I have been using Oracle cloud for a year now and have not been charged as much as a penny on my credit card. I am very happy with it, much better than AWS. Apart from the periodic shutting down of servers that Gary mentioned (which doesn't happen if you have a paid account) I really don't have any complaints.
everything is free except the blok volume,which only seems to last a month in trial,after that they will smartly lock you out giving you no choice but to upgrade.Nothing is free here....
@@ArturoGarzaID If you need a server that needs to have maximum uptime, then I would recommend that you get a paid service from Oracle or someone else. But if you need a service where a little down time can be tolerated, then this is worth considering. Personally I use this as a git server for my personal projects, for doing some heavy calculations that I don't want to burden my local workstation with and for a continuous service that collects data from various parts of the internet. If you are developing a project that will take some time before it goes live to real users then you could also use a free server until you get real users at which point it would be wise to upgrade to a paid version. I have also considered running a NextCloud server, there are many possibilities. I don't know what @Mr_ravee_ is refering to, but you get up to 200Gb of free storage included, I have had my server running for free for more than a year.
I'm in South Africa and it's saved me a lot of money on hosting charges. I run a php server on it and it's been great so far. I got free SSL keys as well installed so it's been great
It was an year ago that another youtuber explained the same free tier service from Oracle. I followed the instructions but was not able to apply. I used my email account and a valid credit card that was verified with a charge of 1€ (don't remember the precise amount) but never got an access to my instance. I live in Italy, not in an obscure country. I attempted to contact Oracle support but without success, no answer from their side. I'll try again now after your video but I'm skeptical.
I did this 20 days ago. I provisioned an instance with 12 ARM ampere cores and 72GB of RAM. Ended up using it to seed the most popular linux distro images, hosting a personal price checking application and my almost-empty website. A few days ago it started actually "costing" (it started using up the 250€ you get for free for the first month) so I reduced it to 4 cores and 24GB of ram. From what I understand that level should be maintainable "always-free". Most annoying part of the experience was the firewall stuff for sure. The OCI tech mess basically has 3 firewalls on top of each other. Iptables (disable that!), the web UI thing (which has non-optional fields that no other rule configurator has), and the firewall-cmd CLI app. After fiddling with all those I finally managed to open some ports to get torrents and my website working. The ampere cores have VERY rougly 50% of the single-thread perf as a core of 3900X. P.S.: I learned of the existence of the GUI SSH client MobaXTerm during this. Having used a few clients like putty, solarputty, wsl cli as just ssh interface, I recommend this over any of them. Probably best feature is built-in seamless file browser that can even follow you as you navigate with cd
Getting Payment issues while signing up Error processing transaction We're unable to complete your sign up. Common sign up errors are due to: (a) Using prepaid cards. Oracle only accepts credit card and debit cards (b) Intentionally or unintentionally masking one's location or identity (c) Entering incomplete or inaccurate account details. Please try again if this applies to you. Otherwise, contact Oracle Customer Service.
For users in India, the main issue is in charging of credit cards that have specific requirements in India. I converted my free tier account into PAYG account (pay as you go) and used some paid services. Oracle is yet to charge for that usage even after over 6 months. I stopped using the paid and free services since then. I don’t want to risk keeping important resources over there. Anyway, it applies only to users in India and for individual users. Business customers may not face such issues as there are different ways to pay as a business from India and there are less restrictions while paying as a business.
I tried their so called free server which they without any notice simply closed and also banned from creating any resources. Their customer care is total waste and they simply say "we can't tell any further on this" kind of template reply. It seems first they were accepting debit cards and that time I registered but without any notice they changed their policy and wanted credit cards and without informing or giving a chance to enter the credit card details they simply blocked all resources. Problem is now when I try to register freshly with an credit card it isn't allowing because my mobile number is already with them. I cannot give some other mobile number as it won't pass through credit card verification. Even if I change my mobile number and link to the credit still it is not allowing as they already have my credit card number as well which I tried earlier! It is not even allowing to create even a paid account. Usual "we can't help..." template reply from their customer care even when I like to take a paid account. As for those free servers which I tried for a limited period it works fine but at times it simply just not accessible. For any serious web hosting it is better to take some paid server than rely on oracle because even if we are paying 100s of $ in their paid account still the customer care is very very bad. Better to avoid them totally.
