Azure Free Credits for Mining Monero/Other CN-Coins. Super-Easy&Super-Profitable

[mk111]

Update: I have updated the script and the script-generator to support Sumokoin (SUMO) as well. The additional option is available on the website intended for advanced users:
https://azurecloudminingscript.github.io/Turn_your_Azure_Free_Credits_into_Cryptocurrency_detailed.html

(My other site https://azurecloudminingscript.github.io/Turn_your_Azure_Free_Credits_into_Cryptocurrency.html has the quickstart-instructions, but has set Monero as default-currency.)

Other currencies based on Cryptonight-V7 or Cryptonight-Heavy should also work.  jdoi made a nice overview:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3129218.0. I have personally only tested Sumokoin, though. I'm getting around 55H/s per Core for Cryptonight-Heavy. This would result in 1100 H/s if one would use the free credits from an MSDN-Enterprise-subscription to mine Sumokoin.

I did not bother making an option for the original cryptonight-algo because the profitability is a joke since the asics are available.

If you have any problems getting it to work feel free to PM me or write a reply in this thread. 

Great update thanks!

[AzureCloudMiningScript]

One person asked me about using nicehash by email, so i thought i'll share the information here.

The good news is that mining to a nicehash-pool is as easy as pasting your nicehash-wallet and the nicehash-server cryptonightv7.usa.nicehash.com:3363 into the advanced script-generator at https://azurecloudminingscript.github.io/Turn_your_Azure_Free_Credits_into_Cryptocurrency_detailed.html and then following the rest of the guide as normal. Nicehash will pay you in bitcoin, which might be an advantage if that's the cryptocurrency you're interested in. (Technical information: the script-generator will detect if you enter a nicehash-server and it will then automatically set the nicehash-flag in XMR-Stak's configuration).

The bad news is the high difficulty of the nicehash-servers. Unless you configure a node-size of 8 or even 16 cores, you won't be able to consistently submit a new share before nicehash bans you for being inactive. Unfortunately, using bigger nodes will net you a much smaller hashrate (compared to setting up a bigger number of small nodes. Running a single 16-core-VM has almost the same price as running 16 VMs with one core each). So in the end i think it is more profitable to just mine Monero and then exchange the mined coins to bitcoin on cryptopia.

 

[AzureCloudMiningScript]

Hi everybody,

github tells me that 4 people have forked my github repository with the mining scripts... wow, i've never felt so popular

But seriously people: if you feel you really need to set the donation-level to 0%, at least have the decency to make your one-off donation to the authors of xmr-stak. Their donation-wallet is at the bottom of their github-page: https://github.com/fireice-uk/xmr-stak

[VaynardW]

I can only mine for several days and got my subscription disabled, both on my free trial account and pay as you go

[JaredKaragen]

I can only mine for several days and got my subscription disabled, both on my free trial account and pay as you go

salt and recompile XMR-stak.   Change it enough, they won't have a detection vector.

I bet running xmr-stak throws up a huge red flag.

[AzureCloudMiningScript]

I can only mine for several days and got my subscription disabled, both on my free trial account and pay as you go

Hi VaynardW,
that's strange. I've been running my VMs without break for several months now, and so far there was no problem. I have also signed up for a free trial account (independent from the azure-account linked to my MSDN-subscription) and i could use up the 200$ free credits without any problem.

You write you "got your subscription disabled". Are you talking about a MSDN-subscription or about the azure-account? And what do you mean by "disabled"? Is your account gone completely (i.e. you can't login anymore) or did MS just stop all running VMs?

[AzureCloudMiningScript]

I bet running xmr-stak throws up a huge red flag.

Yeah, if they really wanted they could have some spyware running in each VM to detect blacklisted processes. However, as a customer i would find this a bit invasive (even if i don't intend to run any of the blacklisted programs). So i am not really convinced that their detection works like that. Azure could also do some checks along the lines of "IF the cpu-load is 100% AND there are tcp-connections to known mining-pools THEN assume that the VM is used for mining". For this kind of detection no internal access to the VM would be necessary (and changing the miner-binary would not help at all).

Do you have experience with changing the binary in such a case? Did it actually help?

[buonleloi]

My keep IDLE status all the time.

Follow all the step.

Not sure anything wrong ...

[AzureCloudMiningScript]

My keep IDLE status all the time.

I guess that you mean to say that in the azure-portal you can see that all nodes are in the state "IDLE". This is normal. The idea of the batch-service is that the users have tasks that get passed on to the nodes. "IDLE" means that the nodes have booted up and are ready to accept such a task. However, we are using the batch-service a little different. For mining, all we have is the startup-task, which will do the actual mining and will run indefinitely.
So instead of checking the node-state you should check your pool's dashboard. If you can see in the dashboard that your miners are active and submitting shares then everything is OK.

[buonleloi]

My keep IDLE status all the time.

