Fully automated mining

1. Packer

Use Packer to build your own AMI for mining.

cp variables.example.json variables.json
# Edit variables.json with your information
packer build -var-file filename.json eth-rig-packer.json

2. Cloud Formation

The yml template is easier to edit, but CloudFormation doesn't support aliases, so you'll want to turn the yml back into json before you upload if you edit it.

If you want to use my AMI's built from this packer file, just use the CFN template as written. You'll want to register with Mining Pool Hub so you have a username to put in the parameters when you launch it.

From the AWS console, head over to CloudFormation, create a new stack and choose upload to S3 with the eth-mining-cfn.template file.

If you want to be really agressive, in CloudFormation use a StackSet to launch the stack in every region. You'll need to prepare you account to let StackSet control it, full details Here, but the gist is you'll allow StackSet in your "administrator" account to assume other roles. Then you'll Create a role in your "target" account that can be assumed from the "administrator" and has permissions to create the resources needed by your stack. I'm using a single account for "administrator" and "target".

That's a pain, so I created a CFN template for it, just create a stack from AWSCloudFormationStackSetSingleAccount.yml in this repo to create the required roles with a minimal policy.

Once that's all in place upload the template again, enter your AWS account number, and choose all four US Regions.

3. Profit!

At the time of writing, ETH was just over $30. I ran 8 GPUs at max $.25 per for 8 hours and earned... 0.00152448 ETH or about a buck fifty. Not so much profit, but I did learn quite a bit. I'll launch again at a max around $0.04/GPU/hr, that way I'll only need ETH to double to make a profit.

References

Donations

Etherium: 0x93ea57f8fA6F70394E84f4A9f746A17efe8a4AAD