Excellent for running your own iPerf3 server. I have the Ampere 4 core, 24Gb RAM, 4Gbps ethernet Ubuntu server. Works a lot more reliable than an Ookla SpeedTest.
I had it for about a month. When I came back the instance is gone. I selected always free image and arm processor. Was going to start some lessons on ncurses. Always back up your data.
its requesting a two step validation system in which one is forced either to download an app on the cel (thus sacrificing all your info) or using a FIDO authentication key... unfortunate
Thank you for this. I was paying $30 a year for a racknerd VM instance with only marginally better resources. I'm going to transition my stuff to this because it's just easier to not have to worry about having to pay for server renewals and things like that.
Do keep backups somewhere else.. Maybe setup a cloud sync with gdrive or other alternatives. It's not reliable. So better to make backups periodically.
Will be using in the college Linux course I'm teaching so my students don't have to worry about getting credits for one of the big three cloud providers. Thanks!
I'd advice against this unless there's a way around the payment info section. The payment info part might scare the students, especially if they don't have any payment sources. This is coming from a recent graduate, so I'm not trying to speak for all. 😊
@@rbjolly We're a community college with extremely limited resources, unlike a university. Also, the goal is to familiarize students with cloud infrastructure rather than local VMs.
I've used this in the past setup for remote desktop but stupidly I had deleted my machine when I wasn't using it and then I hadn't been able to provision a new one due to limited resources a while ago, I came back to try it out again and as of 12/21/23 instead of free it says it will cost $2 a month for the "boot volume" . I don't see any way around it as of now.
I have been using the free tier for a month now and so far everything is running smoothly. Setting up an IPv6 address was a bit tricky. But it works now. Sending mail does not work because outgoing ports 25 and 465 are blocked. However, I do not need this feature at the moment. You can apply to have these ports opened if you need them, as far as I know.
Thanks for the video, I have very bad experience with the "always" free tier at oracle. It was was all fine for 6-7 months or so. However suddenly I got a mail that my account was deleted. That was that. No way to reactivate it, 0 response from support.
Yes Many of my friends' accounts got banned just the same way after random days... It's not reliable... So. Whatever you do should be backed up Some place safe.
@@GaryExplains it's common with OCI Free Tier specifically for my Country India. They ban accounts without any notice or anything. One day your instance is working the next day you wake up and the instance is deleted and the account is banned
But I guess there must be a reason, like using a unique single use virtual card number, or downloading torrents, or something like that. It says very clearly that they check the card number from time to time to make sure it is still valid.
I've got 3 free instances running for over 2 years now; only a few restarts (for security updates I think?) Just using it for website and ftp-server in the cloud 0 billing
I've been using the Always Free Tier for over a year now. I've set up one instance running Ubuntu Server as my main VPN server using Wireguard. All my mobile device data traffic (except phone calls) goes through this VPN. The only issue is that every two months they "reclaim" idle resources by stopping server instances they deem to be "idle". Despite ALL my data going through this server 24 hours a day, it still doesn't use enough resources to avoid being considered as "idle". It's not a big deal because they'll give you 7 days notice, then all you have to do is the restart the server and everything's back to normal; they don't actually delete any of your resources. The Always Free tier (at least with the VM.Standard.A1.Flex shape) gives you: - Up to 4 server instances (limited because each one needs at least a 47GB boot volume, and there are a maximum of 200 GB allowed). - 4 CPUs total. - 24 GB memory total. - 1 GB/s bandwidth. - 10 TB/month outbound data transfer. - Unlimited inbound data transfer. And I've never been charged for anything.
It is very good, I've been running one for some time. Small web server, albeit apache2, also iperf3 as a daemon. Also run Virtual Radar Server which enables me to amalgamate a number of ads-b (aircraft) feeds into one output.
