Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) stands out in the market by offering a unique free plan, delivering a virtual machine (VM) with impressive performance at no cost. This offer stands out not only for its free nature but also for the quality and power of the infrastructure made available. Ideal for developers, students, or small businesses, this plan provides access to advanced cloud resources without incurring costs.
In this offer, OCI allows you to configure a high-performance VM with:
ARM Ampere processor: Efficient for fast data processing.
4 OCPU (Oracle CPU Units): To handle moderate to heavy workloads.
24GB of RAM: Ideal for resource-intensive applications.
200 GB of Storage: Enough for most applications and projects.
This free setup rivals paid offerings, allowing advanced exploration of cloud computing without upfront investment.
Creation of the OCI account
To get started, create your Oracle Cloud account.
Once your account is created we will move on to creating the VM.
Creating the VM
Go to "Compute" then "Instances" from the main menu or the "pinned menu".
Select your "Compartment" and create an instance.
Name your VM and edit the image type as needed.
Change the hardware by choosing an ARM-based Ampere processor, with 4 OCPUs and 24GB of RAM.
Opt for Ubuntu as your OS, choosing the version adapted for ARM (aarch64).
So we end up with this:
If necessary, create a network and make sure you have a public IPV4 address to bind your VM to a domain. At home this was already created, perhaps because I had already made these configurations in the past.
If the network is not already configured, you will simply need to create a network by clicking on edit then:
Make sure you have a public IPV4 address if you then want to link everything with a domain:
Generate an SSH key pair and upload the private key for SSH access to the machine.
We will now choose the size of our boot volume => 200 GB
⚠️ It's only free up to 200GB so don't put more ⚠️
Important Note: Do not rely on cost estimates shown on OCI. According to various sources, including this YouTube video, by following these steps you should avoid additional fees.
We click create, and that's it, the VM is created
Troubleshooting "Out of capacity"
If you have difficulty creating your VM because there is no more available capacity, consider one of these two solutions:
Upgrade to the "pay as you go" but create a VM using only the "always free tier" options.
Use a script to create the VM in case of unavailability, like the one available on GitHub.
Conclusion
To conclude, please note that I haven't managed to get my free machine yet. If it takes too long I will switch to pay as you go with a budget limit configured to send me alerts. But in theory I will be at 0 CHF because I will use free resources.
I have several project ideas in mind, including transforming this Ubuntu VM into a Debian machine and installing YunoHost on it. But it’s music for the future!
Thanks for reading and see you next time!
AlexIn Tech
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