Shaan Chopra

Log something crazy, but intresting.

oracle-always-free-cloud

VM on Oracle Always Free Cloud

Date: Jan 11, 2023

Cloud is the next big thing, and here is one company offering always free cloud. That's Oracle, I also could not believe what I was reading. This is definitely the next level of cloud offering to any developer. Most of the companies in the same category are giving credits for a limited time but Oracle always free cloud service might just eat them out.

Earlier I used to look for free hosting services, but now when I see a free VPS offer what do I do? This is something that I wanted for a very long time. If we look at some of the largest cloud companies like Google started as a search engine, Amazon as an e-commerce store, and Alibaba a B2B marketplace giant.

All these now tech giants started as something else and end as tech companies. What about those companies that were always tech giants? Oracle is one of them, and their always free cloud is a disruptor.

If Oracle keeps the always free I see them turning similar to Gmail, but for developers. Any web developer who wants to test before production, thing can't get better than this.

Then came a lot of negative views that they shut down service, blocked users and they are scraping data. Now, let me clear this out to everyone, they shut down servers after three months or a month that is because you are using the service which is a limited-period free offer use. They will block you if you go against their terms of usage. Scraping data they are Oracle they already have a ton of data they don't need our data from this service.

If you are using Oracle free VPS and then start to sell a plan of shared hosting further then you are bound to get banned. My only request is not to abuse the system or its offering. I am telling you this after a time period of 3+ months and my server was never stopped.

What is always free on Oracle cloud?

And much more for complete details you can visit there offer page.

Who should use this offer?

If you have not registered yourself and started using the free VMs then go do it on their site or just follow the link;

www.oracle.com/cloud/free

Anyone who is looking for hosting or looking for development purposes should get the always free cloud. If you are looking for VM service to learn about cloud computing or trying your hand at CLI or server management, Ubuntu then this offer is for you.

Shared hosting is great for starting a web application but that is still shared here you get a stand-alone VM with an IP address to yourself provided you don't delete the VM.

You can do so much with just the VM, run scripts, generate SSL's, convert PNGs to WEBp, and convert TTF fonts to woff2. Host your website or blog or cv, whatever you want. But please do not cross the line and do anything which is against their terms.

How to get started?

Just visit their site and register yourself. You do need your working credit card they charge you a tiny amount just to confirm the credit card details and then refund the complete amount.

This credit card details I have seen a lot of people not liking this action. Now let's get into these details if Oracle stops asking for credit card details I personally know people who are going to abuse the VM's.

If you still have a problem then the only solution I have for you is to visit a bank and apply for a small credit limit credit card. Banks will be happy to help you with this and then use the card here.

If you see the bar on the top that says “You are using a Free Tier account”. You will not get charged till you upgrade your account. And By default, all ports are blocked in Oracle's VM.

How to open port 80 and 443 on Oracle cloud?

sudo iptables -I INPUT 6 -m state --state NEW -p tcp --dport 80 -j ACCEPT

sudo iptables -I INPUT 6 -m state --state NEW -p tcp --dport 443 -j ACCEPT

sudo netfilter-persistent save

You also have to add the port 80 and 443 in the NETWORKING > VIRTUAL CLOUD NETWORKS > SUBNET > SECURITY LISTS

Oracle by default gives the instance a username of ubuntu which is required to log in via SSH. The root does not have any password and can be accessed by

sudo su -

Google Cloud vs Oracle Cloud

The only other premium service I know that provides a free VM is Google Cloud. But then again Google only provides 1 VM (e2-micro), 30 GB-months standard persistent disk, and 1 GB of data transfer limited from North America to all region destinations (excluding China and Australia) every month.

Google is a premium cloud service provider and also has many more always free resources but if you want a VM then Oracle might be a better option.

Why is their offer always free?

There can be plenty of reasons why Oracle is offering always free VMs and other tools. One reason can be that they can. If Google can offer free Gmail and Google Drive, Oracle has the capability to offer VMs.

Another reason I could think of is training their team. Oracle runs massive cloud services for many big corporations and what is a better place to train their employees? Employees can get live on-job hands-on managing servers.

One more reason in my mind is getting you acclimatised to their network. So that you feel comfortable and switch to more paid services.

The real reason is only available to the people who actually thought of the services.

Conclusion

As far as my conclusion goes is that you really can not crib about things that are free. Shared or cPanel hosting are great in its place but when you have an option of VM then why not. Everyone will start with shared hosting and end up in VM-managed or self-managed. It is good to start early. There is a lot to learn when one shifts to a VM.

Oracle's always free as a service if goes long way, then will have a lot of people will shift from shared hosting plans to VMs.