Today I started a small experiment with a BOINC instance running on a Google Cloud server.
Google is offering for free $300 in credits that can be used for any of their cloud computing services. I knew about this for quite a while, and I had in mind that this can be an easy way for people to get started with Gridcoin. To be honest, I was afraid that configuration of a cloud machine might be too complicated for beginners, but this evening I reserved some time to explore this idea.
Well, I was completely wrong: there was nothing complicated! Few clicks away, and I had a fully configured server (eight cores @ 2.3 GHz), running my preferred projects in few minutes:
Step-by-Step Tutorial:
The first step is to create a free account on the Google Cloud Platform (follow this link), navigate to the "Compute Engine", and create your first VM instance (VM stands for Virtual Machine). Several types of machines are available, and you can select the number of cores, and the type of the Operating System. Based on your selection, on the right side, the running cost of the machine is displayed. This will be deducted from your $300 credits, therefore you should carefully balance your options. Please, pay attention to the selection of your operating system, as the premium images have additional costs.
As part of the Google Cloud Platform Free Tier, you might get also an additional f1-micro VM instance for free!
After your VMs are correctly created, a simple click on the SSH link will bring you to the management console:
The next step is to install BOINC, and do the necessary configuration.
Personally I'm using an account manager, therefore I will only need to attach BOICN to the BAM! Account Manager. Another option would be to use the GRC-Pool instead of the account manager (recommended for beginners), or to manually configure all the projects:
Installing BOINC from the Linux command line:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install boinc
BOINC configuration:
boinccmd --set_run_mode always
boinccmd --set_network_mode always
boinccmd --join_acct_mgr [LINK] [USERNAME] [PASSWORD]
boinccmd --join_acct_mgr [LINK] [USERNAME] [PASSWORD] (twice, in order to force the sync with the account manager)
boinccmd --get_project_urls
Boinc commands to monitor the status of your client:
boinccmd --get_simple_gui_info
boinccmd --get_tasks
boinccmd --get_file_transfers
boinccmd --get_host_info
After this step, you can close the SSH session and return to the Google Cloud Platform, from where you can monitor the status of your virtual machines:
I hope you enjoy my small tutorial. Please feel free to add your opinion in the comments session, specially if you have hints about other providers of free cloud computing.