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How to Turn Your Azure Free Credits into Cryptocurrency: Detailed Instructions

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). With an MSDN Enterprise subscription you can mine cryptocurrency worth up to 149$ every month! This is possible because the newly introduced Azure-batch-service has a low-priority-option, which is dirt cheap!

Short summary:

Setup Azure with Free Credit

Do you have a MSDN-subscription from your 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.

Even if your company pays for the MSDN-subscription, the associated azure-account is your personal account and completely separated from the company. Your boss has no way of accessing it. Microsoft encourages people to use the free credits for testing and learning, and this is what you'll do: learning about using the azure-cloud and the blockchain-technology in a very practical way :-)

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 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!

Chose Mining-Pool

The scripts provided on this site support mining with two different algorithms:

Note: Sumokoin has forked back to original Cryptonight, which means it will no longer be mineable with the script from this site. You'll have to ditch Sumokoin and re-create your startup-script to keep mining.

Other coins might also work if they are based on these algorithms (there is an overview of possible coins at the bitcointalk-forum. The original Cryptonight-algorithm is not supported: recently a ASIC for this algorithm was released which made CPU-mining totally impractical.

To start mining you first have to choose a Monero-pool (or pool for the CNv7 or CN-Heavy-coin of your choice). Pay attention to the pool's rules:

You'll also need to setup a wallet: You have the option to setup a secondary pool, so that your VM's can keep working even if your primary pool is offline.

Note: Cryptocurrencies are notorious for being targets of spectacular hacks and scams. The more cryptocurrency you accumulate, the more important it is to educate yourself about the possible security threats!

Setup the Azure Batch-Service

Note: Azure calls a group of virtual machines within the batch-service a 'Pool'. This has nothing to do with the term 'mining-pool' (operated by e.g. supportXMR.com). Don't confuse the two terms.

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. I recommend using Chrome to access the azure-portal. Fill the form with the following information:

Once you get the notification that your batch-account has been created (it will take a few seconds), go to your batch-account (link to your batch-accounts: https://portal.azure.com/#blade/HubsExtension/Resources/resourceType/Microsoft.Batch%2FbatchAccounts) and create a new pool: select 'Pools' and then click 'Add'. Fill the form with the following information:

In order to make the nodes actually do something, you'll need a startup script which downloads the mining-executable and starts mining. You can create your personalized script here by filling out the fields:

This is your personalized script:

Note:

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
Total number of active cores 6 12 20
Cost of nodes for 31 days ~45$ ~90$ ~149$
Monthly free credit 50$ 100$ 150$

If azure is using 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 cryptocurrency for you!

To stop your azure-pool, go to the overview-page of the azure-pool, select 'Scale' and enter '0' as the number of 'Low priority nodes'. Then click 'Save'. Note that by default your azure-pool will automatically stop when your free credits are exhausted. You can simply restart your azure-pool in the next month once your free credits have been refilled.

Watching your Mining-Progress

The following information only applies only if you are using supportXMR.com as a mining pool. If you use a different pool, check the pool's documentation to learn how it works.
If your are using supportXMR.com
you can see your mining-status if you go to the pool's dashboard supportXMR.com/#/dashboard (or click on the "Dashboard"-link on the left pane of the pool's homepage), scroll down to the bottom of the page and enter your wallet.

Important Notes:


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