Maintain Chia Sync and Keep Your Farm Online

One of the most frustrating parts of plotting and farming Chia is the aspect of keeping synchronized. When your node first comes online, there’s a Chia sync process that makes your node aware of others and other nodes aware of you. If you have another known node IP address, that can help speed your sync, but it’s largely a waiting game. Staying online once the node is live is key, as a surprise reboot or failure means your farm is offline and all plots in progress are gone. It also means your Chia sync is out of step and the longer you’re node is offline, the more resync will have to take place when it comes back. Here are a few tips to keep your Chia farm online and if your luck is right, winning.

Keep your Chia Farm Online with a Battery Backup

This tip might seem obvious for those of us with an IT background, but for the average Chia farmer coming online with home equipment or a mix of custom gear, a UPS might not always be the first thing you think about. With Chia winning coming down to the size of your farm and uptime game, a battery backup is key to ride out the power blips.

The second part of this is how plotting is processed, and currently, there is no way to resume a plot in motion if you need to reboot. With plotting taking hours, this is a massive hit to racking up the plots for your farm. If the machine is unattended, a power loss depending on your BIOS configuration could even result in the system staying off and no longer remotely accessible.

We’ve reviewed a number of small business battery backups from Eaton, which would be more than capable to keep different Chia farms and plotting servers online. The sky is the limit really in terms of what your demands are and what your budget is.

The little 500W Eaton 5SC500 is a solid performer for a medium build that might not push higher than 500VA or 350W of load. It’s also widely available for under $200. For the bigger farms and more importantly plotting, something in the realm of the Eaton 9SX3000 works well without pushing up into the space controlled by 240V models. The 9SX3000 is a 3000VA unit capable of supporting loads as high as 2700W. There are a lot of options in both the 5PX and 9SX on Amazon.

One other note on batteries, we generally stay away from lower-end gear as getting batteries right is really important. Eaton however recently closed the acquisition of Tripp Lite. While we haven’t been hands-on with their newer units, they tend to be a little less expensive at the lower end of the portfolio and should make for a viable alternative. Amazon has a couple of choices that look pretty good. The Tripp Lite SMART1500LCDT is geared for a 1500VA or 900W load.

A Used Battery Backup Alternative

If a brand new UPS is out of your budget, don’t think all is lost. Find an IT surplus store in your area or hit up eBay for an off-lease enterprise-grade UPS. Many of these can be found in the 1000-5000W sizing and very attractive prices. We’ve seen some models go for a fraction of their price new, and in many cases just needing new lead-acid batteries to get them fully operational again. And don’t worry, swapping battery packs isn’t very hard, just be sure to recycle your old battery.

Lastly – Check Your Panel

Even though Chia has the potential to be lower power than other cryptocurrencies, don’t overlook your power requirements. The last thing you want is a breaker tripping after you cause your own power failure. This can happen when a circuit gets overloaded. Having a bunch of computer equipment and external hard drives could pop a breaker should something else turn on that overloads the circuit.

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