Microsoft Azure trial server:
You'll need - a Microsoft email address (Hotmail, Live, Outook), a credit or debit card (claimed to only be charged with a $1/90p deferred charge to prove it's valid although nothing showed up on mine), your selected project URL and your account details plus your favourite SSH programme.
1) Go to
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/free/ and sign up for your free trial.
2) Navigate to the dashboard and select 'New'
Select 'Compute'
Select one of the 'Ubuntu Server' options. Personally, I go for the 14.04 LTS as it's what I have installed on my Linux machines and I'm used to it but since you have very little interaction with the actual operating system, any Linux will do.
Leave all the defaults and select 'Create'
3) Name your instance.
Change the 'VM disc type' to HDD (you won't need the speed of SSD and it's a lot more expensive)
Pick a username (this is what you'll use to SSH into your instance later)
Change 'Authentication type' to 'Password' and enter a password containing three from uppercase, lowercase, number, punctuation and at least 12 characters long (You'll need this for your SSH login after)
On your first pass through, create a resource group. Pick this resource group for subsequent instances (keeps all your instances grouped together)
Pick a location. Different location cost different amounts, cheapest for the instance we're going to be using is West US 2 or East US 2, then West Europe then North Europe. You're limited to four instances per location but apparently, as many locations as you like. I have a list of prices for them all if you're trying to use up your entire £125 in one day
4) Once completed, you need to size your instance. You'll be presented with Microsofts recommendations but you don't want those. Click on 'View all' and scroll down to 'A1 Basic'. This is a single core with 1.75 Gbytes of RAM which is enough for running Boinc. The 'A0 Basic' is a bit cheaper but only a quarter of a core while the 'A1 Standard' is about 30% faster but over twice the price. Also, unlike Google cloud, Microsoft instances scale badly with more cores, a two core set up is almost three times the price of a single core.
Click on it then click 'Select'
5) Again, first pass through, create a storage account name, subsequently, use the one you've created.You'll need a different storage account for each location you use.
Leave the rest of the settings as they are except for 'Monitoring' Disable that unless you're really interested in the details of your instances inner workings, no point in wasting disc space and adding extra disc accesses to your instance otherwise.
6) Click 'OK' then 'OK' and go and make a cup of tea, it takes 5 - 10 minutes to initialise
7) Once it's initialised, you'll be presented with a view of it's properties.You need to note the 'Public IP address' so you can connect to it next to set it up. (You can get the details again later from your dashboard if you forget)
8 ) Fire up your SSH programme (I use PuTTY as I'm used to it but any will do) and enter in the IP address from earlier (step 7) Login using the username and password also from earlier (step 3)
9) Same Linux set up as Google:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install boinc and accept disc space
boinccmd --project_attach project_URL account_key
boinccmd --set_run_mode always
boinccmd --set_network_mode always
10) watch the credits roll in, an A1 Basic is about 70% of a Google cloud CPU
11) Subsequently, go to
https://portal.azure.com/# to check on your progress
As you're given £125 of free credit, only a month to use it in and each instance is £10 - £12, you're going to need at least 12 instances to make sure it all gets used up in time, more if you wait before creating further ones (you get a month from when you register, not from when you create your first instance) Just repeat as necessary with a different instance name and you'll be allocated a different public IP address each time. You can use a common username and password.
Any questions, just ask.
With thanks to Mark (aka Woodles)