I get a bit of free credit with Microsoft Azure, so I host a few bitcoin nodes. Digital Ocean have some good documentation, so I thought id document the steps for MS Azure. The goal is to have very clear steps that anyone can follow, and the smallest possible foot print / dependencies.
If anyone would like to peer review the steps, they can be found at...
https://github.com/evapeak/bitcoind/blob/master/README.mdNote: Ill be adding a few more screen shots very soon.
Azure was giving a little bit of a credit a while back when you start.
Digital Ocean if you use high CPU usage be prepared to submit documentation proving your identity if they are like they were. I know I had just one account and they wanted me to jump through hoops. But this was in days of cpu mining.