HivemindOS manual
HivemindOS Machines
HivemindOS Machines are ready-made Linux virtual machines sold through Microsoft Azure Marketplace. Use one when you want to add a cloud machine to your hive that comes with HivemindOS already set up. They appear next to bring-your-own Hetzner in the New Machine flow in My Hive.
Who owns and pays for the machine
You own the Azure subscription, resource group, virtual machine, network, disk, and access policy. Microsoft bills your Azure subscription for two separate things:
- Azure infrastructure: the VM, disk, public IP, bandwidth, regional premiums, and applicable tax.
- The HivemindOS software fee for the plan you choose.
The software fee is a separate Marketplace line item, not a hidden markup on the Azure compute price. Microsoft deducts its Marketplace store fee before paying the publisher.
You don’t need to install anything extra for Azure. HivemindOS uses your connected Microsoft account, within your Azure permissions.
Deploy a machine
- In My Hive, open New Machine and choose a HivemindOS Machine plan. The hourly software fee is shown before you confirm.
- Choose an Azure subscription, region, machine name, and resource group.
- Review the live Microsoft estimate. The final confirmation reminds you that Azure infrastructure is billed on top and accepts the Marketplace terms for the plan.
- After first boot, connect the machine to Hivemind Link or a private Tailnet so it becomes a normal private machine in your hive.
On first boot the machine applies its name, starts the HivemindOS collector, and creates a local SSH key for you. It stays visible and manageable in Azure Portal. The initial network allows SSH and does not expose the HivemindOS collector port publicly.
Costs and limits
- Azure pay-as-you-go has no universal hard spending cap. Budgets and alerts warn you; they don’t shut anything down.
- A stopped VM can still cost money for its disk and public IP. Delete resources you no longer need.
- If the Marketplace offer isn’t published yet, the card shows the proposed plans with deployment turned off. Proposed pricing can’t bill anyone.
- Self-hosted builds can add other machine providers, but local settings can’t change the official software fee or redirect its payout.