[Guide] How to net 6,000+Ð/day using Windows Azure

Source :http://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/comments/1tt608/guide_no_hardware_to_mine_how_to_net_6000ðday/

 

Inspired by /u/lleti 's free guide for using Amazon Web Services. However, from what I understand due to rental costs, it is more efficient to buy doge directly than use AWS. This guide is based on utilizing the $200 credit that comes with the Windows Azure cloud computing free trial, so you will not pay anything.

This is targeted at shibes with poor hardware that can only mine 50-200 doge per day, but it will work for everyone.

Disclaimer: Doge rate is an estimate based on current difficulties and market. Windows Azure trial may be US only (?)

Overview / How it works

You will not be mining doge directly with this method. Mining doge effeciently requires a GPU, which aren't found in traditional servers. Instead, we will be using the powerful CPUs provided with Windows Azure servers to mine a CPU based crypto-currency, such as QuarkCoin or SecureCoin, and convert those to doge.

Steps

1) Install your QRK or SRC wallet

Ideally if you are reading this, you have installed a dogecoin-qt wallet for yourself before. We will need to do the same for either QuarkCoin or SecureCoin. This is the wallet where will will send the coins you mine with your Windows Azure servers.
QuarkCoin download page
SourceCoin download page

These are not the only CPU coin options, but QRK and SRC are very similar (same hash function) and simple to mine.

Once you have installed the wallet, it should look very similar to your DogeCoin wallet. If you have trouble downloading the blockchain ('out of sync'), look at these threads respectively to see which nodes you need to add to your config file. Config files are located at C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Roaming\CoinName.conf on Windows.

2) Set up a mining pool account

If you have joined a mining pool for DogeCoin, it will be a very similar experience for other alt coins. See the following bitcointalk threads which have a list of mining pools:
QuarkCoin bitcointalk.org thread
SecureCoin bitcointalk.org thread

If you would like a pool recommendation, I can recommend src.coinmine.pl and qrk.coinmine.pl; this is from personal experience, I am not affiliated with them.

Once you are logged in you should also create 3 workers, as we will be setting up 3 servers, one for each server. So you should have 3 worker names, and a password set up for each worker.

3) Sign up for Windows Azure free trial

Link: www.windowsazure.com/en-us/pricing/free-trial/

You will have to provide a valid credit card and verify your account with a cell phone so they know you are a real person. This is a Microsoft product so they are reputable. Once you sign up, you will receive a $200 to use in 30 days. Remember to cancel when your credits are running out so they don't charge you.

4) Create Windows Server instances

I would recommend you watch this video which walks you through the UI of the Windows Azure management site to set up the virtual machines we need. Essentially we are going to do the following:
Create 2 Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 instances with 8 CPU core / 14 GB RAM option
Create 1 Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 instance with 4 CPU core / 7 GB RAM option

Thus we have a total of 20 CPU cores to mine QRK / SRC with. We want the the most CPU power we can get without excessively burning our $200 credit. That's why 2008 R2 is used, and only 3 instances of it.

5) Remotely connect to servers and download miner

This section is also covered in the video from section 4, watch it for a visual walkthrough.

Once the servers have been initialized on Microsoft's end, we should be able to access them under 'Virtual Machines' at www.manage.windowsazure.com. You should see each host name and a status, and when selected there should be an additional 'Connect' button - click it.

You should now be prompted to download a .rdp file. Download this for each of your 3 virtual machines to a folder you will remember. You will open this .rdp file and use the login credentials you previously specified to connect to each server.

Once you are remotely connected, you should see the desktop. Open up the first icon on the taskbar that looks like a server, this is your server manager. We need to open up the 'Configure IE ESC' setting that's visible on this pane. Make sure 'Off' is selected for both admins and users on the IE ESC configuration.

Now, open up the IE browser and navigate to https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B9cvOfoOekSdVzZZcThLZHg4bjA/edit. Press Ctrl + S to download the entire zip to the desktop, and un-zip it.

6) Configure and start miner

Again, this is pretty much covered in the video from section 4, if you prefer watching.

You should now have a folder on your server's desktop named quark-v2_w64. This is the miner for both QRK and SRC. We are going to be using minerd64_sse4.exe. Create a shortcut to minerd64_sse4.exe within the same folder. We now need to add the parameters for your miner.

Right click on your minerd64_sse4.exe shortcut -> Properties. Look at the target field, it should look like this:

C:\Users\UserName\Desktop\quark-v2_w64\minerd64_sse4.exe

We are going append the following format to this target field

-a quark -t 8 -o stratum+tcp://src.coinmine.pl:6020 -u user.worker -p password

-a: algorithm, both SRC and QRK use 'quark'

-t: number of cores (so either 8 or 4 for our purposes)

-o: mining pool information (url and port).

-u: account you have for your mining pool, then a period, then a worker name

-p: password that you created for the worker in step 2

So here is an example of what the target field of your shortcut should look like when you are done:

C:\Users\Nexic\Desktop\quark-v2_w64\minerd64_sse4.exe -a quark -t 8 -o stratum+tcp://src.coinmine.pl:6020 -u Nexic.worker1 -p pass1

7) Profit!!

If you set up your miners correctly on each Windows Server VM (I prefer to assign a separate worker to each one), you should be able to run them and see an output like this: http://i.imgur.com/3lECqSz.png. You can close your remote sessions without interrupting it.

How do you get the doge, you ask? Well, using the above setup I have earned 10 SecureCoins in the past 2 days. These are worth 0.00094 bitcoins (BTC) on Cryptsy at present. A doge is worth 0.0000007 BTC at present, so if I go from SRC -> BTC -> DOGE, I can turn 5 SRC to 6,642 DOGE on Cryptsy. There are also other exchanges, I won't go into how to exchange coins on this post. Remember, this is every day for about a week, for free!

Also, you can CPU mine on your own personal computers as well, not just the servers.

TL;DR

Mine QuarkCoin / SecureCoin using Windows Azure free trial, use Cryptsy (or other exchange) to convert to DOGE. Much more efficient than CPU mining Doge.

Update:

I posted my guide for Windows Azure some days ago. It uses Linux VMs instead to maximize the credit (Linux VMs are cheaper so the credit will last longer, meaning more DOGE!) and it is very easy to follow. Many happy shibes so far. Please have a look.

http://www.reddit.com/r/dogecoin/comments/1tm0ku/a_noobs_guide_to_mining_dogecoin_on_the_windows/

[–]ThePoose 2 points 1 month ago*

Also bear in mind that on Azure you can follow this tutorial, create an image of it right in the Azure interface, and really quickly have several more up and running.

Also Azure is ideal for mining Primecoins. I recommend looking in it.

[–]Ticamai 2 points 1 month ago

Just got Bukkit going with Citizens2 mod on my Amazon EC2 Micro server. A friend and I are experiencing zero lag while doing normal minecrafty things, and it holds up pretty well to lag testing. Definitely an option. To get it working, set up an account (requires phone and credit card), click the "Launch an Instance" button, pick an OS that says it is eligible for free tier(Ubuntu 12.04 was my choice, Windows is an option), choose the t1.micro instance, set it for 30gb of storage space, add UDP port 25565 (might require TCP port 25565 as well), then connect to it and set up the minecraft server. EC2 has a tutorial that will walk you through most of this.

So long as you don't use more than the single t1.micro instance+30Gb storage, EC2 will not charge you, for up to 1 year after the sign up date.

Keeping it running for another year after that - with the same specs - is something stupid cheap, like $75 or so.

If you have any questions, feel free to PM me, and I'll walk you through anything you need!

Try free AMAZON AWS

http://aws.amazon.com/free/