Folding Forum

I think I got a rather clear answer from the US support :

"Thank you for adding the screenshot. If you look at the screenshot it shows that your Offer ID is MS-AZR-0044P. That means that you are still using your free credit it needs to show MS-AZR-0003P.
Your options are to switch to MS-AZR-0003P offer id, meaning you no longer will use your free credit and start paying for quota usage. Or archive this case until you use up all your free credit and you can re-open it then or email me directly."

I understand that, even if you upgrade to PAYG by entering the credit card number, the offer ID remains 'MS-AZR-0044P' (Free trial) until you use your free 200$ credit or reach the end of the 30 days trial period, and then it switches to 'MS-AZR-0003P' (PAYG).

Maybe there's a constraint on the creation of a Spot VM, which is forbidden when you're on Free Trial (even "semi-upgraded" to PAYG) ?

Oops, cross-posts ! I will try to raise a new request as you described tomorrow, and we'll see what happens Thanks a lot for your assistance.

ooof, lol I kept refreshing the forum not realizing i was at the bottom of page 4.
What doesn't help alleviate my confusions is that I do not have "Offer IDs," but I have a "Plan" which is listed as Azure Plan. I'm looking at a new account made Dec 22. This new one had no issue moving to pay-as-u-go and then making the VM, so seems to contradict what that support is saying. Perhaps support is 100% right, but maybe offer IDs isn't the underlying issue but just another symptom.

I submitted a support request too ... let's see if I get the same answer ...

If they don't solve the issue or still can't create spot VMs, any idea about how to use the free credit in a normal VM ?

i got 1 more idea if support can't fix the situation details to you both in a PM.

After all that if everything still fails, regular V100 instances last only 65 hours before eating up all the credits. P100 (NC6s_v2) last 4 days, and T4 (NC4as_T4_v3) for 2 weeks 1day 10hrs, but you mentioned not having quotas for those.

If you can't get a quota increase, the 8 core compute CPU VM (f8s_v2) looks available by default and costs 0.34 in US and 0.38 in northeurope. I think that's about 3 weeks worth and a rough guess of 1 million points total (about 100 WUs) during that time.

I will definitely not promote Azure service and support ...

... if one resides in France (possibly EU?). works great in US for some reason. We need more data to know for sure

I'm burning the Azure credit before it expires with a standard VM with the V100 running for a couple of days, and I delete everything there.

A team mate might try to follow your tutorials from Swiss, I'll let you know if it works.

Did you ever figure out the Azure problem? Thought I would try one from NZ, this is what I got:

Argument '--max-price' is in preview and under development. Reference and support levels: https://aka.ms/CLI_refstatus
Azure Error: InvalidTemplateDeployment
Message: The template deployment failed with error: 'The resource with id: '/subscriptions/a3bb0286-8df3-4b99-8226-4360e0c33e05/resourceGroups/myCloudFolding/providers/Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines/AzureFolding' failed validation with message: 'The requested size for resource '/subscriptions/a3bb0286-8df3-4b99-8226-4360e0c33e05/resourceGroups/myCloudFolding/providers/Microsoft.Compute/virtualMachines/AzureFolding'is currently not available in location 'eastus' zones '' for subscription 'a3bb0286-8df3-4b99-8226-4360e0c33e05'. Please try another size or deploy to a different location or zones. See https://aka.ms/azureskunotavailable for details.'.'.

Thank you for providing more data to me. I have not. Assuming you've waited 10 minutes between upgrading the account and attempting the VM creation, it looks like they may have tightened up their rules for who can use GPU instances with free credits. Since now people in France and New Zealand are hitting this issue that I have been made aware of, it looks more likely that GPU folders from outside the US won't be able to do this. I will hopefully know later this week if it is still doable from those within the US.

it's a bit frustrating b/c i see no policy updates, but when it comes to their free accounts, they did leave it pretty vague with practically an asterisk for 'it depends.' So from what the French have relayed about what support have said about their subscription codes, looks like no gpu folding

Damn, hopefully it is able to be done, but if not, we still have GCP.
I also tried to do it in Australia East, and nothing. Yes, waited even an hour before trying again just to make sure, nothing worked on either.

And their support won't be helpful ...

Have you managed to get a GCP one running in the last month? I have set up a new one, trying GPU quota increase, and it is saying "Unfortunately, we are unable to grant you additional quota at this time." I have been trying for the last month to get it to increase quote, when I get the chance to sit at desk.

my last GCP was set up in Jan and shut down last week or so. I have since run out of family members to create more trials, so i'm afraid i can't give you any more up to date advice

Mine is still running, but I didn't try to create new free ones ...