I guess that you mean to say that in the azure-portal you can see that all nodes are in the state "IDLE". This is normal. The idea of the batch-service is that the users have tasks that get passed on to the nodes. "IDLE" means that the nodes have booted up and are ready to accept such a task. However, we are using the batch-service a little different. For mining, all we have is the startup-task, which will do the actual mining and will run indefinitely.
So instead of checking the node-state you should check your pool's dashboard. If you can see in the dashboard that your miners are active and submitting shares then everything is OK.

After try to SSH to one node and run "top" I could see the miner running, but nothing on pool side.

Need to investigate more tmr.

I have many of Azure account which running NH with NV6 VM now, how could 10 nodes with 20 cores total just use 150$ for a month ? Very interesting ...

[AzureCloudMiningScript]

After try to SSH to one node and run "top" I could see the miner running, but nothing on pool side.

If you connect to the VM through ssh, you can use the command

Code:

nano /mnt/batch/tasks/startup/stdout.txt

to have a look at the file /mnt/batch/tasks/startup/stdout.txt (you'll have to scroll down quite a bit to get to the interesting part).  If the miner is actually doing something, then you should see the periodic hashrate-report. Otherwise there should be some error-message visible there.

Please post here again if that does not fix the problem.

And the low price is really true! With the batch-service 20 low-priority cores will cost you just a little less than 150$!

[buonleloi]

After delete all old ResoureGroups and do it again, thing done well now !

http://prntscr.com/jhs21p

I will looking at the bill to see if it really cost lest than 150$

If possible please add some options to the script : wokername and email to notify.

Thank you for the script.

[AzureCloudMiningScript]

After delete all old ResoureGroups and do it again, thing done well now !



I will looking at the bill to see if it really cost lest than 150$

If possible please add some options to the script : wokername and email to notify.

Thank you for the script.

I'm glad to hear that it's working for you. Thanks for the suggestion about the workername. I'll write up the options for adding a workername in a later post.

[buonleloi]

After delete all old ResoureGroups and do it again, thing done well now !

http://prntscr.com/jhs21p

I will looking at the bill to see if it really cost lest than 150$

If possible please add some options to the script : wokername and email to notify.

Thank you for the script.

I'm glad to hear that it's working for you. Thanks for the suggestion about the workername. I'll write up the options for adding a workername in a later post.

So far so good !!!

http://prntscr.com/ji6sfi

Running 3 subscriptions now.

If you look at this :

http://prntscr.com/ji70ng

M60 can run ZEC at 320H/s or lyra2v2 at 26MH/s, plus 6 CPU

May be we can get something better than 20 CPU core to mine XMR ?

[AzureCloudMiningScript]

M60 can run ZEC at 320H/s or lyra2v2 at 26MH/s, plus 6 CPU
May be we can get something better than 20 CPU core to mine XMR ?

When i started setting up the scripts i experimented with the GPU-VMs from Azure. The GPU of course is capable of a higher hashrate, but it is also more expensive. I found that in the end the profit is approximately the same, but setting it up is by far more difficult. For the GPU to work i have to install some external NVIDIA CUDA-packages and reboot the VM a few times. Setting it up was a fight even with the official guide from azure.
I checked the hashrates you gave at whattomine.com and it did not show a higher profit than Monero (assuming 1600H/S), even if you take into account the extra 6 CPUs. I know profit-calculators are not really exact... do you think that the numbers are so far off that in the end using the GPU would yield a better result than CPU-mining?

[AzureCloudMiningScript]

Running 3 subscriptions now.

Are you talking about actual MSDN-subscriptions with free monthly azure-credit, not just one-off Azure-accounts? May i ask you how you got the 3 subscriptions?

[texasman86]

anyone know of a good, reputable source to get the MSDN accounts? All the peeps selling accounts on BCT seem like fraudsters...

[rdluffy]

Running 3 subscriptions now.

Are you talking about actual MSDN-subscriptions with free monthly azure-credit, not just one-off Azure-accounts? May i ask you how you got the 3 subscriptions?

I'm trying to find a decent seller, but I can't find a good one to buy an account, I tried everything

[buonleloi]

anyone know of a good, reputable source to get the MSDN accounts? All the peeps selling accounts on BCT seem like fraudsters...

With this tut, no-one will sell sub at that cheap rate !!!

Running 3 subscriptions now.

Are you talking about actual MSDN-subscriptions with free monthly azure-credit, not just one-off Azure-accounts? May i ask you how you got the 3 subscriptions?

I have some free account (about 150 but MS has blocked a lot of them)
Yes I use NV6 for more than a year (~2$-3$/day from ZEC and XZC/ZOI but will out of credit after 6days )
Now it hard to get NV6 with new AZ Sub, this tut should make me rich again

http://prntscr.com/ji9mcz

Will change all to XMR this weekend.

[Freddy11]

what happens when there is no more monero to mine?