Is there a way I can generate plots on a cloud server? How and where?
Yeah, you can, but storage ain't cheap..
How and where please? I would like to look at it from top to bottom and do a cost benefit analysis.
You can check out OVH's dedicated storage servers, which you can grab 48TB for $489.00/mo. That's around $120/TB/year. Or if you wanna go biger, 216TB will be $1659.00/mo, or around $92/TB/year. Keep in mind you'll need to generate all the plots too, so you might want to vRack that with a powerful "Big-Data" server such as the HG (which could generate plots at a rate around 13900 nonces/min, as it has 2xE5-2650v2) or an Infrastructure server such as the EG-128 (which you can rent weekly for $100, and could generate around a rate of 7000 nonces/min) for a few weeks to generate all the plots, constantly moving them over the vRack connection.
Alternately, you could rent SYS servers such as their 24TB option for around $150 per month, or around $75/TB/year. Keep in mind that every TB of stated space is 0.9TB of space after formatting and creating the filesystem, so the 24TB server will give you 3.6TBx6=21.6TB after formatting and using "tune2fs -m 0 /dev/sdx." I also rent out burst mining power at a rate of 0.045BTC/TB for the first month (for an actual full Terabyte, or a Terabyte *after* formatting), and 0.0225BTC/TB each month afterwards. If you use SYS for the servers, you can still use OVH Enterprise Dedicated Boxes, and then download the plots over the internet. However, this connection will be limited to 500Mbps, and in actuality you're performance will waver between 300 and 400 if you are saturating multiple connections constantly.
Interestingly enough, Hetzner.de offers a 16TB dedicated server for 69 Eur including 19% VAT (so around $74/mo if you don't live in Germany, so you don't have to pay VAT). The processor in that box is capable of somewhere in the ballpark of 3600 nonces/minute more than likely, which would give you just over 1.18TB/day of plots. 16TB after formatting is 14.4TB-ish, so that would take the server around 14.4/1.18=12.2 days to create all the plots. Renting another dedicated server for plot generation seems impractical with Hetzner given the 200Mbps/connection, which may or may not also be the download speed.