Thanks been struggling with getting the ssh keys to work in Linux, they work just fine in Putty on that other Os! Perhaps a video on using the config folder for ssh keys?
can I set up google cloud or oracle cloud free trial with a an Ubuntu VM to run a low cost 24/7 streaming of my old videos to my TH-cam channel. This is the next big thing for TH-cam... do this and include additional good price for webhosting my website with the free trial offer and it will be gold.
Wasn't able to allocate Ampere VM in Frankfurt region. Capacity is not available. And you can't change region. Micro is available only. So region choice seems matters.
All providers run these type of promotions. It costs them nothing. You can learn things you just don't have the infrastructure to do. If you were smart, you'd see the value in this instead of making sill comments about things you know nothing about.
I know absolutely zero thing about servers but can I use it to download low speed torrents to the ram and then download at full speed from server to my machine?
Presumably you could run a command line torrent program, nohup it and come back later to collect. But that said I don't think you get much space on the free instance, so your torrent would need to be small (and, obviously, legal).
I have been using it for the past 2 years and it's works great, I used to use linode but they scammed me so I changed to this and it works much better and it's free
@@masterneme always free resources are limited by usage... If you are running always free tier instances you can use them as you wish... It won't charge you...
Hi, I have commented on many videos like this but no one answered me, but I want to know what happens if I have many user visitors on my personal website when the server bandwidth is unlimited?
It's bad, it looks like amateurish already when loading an account for a Free Oracle Cloud Service account. I repeated the creation of the account several times, everything was always confirmed (e-mail, payment card) but the account for use was never created and it reports some unspecified error. Inspected. I had everything valid, correct and no VPN. location EU Czech Republic. I lost my confidence. If it can't create an account on the Internet, what do other cloud services look like! I'm running away.
It works well except every few months they shut the machines down. Free tiers are not available every time, so you might wait for the free machine to be available to power up again. Not suitable for commercial use.
Seriously? They will shut down your machine without telling u?? What if we open 2 accounts and run the project using docker swarm across 2 separate servers?
Of course they tell it in advance, but there is no way to stop it once you get the notice. You have to wait for the precise moment to power up your machine again to minimize the downtime and reclaim the resource. It is very difficult to get an Ampere machine. Since my workload is almost constant, i believe they do this to avoid commercial usage, when they shut down they explicitly mention they never shot down paid instances. I can't say it's unfair nor complain because it's a free service.
If Oracle thinks you have just started the instance but you aren't using it, like leaving a light switched on during the day time, then it will switch it off. It isn't deleted, but shutdown. You can then restart it.
I spent a couple of hours last night trying to register. I tried multiple credit cards and multiple browsers, but the site just freezes at the final stage.
I contacted them some time ago, you cannot create multiple accounts. They do some checks for the address the Creditcards are registered on or some other checks. Logical I guess, it is a free tier… they don’ want people to misuse this privilege.
Interesting. Thanks for the info. I hate to leave my credit-card somewhere on the internet. Is there a way to change your credit-card credentials to fake data after you established your linux instance?
yt algo sucks it's been so long i have seen this old fella ........ ig it's been a year and sry mate i just forgot your name also so wasn't able to search you on yt also now subbed and turned on notification also.
Not quite the same, it is free of charge, within specified monthly usage limits. "When you stay within the Free Tier limits, these resources are not charged against your Free Trial credits or to your Cloud Billing account's payment method after your trial ends."
@@GaryExplains are you talking google or oracle now? google: 30 GB-months standard persistent disk 1 GB network egress from North America to all region destinations (excluding China and Australia) per month Your Free Tier e2-micro instance limit is by time, not by instance. Each month, eligible use of all of your e2-micro instance is free until you have used a number of hours equal to the total hours in the current month. Usage calculations are combined across the supported regions. Compute Engine free tier does not charge for an external IP address.
Greetings! What do you say about Ampere with 4 core and 24GB? They write that I have free first 3000 CPU hours and 18000GB hours per month. 4*24*30 = 2880 and 24*24*30 = 17280, so less then limits. What should I do for use this offer?
