Host a node on Microsoft Azure | Bitcointalksearch.org

ranochigo

legendary

Activity: 2982

Merit: 4193

Quote from: notlist3d on March 21, 2015, 12:14:51 AM

Quote from: doof on March 18, 2015, 08:45:54 PM

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.md

Note: 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.

If you have an MSDN invite or admin, you will automatically get $150 credit per month. However, the price is very expensive for bandwidth and the VM.

notlist3d

legendary

Activity: 1456

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Quote from: doof on March 18, 2015, 08:45:54 PM

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.md

Note: 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.

grue

legendary

Activity: 2058

Merit: 1431

Quote from: mishax1 on March 20, 2015, 06:17:07 AM

Just found an even cheaper solution - http://fullnode.info/howto.html

if you click the link, you'll see that the $19/year offer is no longer available.

mishax1

legendary

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Just found an even cheaper solution - http://fullnode.info/howto.html

emrebey

sr. member

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Merit: 250

Quote from: grue on March 19, 2015, 05:36:13 PM

here's my upstart script for bitcoind (put in /etc/init/bitcoind.conf)

Code:

description "bitcoind"

start on filesystem
stop on runlevel [!2345]
oom score -500

respawn
respawn limit 10 60 # 10 times in 60 seconds

script
   user=bitcoin
   home=/home/$user
   cmd=/usr/bin/bitcoind
   pidfile=$home/bitcoind.pid
   # Don't change anything below here unless you know what you're doing
   [[ -e $pidfile && ! -d "/proc/$(cat $pidfile)" ]] && rm $pidfile
   [[ -e $pidfile && "$(cat /proc/$(cat $pidfile)/cmdline)" != $cmd* ]] && rm $pidfile
   exec start-stop-daemon --start -c $user --chdir $home --pidfile $pidfile --nicelevel 10 -m --startas $cmd
end script

there is a upstart configuration lives in the official codebase: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/contrib/init/bitcoind.conf

Quote from: Heads-Tails on March 19, 2015, 05:43:09 PM

What is the $USD cost to operate a MS Azure bitcoin node for a month?

depends of the machine you will use but it cost much. use digitalocean if you look for a cheap and fast solution.

Heads-Tails

newbie

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What is the $USD cost to operate a MS Azure bitcoin node for a month?

grue

legendary

Activity: 2058

Merit: 1431

I also run a node on azure, but I have a few suggestions:

you should be running bitcoin as a separate user so in the event of a exploit in bitcoind, you server doesn't get pwned.
you should be using a upstart/init.d script otherwise bitcoind will not restart if the server reboots (rare, but still happens on azure).
you can avoid making a symlink for bitcoind's data directory by directly mounting the datadrive on ~/.bitcoin
bitcoin uses TCP 8333, not udp
you should use basic_a1 or basic_a0 to save a bit of money
if you don't want sync to take forever, get a D3 or D4 vm, symlink ~/.bitcoin to /mnt/bitcoin (so bitcoin can sync on ssd). once it's synced, move the the data over to the data disk

here's my upstart script for bitcoind (put in /etc/init/bitcoind.conf)

Code:

description "bitcoind"

start on filesystem
stop on runlevel [!2345]
oom score -500

respawn
respawn limit 10 60 # 10 times in 60 seconds

script
   user=bitcoin
   home=/home/$user
   cmd=/usr/bin/bitcoind
   pidfile=$home/bitcoind.pid
   # Don't change anything below here unless you know what you're doing
   [[ -e $pidfile && ! -d "/proc/$(cat $pidfile)" ]] && rm $pidfile
   [[ -e $pidfile && "$(cat /proc/$(cat $pidfile)/cmdline)" != $cmd* ]] && rm $pidfile
   exec start-stop-daemon --start -c $user --chdir $home --pidfile $pidfile --nicelevel 10 -m --startas $cmd
end script

mishax1

legendary

Activity: 2898

Merit: 1017

That looks pretty nice and not too complex..

Do you need to have the Ubuntu server image or is it already located on the Azure ?

doof

hero member

Activity: 765

Merit: 503

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.md

Note: Ill be adding a few more screen shots very soon.

Topic: Host a node on Microsoft Azure (Read 1600 times)