Is it private pool mining efficient?

Question

I have several machines ready to mine. Is it more efficient to setup one machine as the central "pool"(e.g. with a software like this) and connect other machines/miners to it or is it more efficient to "solo" mine on each machine without a central pool. I'm aware of the pro/cons of public pools but I'm not interested(due the lack of trust).

Answer 1

Private pool pros:

• You need only 1 copy of the blockchain and one node instance versus n copies for independent solo mining on each machine. You can help bandwidth by hooking 1 node to the outside network, and rest of them to this one "main" but you'd still have n copies of the blockchain on each machine.
• You have more versatility with regards to mining software as some of them work only with pools
• You can set worker IDs and monitor each miner stats from one single place

Private pool cons:

• Involves more time to learn how to set up and maintain a private pool.

There shouldn't be any measurable performance differences, and you could even set up each machine to solo-mine to the pool but you get the benefits of optimizing your network / storage requirements.

Also, you might want to consider this pool software as well. For that one, if you get stuck with it I believe you could find help rather quick in #monero-pools channel on IRC