Using the cloud to mine cryptocurrency is literally the worst way to go about it. You’ll pay through the nose for the hardware. However, should you just want to be experimenting without getting into hardware, here are the simple steps to get up an running mining Ethereum on Microsoft Azure’s N Series virtual machines.

If you haven’t already, you’ll need to create an Ethereum Wallet. One way of doing this is with the official Mist app.

Once you’re VM is up an running, you can install the dependencies.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ethereum/ethereum
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ethereum geth
sudo apt-get install nvidia-cuda-dev nvidia-cuda-toolkit nvidia-nsight

Download the latest release of the Claymore Miner. The easiest way to configure pools and start script is using the quick start guide on Nanopool. For more detailed info on getting a mining rig set up with your own hardware I’d recommend the series from Crytobadger

From my experiment, I saw around 95%-90% loss in value from money spent on the VM to Ethereum produced from mining. It was fun to get a better grip on what’s going on though.

For the foreseeable future, I’ll be sticking to letting the professionals do the mining for me at Genesis Mining. Use Code xIPjC9 for 3% off.

Other wallet services that you might find useful are Coinbase and Poloniex.