This article is for ASIC miners. For GPU mining, please see the article Connect to GPU miners on a remote location.
Awesome Miner requires network access to miners in order to make a connection and request information. Remote networks are often protected by a firewall or router while the miners on the remote network only have local IP addresses.
Connect to remote ASIC miners without VPN
In a typical setup, Awesome Miner connects to ASIC miners on a local network in order to manage and monitor the mining. For ASIC miners on a remote location, this typically requires a VPN connection. Instead of communication over VPN, a small computer running Remote Agent can be deployed at each remote network to enable communication with Awesome Miner via the Awesome Miner Cloud Services.
Awesome Miner and Remote Agent will both connect to the cloud and setup a communication channel without having any direct connections between each other. Each Remote Agent can then connect to and manage all ASIC miners on the remote network.
This removes the need of VPN and firewall configurations. Note: Awesome Miner still needs to be running all the time to manage and monitor the miners in this setup.
Prerequisites
- You need an active subscription for Awesome Miner
- You need to create an account for Awesome Miner Cloud Services
- Awesome Miner must be installed and running on the computer where you want to manage the mining operations
- Awesome Miner Remote Agent must be installed and running on a computer at each remote network where you want to run the mining
- The operating system can either be Windows or Linux
- Windows 8 or later are supported. Windows 7 (and Windows Server 2008) are not supported.
- Linux x64 and Raspberry Pi (ARM) are supported.
Configuration in Awesome Miner
Awesome Miner must be configured to be able to communicate with Remote Agents connected via Cloud Services.
- Click on the Cloud Services button in the Awesome Miner status bar
- Check the box for Enable Remote Agent connections via cloud
- Save the changes
Configuration in Remote Agent
Follow the steps below to configure Remote Agent for Windows. For configuration of Remote Proxy on Linux, see the guide Environment setup: Remote Proxy for Linux.
- Right click on the Remote Agent icon in the Windows notification area
- Select Connect via cloud
Click Configure
- Enter your Cloud Services account details
- Save the settings and verify the connection status showing up like below
Finalize setup in Awesome Miner
The Remote Agent will now be listed as a Managed Host in Awesome Miner. It can be viewed via the Awesome Miner Options dialog, Managed Hosts section.
- For each added Remote Agent to be used to control ASIC miners on a remote network, edit the Managed Host entry in the Awesome Miner Options dialog and check the box for Use as Remote Proxy.
- There are two ways of adding ASIC miners to the Remote Proxy.
- Configure the Managed Host for automatic network discovery. This will let the Remote Proxy automatically scan for miners on the network and add then. See the section Automatic miner discovery.
- Use the Network Scan via the New miner button in the Awesome Miner main toolbar. When scanning for new miners, a specific Remote Proxy can be selected.
The connection status for all Remote Agents can be viewed via the Cloud Services web interface, via the page Connect via cloud.
Alternative solutions for ASIC miners on remote networks
VPN (Virtual Private Network)
A Virtual Private Network is a secure way of connecting to remote networks. There are many ways of setting up VPN networks, where both routers and software solutions are available.
Awesome Miner is not aware of any VPN network existence, but if available it will be used. From an Awesome Miner point of view, a network connection must be possible to establish to the miners, and it's up to the network configuration to make this possible.
When setting up a VPN, there is no need to use the concepts of Remote Agents and Cloud Services.