Cloud GPU mining with Amazon AWS EC2

terzimterzim LondonMember Posts: 41
Hi all,

I read some references on cloud GPU mining using Amazon Web Services (AWS) instances (http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/). Has anyone ever tried this service and came across howtos? Any ideas on applicability to Ethereum mining and / or projected cost-reward profile?

Thanks - Massi
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Comments

  • GenoilGenoil 0xeb9310b185455f863f526dab3d245809f6854b4dMember Posts: 769 ✭✭✭
    This guy seems to have figured it out: http://forum.ethereum.org/discussion/comment/8605/#Comment_8605

    24MH/s is not very good considering the amount of hardware involved. All NVidia so not ideal.
  • terzimterzim LondonMember Posts: 41
  • terzimterzim LondonMember Posts: 41
  • terzimterzim LondonMember Posts: 41
    @wuehler I am aware you were on this topic too. Any tips & tricks to share so far?
  • angelomilanangelomilan Member Posts: 8
    Hey guys hi @jesus666 thanks to @paul_bxd I'm putting together a "Ethereum cloud mining for dummies" guide. I'm not technical.
    Maybe the best thing to do for dummies like me would be to stay away and wait for a desktop client with a graphic user interface (Mist?)
    Anyway, what I'm trying to do is to turn all the wikis by developers, for developers into a "100 easy steps" (ha ha, this time for real) into something the average joe can apply immediately.
    I want to contribute from the start.
    The faster we make Ethereum "understandable" for average people, the more people will come in, the more traction ethereum will get.

    Frankly, I still have problems getting to gpu mining.
    Here is my draft:

    https://medium.com/@angelomilan/cb2c8d3fa8b6

    If you want to contribute, you are very welcome

    Ciao!
  • angelomilanangelomilan Member Posts: 8
    you can PM me ;-)
  • terzimterzim LondonMember Posts: 41
    ok, we are completing a "for dummy" guide on this topic, which may be of interest to me. @jesus666 are you Konstantin? I will send you the "for dummy" guide for review.
  • Michael_AMichael_A LondonMember Posts: 61
  • CanaryInTheMineCanaryInTheMine Member Posts: 41
    terzim said:

    ok, we are completing a "for dummy" guide on this topic, which may be of interest to me. @jesus666 are you Konstantin? I will send you the "for dummy" guide for review.

    i can give the guide a try too, if you send me a link... I have an AWS account and can test it
  • terzimterzim LondonMember Posts: 41
    Hi guys, please check the latest version of the guide. it should work now. Help with testing would be appreciated.

    https://github.com/angelomilan/ethereum-guides/blob/master/GPU-cloud_mining.md
  • GenoilGenoil 0xeb9310b185455f863f526dab3d245809f6854b4dMember Posts: 769 ✭✭✭
    @terzim thanks a lot! I'll will follow your guide later, but instead install my CUDA miner and see if we can squeeze a few extra Mh/s out :)
  • terzimterzim LondonMember Posts: 41
    thanks. @Genoil if you would like to participate to editing the guide please let me know your github username.

    Massi
  • GenoilGenoil 0xeb9310b185455f863f526dab3d245809f6854b4dMember Posts: 769 ✭✭✭
    edited June 2015
    I got my CUDA miner running on AWS and managed to squeeze out a combined 46MH/s from 4 K520's. I was baffled by the hourly price though. If you are planning to really do this, I would run a separate permanent m3 class full node running geth, to keep up with the blockchain, and use spot instances for mining. g2.2xlarge give better value for money there, as spot prices are typically 5x as high for 4x the performance. On the downside you need 4 times the number of volumes. I don't know how that evens out cost-wise.
  • terzimterzim LondonMember Posts: 41
    we will explore more on cost / income profile definitely
  • GenoilGenoil 0xeb9310b185455f863f526dab3d245809f6854b4dMember Posts: 769 ✭✭✭
    I think it is also useful to mention to people that want to start with an EC2 node is that an m3.medium isn't fast enough to keep up with the advancing blockchain. I'm now using a c4.large and a 64GB volume (50% full).
  • mikkaaamikkaaa Member Posts: 34
    I know cloud mining might not be cost-effective, but trying to run a benchmark on a g2.2xlarge instance with no success.