What is the link to the offer, is it Oracle? Edit: I had a quick look and yes that seems to be the offering for Arm servers which is great. My problem is that none are available in my area which I covered briefly in the video.
Followed exactly and nothing worked. Oracle is painful. After about seven tries, I got an instance to work. Got errors like "capacity full", "no VCN", etc. This might be free but Linode is so much better. 🙂 However, I do have to say it's nice having a free tier from a big company.
As always, great video! But, please consider using a stock photo rather than a text-to-image ai background, it looks very unpleasing with all the wonky unrealistic shapes.
@@GaryExplains It may just be me, but one of the advantages of listening to videos rather than actual people is that you can let your eyes ponder wherever you want without appearing rude. So, yes, at least I am spending quite some time looking at video backgrounds.
I've found it to be a huge hassle to set up an account. My bad for being a Brit living abroad and needing a VPN. The closest I got to success was verifying email, confirming with credit card only to be rejected at the final hurdle because I was "using a tool to hide my location". I'll wait until the summer when I'm in the UK before I try again. :-)
@@GaryExplains I live in China, which raises all sorts of additional complications. Yes, I have a local account, but I specifically want a host that is outside this specific walled garden.
Its all cool and all - but I can't create one :/ "Out of capacity for shape VM.Standard.A1.Flex in availability domain AD-1. Create the instance in a different availability domain or try again later. If you specified a fault domain, try creating the instance without specifying a fault domain, otherwise try creating the instance in a different availability domain. If that doesn’t work, please try again later."
I created an account after watching this video, created a Linux VM and installed WireGuard on it. After working nice for a week, I suddenly could not access the server. I created a support ticket and it took 8 days for them to tell me that my account has been suspended. No prior warning, no e-mail, nothing. And the link support provided to reactivate my account does not work. This free tier is just a joke. Please stay away from it if you want to keep yourself sane.
Sounded great, just what I needed, a free VPS. Signed up, filled in my email address, name, home details, super secret password and credit card. Details correct, card accepted, but for some reason they couldn't identify my location, even though I'd just given it to them? Tried again, no verified location, no deal, couldn't get any further. Gave up :-(
"When your 30-day trial period for the expanded set of services ends [which includes the $300], you can continue using Always Free services with no interruption." Oracle site.
I doubt it was for no reason, of course the people say it was for no reason as they aren't going to confess to downloading torrents or having multiple accounts or using virtual card numbers or whatever.
@@GaryExplains you are right - all i have to go off is their word. nothing wrong with virtual credit cards however - they can bounce a payment, just like a normal card
Hello, I can confirm that the service is for free. My account is already after trial period and my instance compute with amount of resources within Always Free rules is still working. During account registration they took me 1EUR from debit card and gave me it back. So it is in real for free ;-). The issue what I countered is an access from public network after trial period. I can uses ssh connection but other services stopped be seen from public network. Does anybody know about such limitation in this service. I used "Security list" from subnet configuration in WWW control panel. But after trial period it has stopped work. Does anybody know what is different way to configure ports to public network or there is some limitation in Always Free service? ;-) Regards
Hi Gary. Thanks for the tutorial. I can say right away... thanks for "holding my hand"... I needed it. I managed to create an 'instance" of AlmaLinux OS 9.2.20230516 AArch64. The Launch mode is PARAVIRTUALIZED... and the instance is supposedly running. However, I'm not sure if the "instance" is kwazikwetl perambulating (or is that not Oracle speak? ... not sure.) Anyway, I've had enough of Oracles alphabet soup names, for ordinary computing concepts... before I login...so in true Shyamalan style... I'm goin to go run my self over with my lawn mower.
@@willi1978 Right, somehow I never payed them a cent, while using their Enterprise grade Linux OS with all the updates for free, and Cloud VM for my webserver in Oracle Free tier cloud for several years now... sure.
Oracle has so horrible reputation, sending you enormous bill, that I cannot accept the offer validating my request with my payment card, even it is free, I consider it is too risky.
