That's a decent idea about running a VPS for a bitcoind relay. I could stick p2pool on there too while I'm at it.
I like this idea of a VPS with the p2pool and bitcoind nodes on it. Will probably be trying that in the new few days. Anyone else have any tips on doing it?
There's a Bitcoin tutorial for digital ocean
I know how to set up bitcoind on a VPS generally. Just wondering about the p2pool aspect of it. For example, is it better to have bitcoin and/or p2pool local nodes that connect to their counterparts on the VPS or just have the miners connect directly to p2pool+bitcoind on the VPS?
Just connect to vps make p2pool public
Open ports 833 9332 9333
If the VPS is good enough to run p2pool on with ~8 outgoing connections, then I'd just run p2pool there. Bitcoind isn't a problem, since getting slow block notifications in p2ool doesn't really penalize you (all in all, it's probably beneficial as far as building off previous shares goes).... if you ever solved a block, it'd increase chances of it being an orphan tho, I suppose.
..... but I wouldn't open it to the public, not on one of those 'couple of dollars' VPS'es that I was referring to, hah