    $ ethminer -G -M
    [OPENCL]:Found suitable OpenCL device [GRID K520] with 4294770688 bytes of GPU memory
    Benchmarking on platform: GPU
    Preparing DAG...
    Warming up...
    Trial 1... 0
    Trial 2... 0
    Trial 3... 0
    Trial 4... 0
    Trial 5... 0
    min/mean/max: 0/0/0 H/s
    inner mean: 0 H/s
    Phoning home to find world ranking...

    At least genoil and others seems to have some insight how to run instances.

    How to use gpu instances just for mining and blockchain syncing for memory optimized instances? How to communicate between instances?
  • aakilfernandesaakilfernandes Member Posts: 2
    Hey, I'm never actually able to SSH into my AWS instance following this guide. I keep getting 'Operation timed out' before actually connecting.
  • terzimterzim LondonMember Posts: 41
    Hi, the guide works. I have just tested it on the livenet (using Window's PuTTY to connect).

    We have also updated the guide to generate the Genesis block in the AWS instance.

    Follow the link: https://github.com/angelomilan/ethereum-guides/blob/master/GPU-cloud_mining.md
  • cryptoboycryptoboy Member Posts: 74
    Any chance you can share AMI image?
  • cryptoboycryptoboy Member Posts: 74
    Doesn't the account need to be unlocked for mining to take place?
  • cruxiblecruxible Member Posts: 4
    Since you ask for an AMI, I set up a simple public AMI for GPU mining on Amazon ec2. It is ami-1f73d474 (ubuntu 14.04 ethereum NVIDIA CUDA GPU ether miner autostart) in US East (N. Virginia) region. ami-9004008d in Frankfurt.

    Launch it with a g2.8xlarge or g2.2xlarge instance (spot 8x is probably the better value, though neither is great at this point depending on your price predictions). Automatically on boot, the AMI will start up geth and ethminer in GPU-mining mode (genesis block already installed). You just need to wait a bit (at most 5 or 10 mins) for it to boot and catch up to the blockchain. Then use "geth attach" to change to the coinbase of your choice. You should get about 8 or 9 MH/s on the smaller instance, 35 or 36 MH/s on the larger. Miner logs are in em.log and geth logs are in geth.log, so you can watch them with "tail -f em.log"

    Disclaimer: you should not trust me, I said "Y" for you and created the genesis block for you, and the default coinbase is of my choice so don't forget to change it to yours!
  • cryptoboycryptoboy Member Posts: 74
    @cruxible Awesome! I'm pretty sure I did very much the same setup. But I'll check out yours.
    TBH I am not really sure that GPU mining on EC2 actually works, it's possible people are only mining using CPU and thinking they are mining on GPU.
  • cryptoboycryptoboy Member Posts: 74
    Out of curiosity - what security group configuration are you using?
  • cryptoboycryptoboy Member Posts: 74
    edited August 2015
    If anyone is using instance from @cruxible - modify /etc/rc.local and put your address.

    sudo nano /etc/rc.local

    I think you could use ec2-metadata to use the user tags, so you can preconfigure it for each instance.
  • cryptoboycryptoboy Member Posts: 74
    See - instance says mining: true, which means geth itself is mining. And if you get any blocks they might have just been from geth, not from ethminer :)
  • cruxiblecruxible Member Posts: 4
    It is doing GPU mining, mined a good amount myself this way in the first 24 hours. You should change rc.local but also use a console to miner.setEtherbase('youraddress')
  • ksoucksouc Member Posts: 1
    edited August 2015
    how do I get this to run without having to keep my terminal windows or putty open 24/7? I have two open, one with geth that is constantly updating blocks and the other running ethminer, and I have tried using nohup to no avail.
    Update/Solved: use screen
  • agardenagarden Member Posts: 2
    edited August 2015
    Sorry for the noob question... i'm new to ubuntu.

    Followed the excellent outline above from jesus666 above but when i get to the, "make geth" stage, I error out with the following:

    build/_workspace/src/github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/Godeps/_workspace/src/github.com/huin/goupnp/goupnp.go:97: unknown http.Client field 'Timeout' in struct literal
    make: *** [geth] Error 2

    All the steps leading up to this worked well for me.


    ________________


    Edit: Time to sleep. Just realized I had the wrong version of Go installed, which the 100 step guideline did actually mention.
    Post edited by agarden on
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