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How to Turn Your Azure Free Credits into Cryptocurrency

The rate can fluctuate between 1:1 and 1:4, i.e. in the best case you'll get almost 1$ worth of cryptocurrency for every 1$ spent on azure (depending on the current exchange-rates). This is possible because the newly introduced Azure-batch-service is dirt cheap!

Short summary:

You'll need a azure-account with free-credit, e.g. from a MSDN-subscription

Get a Monero-Wallet

Start mining with the Azure-Batch-Service using the scripts provided here

With the instructions provided here you will be mining Monero. Monero is one of the top-altcoins and better than bitcoin in virtually every aspect (i guess bitcoin beats Monero only in popularity). If you are interested in a different cryptocurrency you can read my detailed instructions here.

Setup Azure with Free Credit

Do you have a MSDN-subscription from you day job? Great! You must have already noticed that Microsoft keeps sending you emails asking you to open an azure-account with up to 150$ monthly credit. Follow the instructions in the mail to claim your free credits. Note that by default you don't even have to enter your credit-card-number, so you can be sure that your mining is running purely on your monthly free credit.

If you don't have a MSDN-subscription, you can at least use the one-time credit of 200$ you get just for opening the Azure-account. Depending on the current altcoin-exchange-rate and whether azure adds tax to you bill or not it might even be profitable to keep running your azure-account on your credit-card - but note that you'll be operating on a razor-thin margin!

Get a Monero-Wallet

There are many ways how to create a Monero-wallet. The easiest is to setup a web-wallet with MyMonero.com.

Cryptocurrencies are notorious for being targets of spectacular hacks. A web-wallet like MyMonero.com is a good way to get started. However, once you have accumulated a non-trivial amount of Monero you should educate yourself about the possible alternatives!

By the way: if you don't already have a password-safe like keepass you should definitely start using one to store your wallet-details (and of course all other passwords you are using). Trust me, you'll regret it if you don't start now.

Setup the Azure Batch-Service

After signing up for your azure-account you can click on the following link to create a new batch-account: https://portal.azure.com/#create/Microsoft.BatchAccount Fill the form with the following information:

Account name: Just a name for your batch-account

Resource Group: Click 'Create New' and give it a name, e.g. 'myRecGroup'

Leave the other options at the default-settings.

Click on 'Create' at the bottom to create the batch-account

Once you get the notification that your batch-accout has been created (it will take a few seconds), go to your batch-account and create a new pool: select 'Pools' and then click 'Add'. Fill the form with the following information:

Section 'Pool Detail':

Pool ID: Just a name for your azure-pool

Section 'Operating System':

Publisher: Canonical
SKU: 16-04 LTS

Section 'Node Size':

Node pricing tier: 'Standard F2 (2 Cores, 4GB)'

Leave the other options at the default-settings.

Click on 'OK' at the bottom to create the azure-pool.

Whenever the computers in your azure-pool get started up, they will execute a custom script which will download the mining-executable and start mining. Enter your Monero-wallet here and click on the button to generate your personalized startup-script (it should look similar to 46ZRy92vZy2RefigQ8BRKJZN7sj4KgfHc2D8yHXF9xHHbhxye3uD9VANn6etLbowZDNGHrwkWhtw3gFtxMeTyXgP3U1zP5C):

This is your personalized script:

(Note that the scripts and the miner-executable are hosted on github.com - you can check out the code yourself if you have any doubts about the function of the script)

Once the azure-pool is created, go to 'Start task'. Fill the form with the following information:

Command line: here you have to enter your personalized script from the textfield above

User identity: 'Task Autouser, Admin'

Leave the other options at the default.

Click on 'Save'

The last step is to tell Azure how many mining-nodes it should start for you. This depends on the amount of free credits available in your azure-account. Basically you want to use up as much of your monthly credit as possible without actually consuming all of your credit (otherwise you'll have to repeat the setup again in the next month because azure will delete your pools if your free credits are exhausted).

	Professional	Platform	Enterprise
Number of low priority nodes (F2, 2 Cores, 4GB)	3	6	10
Cost of nodes for 31 days	~45$	~90$	~149$
Monthly free credit	50$	100$	150$

If azure is setup to use your local currency instead of USD the numbers might look slightly different.. if you run out of free credit before the end of the month, just reduce the number of nodes by one and try again.

Now go back to 'Overview' and click on 'Scale'. Enter the number from the table above in the field 'Low priority nodes' (e.g. 3 if you have MSDN Professional), and click on 'Save'. Congratulations! The azure cloud is now mining Monero for you!

Watching your Mining-Progress

The script is using xmrpool.eu as a mining-pool (don't mixup the terms 'mining-pool' and 'azure-pool' - they describe two totally different concepts). To see your mining-status go to xmrpool.eu and enter your wallet.

Approximately 5 minutes after starting your azure-pool you should be able to see the number of submitted hashes slowly increasing. The displayed hashrate will vary wildly - this is normal.
Your pending balance will increase once the mining-pool finds a new block. For a big pool like xmrpool.eu this will happen a few times per day. However, if the pool is unlucky, it can also take a day or two.
The pending balance will be paid out to your wallet once it passes the minimum payout threshold of 0.2 XMR. If you have MSDN Professional you'll have to mine a month or so until you can see a incoming payment in your wallet. Obviously it'll be faster if you have more azure-credits to spend.

Important Notes:

Azure has a standard-limit of 20 low-priority-cores per region. If the quota in your azure-account is less than that, you can request an increase of this quota through the azure support. I recommend not asking for more than 20 cores. We are operating in some kind of gray area here, you don't want to cause a big stir... If you want to mine with more than 20 cores i recommend setting up more azure-pools in other regions (the quota limits only the number of cores per region, nothings stops you from setting up more azure-pools in other regions).
Nothing in life is free. If you are mining with the script from this site the miner-executable will mine 4% of the time to my private wallet. From the cryptocurrency generated this way i pledge to donate half (2%) to the authors of xmr-stak. You can view this as a convenience-fee for getting a tested and streamlined mining-script.

Do you need help following the instructions? You can contact me at