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