https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/FreeTier/freetier_topic-Always_Free_Resources.htm
Instead of hosting at home, I’ve decided to go to the cloud and I LOVE the package you get with Oracle. You get enough computer hours for 2 amd based and 4 ARM based compute instances with generous network allocations.
Perfect for those of us who are just playing around with stuff and don’t have a spare PC/Device :)
Hope this post helps someone have some fun!
You should also know that Oracle will fuck you as soon as it’s convenient for them and they’ll even expect you to like it!
We had some of their products at work a decade ago, after this experience I just don’t touch their products at all period even if they were offering me money.
They make Microsoft look nice in comparison!
I’m gonna wait here for the chuffed “I run pihole from the cloud and can access it from anywhere!” post
low key though couldn’t you run more or less a pihole type vpn from cloud to a local network gateway?
I mean you’ll run up a lot of bandwidth and you would limit your speed but just saying out of curiosity you COULD reasonably do it
I run Matrix on my ARM instance there. It works perfectly for that.
THE matrix? Like…Neo and Morpheus?
I don’t believe Oracle for anything.
You mean to tell me I shouldn’t ask them if my GF is cheating on me?
This is fairly common knowledge around here i think, but sure maybe someone didnt know and is happy to learn about it :)
And free yes but afaik they still require you to file a valid credit card with them (common practice but not everyone has one and therefore is locked out of this “offer”).
And also “you should know” that Oracle terminates those free tier packages every now and then, sometimes with (allegedly) no warning or reason. You should absolutely not host anything there that you rely on.
And Oracle is a absolutely horrible piece of shit company.
Sure its free, but be aware that you are the product (which isnt exactly the typical selfhosting spirit).
Thanks for the heads-up!
I know people HATE oracle but for me its perfect, i’m just dinking around and I don’t want to abuse making new AWS accounts for their 12 months free tier for a computer instance.
I know that one of the reason they terminate instances is if they are deemed inactive as such that 20 percent or less CPU activity and some other fairly high minimums.
I also know almost all cloud providers including cloudflare hate certain things like plex media servers for potential copyright violations.
I’d say the reasons are perhaps unfair but nonetheless present.
Anyways i personally just found out about it so as poorly received as the post has been, I hope someone does find this to be a fun way to dink around too
I hope it lasts for you, I created one as a secondary to my main paid VPS elsewhere. The oracle one just vanished. No warning in advance, no email and very confusingly no evidence that it ever even existed. Thankfully I had no data of note on it. So free, yes - but utterly unreliable. I was just using it to learn and it had no reason to be deleted such as breaching any fair use etc
and you should know they ban accounts for no reason as well.
Setup an uptime Kuma server and they banned me without any warning or notification 😑
maybe it looks like a c&c for some botnet or w/e.
can you make a new account with a new email? I know AWS lets you make new accounts very easily
My Vm is still working but i can’t for the life of me get in to my account… i keep getting emails to say it’s locked but i never receive the reset password email…
Yeah, that’s the problem when something like that is free. It’s better to always have backups.
I use my Oracle VPS just for Wireguard to bypass CGNAT. I wouldn’t host anything important there.
They changed this always free tier previously.
Don’t believe anything they say because they will remove additional features. I guarantee it.
if you reread my post its more for learning and playing with more hardware than you get with AWS.
I’m not suggestion people run critical services or data here
The issue I have is they removed the ability to use a custom domain and DNS. Happened sometime between 2019 and 2021. I have an old pdf I made showing the long removed options.
That kneecapped the service for a lot of people years back. Without a way to access it externally, playing with hardware was no use.
is there any reason you couldn’t just point a domain you own to the IP address of the instances?
For me its working and I serve the SSL certificate from the homer page or w/e
It wasn’t externally accessible after they removed the entire section from their gui.
Perhaps they added it back after people left. I tried again in 2021 and that wasn’t an option nor was internal IPs only after being able to do what you described previously.
But the point remains that they have changed their terms previously, and pray they don’t alter them any further.
yeah idk maybe they changed it but i have an externally accessible IP where I can access my apps on different ports and I can point my domain to that IP with no problems. Homer has some functionality to serve the SSL cert and that is within the instance, it wouldn’t matter if its a laptop at home or whichever cloud.
One thing you may have run into is that you have to open ports in the security group so if you didn’t do that then its “not accessible”
Tried opening an account today, when I entered a completely valid Amex it gave me an error and to contact customer service which I did through a form, no confirmation was sent to my email. Tried yet again with a valid visa same result. Seems they really have no interest on free service
Official vague answer ( 2 days after) and marked as solved
Subject: Oracle Cloud Payment UpdateIncident: 231023-???Status: SolvedResponse By Email (Customer Service Agent) (25-Oct-2023??? PDT)Hello,
Unfortunately, we are unable to resolve this or process the transaction. This is all the information we can provide.
Regards,Customer Service Agent
Sorry about that, I know i’ve had a lot of good luck with AWS free trails multiple times on a single CC
You must be new here.
Only a fool would trust Oracle in any way, shadow, or form.
They are IT poison.
I’m glad their offering meets your needs, but I would not trust them even to boot a blank docker image.
Nice try Oracle Marketing Intern.
Can i interest you in 300 dollars in free credits for 1 month? Lmao jk
some of those VMs are in short supply, and are hard to get
IMHO, there is no such thing as “the cloud.” All your doing is using other people’s computers. The history of the Internet is littered with the corpses of once “free” and low-cost services.
IMHO, self-hosting means running my own services, storing and processing my own data, on my own LAN and servers. It’s about minimizing my reliance on third-party service providers to avoid the vagaries and price shell games they play, while restricting access to my PII and staying in control of my data. I don’t do it because it’s easier or cheaper, because it’s usually not. I do it because I believe I’m better off for it.
Perfect for those of us who are just playing around with stuff and don’t have a spare PC/Device :)
right and you shouldn’t run critical stuff on other peoples hardware unless you are down pat with security, DR and HA concepts but this post was really aimed at people who just want something free to play around with and learn with