Topic: [YAC] Illustrated, step-by-step guide to starting your own AWS YAC server farm! - page 5. (Read 13595 times)

Hey there! Just as the title says. Keep in mind there are other, faster ways to go about this - this guide is geared toward being accessible rather than efficient.

Before we begin, two very important things:

1) YOU are responsible for making sure this is a profitable venture. Don't spend money you can't afford to lose. If it's too good to be true, it probably is. Etc etc etc.

2) This guide involves executing a bash script that I wrote to set up the instances in one easy step. DO NOT EXECUTE THIS FILE WITHOUT MAKING SURE IT'S SAFE WITH A TEXT FILE EDITOR FIRST (nano, vim, etc). You don't know what kind of nasty things I could have put in there, and you can never be too safe.

Ok, let's get started!

First, go to Amazon Web Services (http://aws.amazon.com), open an account, and set up a payment method. If you can't figure this out, you probably shouldn't be running servers  

Once that's done, go to the AWS Management Console. You should see this:



Click the EC2 link. You'll see something like this, although you may be in a different region and you won't have key pairs/placement groups/security groups yet:



Now, click Spot Requests on the left sidebar, and click the "request spot instances" button. Select Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS for Cluster Instances (Ubuntu for servers should work fine also).



I'm going to do this demo with a cc2.8xlarge instance, which has 88 ECU (a measure of computing power) and makes about 750kh/s. You should do your own cost analysis and choose the cheapest type of instance. You may also want to get more than one instance.



One of the most important fields here is the maximum dollars you are willing to pay per hour. I entered 0.35. Again, do your own analysis. Keep in mind - if the market rate exceeds this amount, your instance will be terminated and any YAC you haven't withdrawn from the wallet on your server will go along with it. Click continue. If you're launching more than one server, make sure to create a placement group on the next page. Otherwise, just click continue again. Click continue on the Storage Device Configuration page.

The Key Pair page is important. You want your servers to be secure - create a new keypair, give it a name, and download it somewhere you won't lose it. Click continue.



This next step requires you to know your local IP. Type "my IP" into Google. Make it look like the image below (make sure you select SSH), then click "add rule" and click continue.



There will be a confirmation screen. Make sure everything is correct, then click continue.

You should now see a screen like this (without the terminated instances, of course):



Wait until the instance is confirmed (circle turns from yellow to green). You will have to click the refresh arrow a few times, and it might take a couple minutes. Then go to the Instances page (link in the left bar). You'll see the following:



Wait for "initializing" to disappear under "status checks" and be replaced by "2/2 checks passed". Then, right click the instance, and click "connect". You'll get a dialog like the one below. Follow the instructions - an SSH session will appear. It will tell you it can't verify authenticity - type "yes" and press enter. You will not need to do this the next time you connect.



You should see this once you're logged in:



Enter the following lines of code into the console.


You'll see this:



It may appear that you didn't get the prompt back. Don't worry, just enter the next line in.


You'll see this:



Just one more step between you and mining! Enter the following, then sit on your hands and wait for your terminal to look like the image below. DO NOT CLOSE THE SSH SESSION!




Okay, you're off! The server will download the blockchain (it's short, won't take too long), then start mining. Here's 3 commands you'll need:

- gets the balance of your miner account

- use this often to get the YAC out of your server's wallet. Remember this is a spot instance, so it can be closed at any time if the market rate goes above your maximum rate, and you'll lose any YAC currently in the wallet. You can write a script to empty it periodically, but I can't help you with that.

Make sure the amount you send is at least 0.01 YAC less than the getbalance amount to allow for the transaction fee.

Keep in mind the blockchain has to be downloaded before any blocks can be found. This won't take long, since it's still quite short. You can check the estimated hashrate with



If this guide helped you, maybe kick some of the YAC you mine over to me at Y2JcwhZu9m6cqPZ3Jv8iKspcJYNY5wa5zc