mludvig/gcp-ethereum-miner

Mine ETH on Google Cloud Platform

GCP Ethereum (ETH) and Ethereum Classic (ETC) Miner

Terraform template for mining Ethereum (ETH) and Ethereum Classic (ETC) crypto currencies on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) GPU-enabled VM instances.

Important!

• GCP is very sensitive about crypto mining on their platform. The scripts and templates presented here have been carefully crafted to bypass detection however as always run it at your own risk.

• Even more importantly: don't change the startup script or you may expose yourself to the GCP wrath.

• Ethereum mining may not be profitable at all times and it can get very expensive very quickly - you have been warned! Unless you've got access to a free GCP account it may not be the wisest thing to do!

Medium article

Check out my blog post Easy Etherum mining on GCP for more details.

Quick start

The easiest way to start is by using the Google Cloud Shell. I assume that you already have a GCP Project set up, let's say it's called mining-project-12345.

1. Login to your Google Cloud Console

2. Open the cloud shell using the icon in the top-right corner of the console.

3. Once the shell starts up you may have to select the right project first:

    cloudshell:~$ gcloud config set project mining-project-12345
    Updated property [core/project].
    cloudshell:~ (mining-project-12345)$
   

4. Next we clone this GIT repository to Cloud Shell:

    cloudshell:~ (mining-project-12345)$ git clone https://github.com/mludvig/gcp-ethereum-miner.git
    Cloning into 'gcp-ethereum-miner'...
    remote: Enumerating objects: 41, done.
    remote: Counting objects: 100% (41/41), done.
    remote: Compressing objects: 100% (20/20), done.
    remote: Total 41 (delta 23), reused 39 (delta 21), pack-reused 0
    Receiving objects: 100% (41/41), 5.80 KiB | 2.90 MiB/s, done.
    Resolving deltas: 100% (23/23), done.
   
    cloudshell:~ (mining-project-12345)$ cd gcp-ethereum-miner
    cloudshell:~/gcp-ethereum-miner (mining-project-12345)$
   

5. Configure terraform.tfvars to your liking.

    # Ethereum (ETH) or Ethereum Classic (ETC)
    coin_name           = "ETC"
   
    # Ethereum wallet address
    wallet_address      = "0x99b36B44cf319c9E0ed4619ee2050B21ECac2c15"
   
    # Launch instances in these provisioning models (best for high availability)
    provisioning_models = ["SPOT", "STANDARD"]
   
    # GPU types to use
    gpu_types           = ["t4", "a100", "v100"]
   
    # Number of instances per-gpu / per-region / per-provisioning_model
    group_size          = 16
   

   A note about group_size - each combination of GPU type + Region + Spot/Standard mode creates a separate Instance Group and each instance group will have the configured group_size. It means that the number of instances eventually running will be up to group_size * number of instance groups, of course only if your Service Quotas permit.

6. Now's the time to start mining!

    cloudshell:~/gcp-ethereum-miner (mining-project-12345)$ terraform init
    cloudshell:~/gcp-ethereum-miner (mining-project-12345)$ terraform apply -auto-approve
   

   You may be presented with a pop up saying "Authorize Cloud Shell" to make GCP API calls - click Authorize.

You will see how Terraform starts creating the Instance Templates and Instance Groups. When it's done head over to the VM console and you should see some instances starting up.

GPU Quotas

If there are none check out the Instance Groups console and in there the ERRORS tab in some of the IGs to figure out what's going on. Most likely you'll be limited by GPU Quotas and will see messages like:

• Instance creation failed: Quota GPUS_ALL_REGIONS exceeded. Limit 0.0 globally.
• Instance creation failed: Quota PREEMTIBLE_NVIDIA_T4_GPUS exceeded. Limit 0.0 in region us-central1.

If that's the case head to IAM -> Quotas, search for the above (e.g. GPUS_ALL_REGIONS) and try to get them increased.

The form will ask for a reason or justification. Needless to say that "Crypto mining" is not a good one to put forward :)

Happy mining!