Introduction

I've been thinking 💭, it is possible to earn and contribute to Storj using Google cloud free trial? Google Cloud comes with $300 credits. This experiment can also possible with Amazon AWS (a possible extension) and Microsoft Azure. But 😅I used up all my $200 credit in my Monero Mining experiment earlier on my Steemit post ¯_(ツ)_/¯.
😂
I'll be aiming for the Virtual Machine (VM) with the least cost, eg. 1 vCPU Broadwell, 8GB of RAM and give it plenty of storage (max out at 2048GB) (coz it's used for Storj 😂).
I'll be testing this intriguing concept out during the next few days, so stay tuned!

Edit (4/9/17): 8 vCPU Broadwell (max out) (as each CPU acts as a node. hence it's capable of running 8 nodes), 20GB RAM (min 1-2 GB RAM per node)

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Update 1 (4 Sep 2017)

I have edited my VM specifications to more optimal levels, after setting my VM with Ubuntu 16.04. If Windows server is selected, there is an extra cost of $29.20/month.

Cost breakdown and Specifications

$302.94 per month estimated
Effective hourly rate $0.415 (730 hours per month)

Item	Estimated costs
8 vCPUs + 20 GB memory	$304.04/month
2048 GB standard persistent disk	$90.11/month
Sustained use discount	- $91.21/month
Total	$302.94/month

Hmm... Setting up Storj is harder than expected, I may need more time in this :)

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Citations

Introduction

1. N.a (n.d.). Storj Share Daemon (CLI). Docs.storj.io. Retrieved from https://docs.storj.io/v1.1/docs/storj-share-daemon-cli
2. Ciprian V. (28 Aug. 2017.). How to Mine Storj & How Profitable Is It? - 1st Mining Rig. 1st Mining Rig. Retrieved from http://1stminingrig.com/mine-storj-profitable/