blockchain has passed the 200GB of block database! And added to that we have the block index and all other data, so 256GB was not enough anymore... This was already in our radar so we decided to take this chance and upgrade our server to 512GB SSDs. Now we're ready for some more months/year of block data!

Fixed some intermittent issue in Network Interface cards

Our server boxes are real machines, not Virtual Private Servers (VPS) or some other cloud hosting solutions. They happen to have real hardware inside! ahahah :D So this means that, besides the better performance they have, they can also suffer some hardware/driver problems.

This time it was the Gigabit network interface cards (NIC) of some of the boxes. The latest we upgraded have a motherboard that uses some NIC that Ubuntu supplies the outdated version of the driver. It works, but from time to time the network drops for no reason and might come back up after a while...

Well, for a witness this is not good... We missed some blocks because of this and it was hard to figure out the cause. But we think we corrected it now with a latest version of the proprietary driver installed, so fingers crossed! :)

Upgrade to v0.20.9 of Steem blockchain

The upgrade was smooth, no problems to register. It was not expectable either as this was just a small fix update.

So we now also run the latest version of Steem blockchain code.

Technical Infrastructure

Our infrastructure is still the same, but the SSDs have grown double size! We total a dozen blocks missed and performance is even better because we made some networking improvements in the datacenter internal network.

All boxes are behind firewalls, IDS and power redundancy systems. The server characteristics are subject to upgrade or revision as needed.

Witness node	Dedicated Server
CPU	AMD Ryzen 3 2200G 4x core 3.5GHz
RAM	64GB RAM DDR4
Disks	512GB SSD x 2
Connection	Gigabit over optical fiber backbone
Power	Redundant + UPS
Location	EU - Portugal

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@dsound witness rank

We are now at #106 position in the witnesses ranking and finding our way through the hard lane back to the top 100. It is very difficult but we are positive that we deserve to be back in top 100, because this is a DSound Community effort and our Tribe is one of the most active in Steem! Can you please help us get there?

Conclusion

Our nodes are now running the latest version of the Steem Blockchain core code. But...

It is hard to be so down (#106) in the witnesses ranking, so we're counting on you to help pass the word to all your friends or simply by reposting this post, so we can get @dsound witness up the ladder! :)

Thanks a lot to all fellow members of DSound tribe, all Steem members, developers and music addicts like us for your continued support and encouragement on this project! Without you we wouldn't be here assuming this responsibility. Big thanks to all of you!

But, still don't know what DSound is?

It's ok... You are at the right place!

Let's share what it is with you right now...

What is DSound?

DSound is a decentralized web application that allows anyone to upload, listen and discover music and other sounds stored on top of the IPFS Network.

It uses STEEM blockchain as a persistent database, so by posting their sounds the authors can earn rewards in cryptocurrency, when other users like their content, which can be exchanged easily to US Dollars, Euros or any other currency, with a look and feel very similar to Soundcloud.

Check DSound Intro post for more details

DSound Discord Server (the tribe is connected)

If you're learning about DSound now or you didn't connect yet, please join our Discord server at:

https://discord.gg/hSsBw3b

There you'll find a few channels to have everybody from our community getting together and making DSound even better.

If you need any help, please chat with our moderators who have done a great job in making this server a great place to hang out! Also check their work on DSound since they are content creators as well:

@juliakponsford
@jamesub
@archaimusic
@jamesub
@jeffandhisguitar
@darrenclaxton
@nickyhavey

DSound is this! <3

"Music is what feelings sound like"
DSound <3 Music

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And If you trust us and approve what we do in the Steem ecosystem, please give us your Witness vote to help us continue this journey...

Design by @aleister

You can vote for @dsound as a Steem Witness here: Vote with SteemConnect

... but if you prefer the oldfashion way, please go to:
https://steemit.com/~witnesses

and vote for @dsound :)

You might not find us on the list yet, so please use this field to vote:

Alternatively you can set @dsound as your proxy, so that you follow the witnesses we vote as well. This might be interesting for all of you that don't know that well for which witnesses to vote... To do so use this field:

Note: You will need your active private key or your master password for these operations.

Thank you guys! :)