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Securing Your Core Wallets with SimpleSwap.io and a Home Server
Today’s video is sponsored by the team over at SimpleSwap.io. SimpleSwap.io understands that as a crypto miner, it is crucial to have the ability to exchange your cryptocurrency on the fly, especially if you need to liquidate your crypto quickly to cover operating costs. With SimpleSwap.io, exchanging cryptocurrency can easily be done in four steps without any exchanges or KYC requirements.
Why Should You Secure Your Core Wallets?
As a crypto miner, you may have initially stored your core wallets on your editing computer or saved your browser extension wallets without much thought. However, two major concerns might arise with this approach: security and redundancy.
The security of your core wallet is essential, given the potential for hacks and unauthorized access. Additionally, redundancy ensures that you have multiple backups of your wallet – so if something goes wrong with your computer, you can still easily access and recover your crypto assets.
Introducing the Home Server Project
To address these concerns, a simple project was undertaken to create a more secure and redundant system for storing core wallets. This involved picking up a 1U HP ProLiant DL160 Gen9 server. The server has three 1TB 7200 RPM drives, configured with RAID 5 for redundancy. With RAID technology, data is distributed across multiple drives so that if one fails, the system can continue to run, minimizing the risk of data loss.
Setting Up Virtual Machines for Core Wallet Storage
The server runs Windows Server 2019, with multiple virtual machines created using Hyper-V – a feature that allows you to create, run, and manage multiple virtual machines on a single server. Each virtual machine runs Windows 10 and is dedicated to one specific core wallet.
The goal is to turn on these virtual machines only when needed to sync with the blockchain or to check wallet balances or transactions, and then power them off when not in use. This adds a layer of security by limiting the accessibility of the core wallets and minimizing the risk of unauthorized access.
Furthermore, the virtual machines are set up on a separate VLAN to isolate them from the rest of the network. This ensures that other devices on the network cannot access these virtual machines or the core wallets installed on them.
Additional Redundancy with Backups
To further improve redundancy and ensure that wallet data is safely backed up, two external USB hard drives will be used. One will be connected to the server at all times to store backups of each virtual machine, while the other will be stored in a waterproof, fireproof safe and swapped out periodically.
These backups can be created using Windows Server Backup, a built-in feature that can be used to backup the virtual machines to the USB drives. This backup process can be scheduled to run automatically, ensuring that multiple copies of each wallet are always available and up-to-date.
Conclusion
This home server project is an excellent solution for adding both security and redundancy to your core wallet storage. By utilizing a dedicated server, virtual machines, and multiple backup methods, you can ensure that your crypto assets are protected and easily accessible when needed.
It’s essential to consider the security and redundancy of your core wallets as a crypto miner, especially during down markets. Home projects like this enable you to learn more about safeguarding your digital assets, as well as providing a valuable opportunity to develop your technical skills.
Don’t forget to explore SimpleSwap.io for your cryptocurrency exchange needs, and let us know your thoughts and experiences in securing your core wallets in the comments below.
With Cyber Security, there are many ways to set up Security. It's always about risk tolerance.
If you have a trusted person, with whom you can co-locate a server you can use ZeroTier to create a private VPN that you have full control over and sync between servers.
Bro great video, this is the kind of vm node content I have been looking for. sometimes these creators by pass the new guy because the have experience with this stuff so they assume we all do. I really needed this one have been wanting to do this stuff but I'm a mechanic not an I.T. specialist, so thanks!
And when they all coming up with their mobile wallet support?
Mate that was gold. I've had yesteryear experience in networking and servers, so refreshing and seeing new software etc was great, cheers HM haha I thought I'd add NT4 so some migh t recall the OS 😉
proxmox for me, easy to roll new windows VM via template, easy to automate backups and has snapshot feature which is a godsend
Great vid to spark the discussion and thoughts in the community. Personally I am rocking Proxmox but achieve the same result. But think more people would like hyper v and windows feel
Don’t sell yourself short Hobbyist. You know plenty of the basic principles that some of us know nothing about.
So is a tutorial in the works because I didn’t comprehend anything you said in this video except for the fact that my core wallets aren’t safe😂
THM awesome content, this should help many others with the idea of what todo, however for most people new to VM running their own Windows Server OS and loading HyperV maybe be a bit much, for noobs I would say look into oracle virtualbox, or VMware workstation pro .. very easy install don’t even need to reboot and it runs on top of standard windows 10 etc.. but yeah so many ways to accomplish the same thing.
This is a great security practice for core wallets. They have been known to have viruses and segmenting like this is great operational security. These are also great for nodes, cool stuff!
What's the pros and cons of doing this instead of running VM on an old laptop, raspberry pi, or maybe even Oracle VM, proxmox. Thanks for the knowledge. I've thinking about doing this for a while now…might as well try it.
Doing same with VMware esxi
Great thing is the twin power supply , how many time I used the spare PSU to power a couple GPU
Gen9 ? I got a twin xeon gen7 doing randomx and running 6 5500
Super!! think about it! you opened a new door for me to learn about networking! I was thinking about Proxmox because it can be placed on bare metal. I don't know how much space Hyper V takes up according to Proxmox? Maybe you can see it a little. I listened to a talk about security with Set today!! Great stuff! Although I don't mine anymore, I still hope for such interesting topics. ! Thank you
Could you do an in depth video on how to set up the server? It would be overkill for my use case but would love to know how to do it and set one up for fun.
Love Handshake!
awesome! would love to do this too
Noob question: Say I want to back up my current Neoxa wallet on a server like this or another computer or whatever
Do I just download a new core wallet from Neoxa and log in using my existing credentials?
Will the new wallet sync w/ the block chain and recognize me as the owner of my coins?
appreciate the videos!
thanks
Hey hobbyist, do you think you could make a video on how to determine legitimacy of exchanges? With these new coins we’re all spec mining, there are a lot of scam exchanges popping up. I appreciate your insight.
Great tips!❤
Laminate a paper wallet, put in in a small fire resistant safe, stick that in a fire resistant safe. That way if fire the small safe protects the laminate from the 350 degree temp of fire safe. You can wrap in aluminum foil if you want just one safe.
since it takes a year to sync them, yea probebly safe 😂