@@GaryExplains Not exactly. I was working for a huge bank few years ago and they received a nice bill, so the bank decided to migrate to Postgresql. This is why I was working for them.
That is a different thing. Oracle database is a commercial product. Postgresql is open source and I guess they used it without any support contract etc. That isn't about cloud computing.
I'll help everyone out that stumbles on this vid...it ain't free. Well I'm sure you could dwindle the services down to weaker than raspberry pi zero, but what's the point of that? I guess just to say you did? Oh...and good luck finding an open data center. I would have paid a few bucks just to not have wasted my time.
@@GaryExplains Not just credit card details but also mobile number linked to that card and it claims it is for verification. But they store our mobile number and also credit card details. If it is totally free and without our permission they aren't going to charge then why they worry so much about asking our details? Main problem with them is all goes well till resource creating page then nothing will be created and all our details will be them. Hence we can't try again with same card or same mobile number. Through comments I come to know many from India are facing the same problem like me. May be you are lucky or the comments here which are against Oracle are unlucky people.
If you don't understand why, when I explained why very clearly in the video, then I can't help you further. What I don't understand is that Oracle is offering something for free and people still find a way to complain about it 😂
Do note: I was getting this... and I was having activity on the instance They will shut it down weekly Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Customer, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) has reclaimed idle Always Free compute resources from Always Free customers by stopping the compute instance(s). Reclaiming idle resources allows OCI to efficiently provide services to Always Free customers. Your account had one or more idle compute instances that have been stopped. You can restart your compute instance as long as the associated compute shape is available in your region. In the future, you can keep idle compute instances from being stopped by converting your account to Pay As You Go (PAYG). With PAYG, you will not be charged as long as your usage for all OCI resources remains within the Always Free limits.
Please stop recommending this service as they do terminate your account without prior notice, even for new accounts with active services e.g a RSS reader and some simple docker containers. They just terminate your account, even after just about two weeks of testing their service daily and there is nothing you can do. You cannot even delete your account when the tenancy is terminated. Very poor service!
I haven't had any problems and I have been using it for more than a year. Lots of people here in the comments have said very positive things about it. If you try to cheat the system with a virtual card number or use multiple accounts then it seems that Oracle does close those accounts.
@@GaryExplains I used a good valid card, and in was the only account ever created. Did not do anything that could be considered cheating and they just terminated the tenancy without any notice or anything. So please do not tell me they are OK as they do not deserve the promotion for the free tier presented everywhere on TH-cam.
Ok, that sounds like a valid problem. However I have not had that experience so I made this based on my experience, not yours. I can't ask 8 billion people about their experiences of any product or service before I make a video, i can only base it on mine, and mine have been positive.
For example, there is a comment here from Maurits Dijkens, it reads, "I've got 3 free instances running for over 2 years now; only a few restarts (for security updates I think?) Just using it for website and ftp-server in the cloud. 0 billing." So he didn't have the same problem as you and he has been using it for 2 years.
@@GaryExplains I am glad people can use it, for me it was impossible. And after they terminated the tenancy after about 17 days, now I cannot use my account at all and also cannot even delete it if I want. So in my opinion it is was not a great experience.
@@GaryExplains Hi Gary, thanks for answering. After Oracle bought Sun, all the projects changed (i am mostly thinking of java and zfs). I'm not too deep in illumos scene so i highly recommend everybody to watch Bryan Cantrill talks, or just read the wikipedia article: Acquisition of Sun Microsystems by Oracle Corporation
Yes, I know what Oracle did. But it bought the company and it had the right to do whatever it wanted with it, regardless if you or I liked it. But my question was, why are you so attached to Solaris. Surely Linux won, regardless of what Oracle did or did not so with Sun.
Yes, I'm a bit of a grammar Nazi - LINode. 🙂 *Edit:* Fun fact: the leading dot (.) which hides files under Linux was originally a programming shortcut to hide current (.)and parent (..) directories. But as the code only looked for the leading dot, anything beginning with one also wouldn't be displayed.
I have been using Oracle cloud for a year now and have not been charged as much as a penny on my credit card. I am very happy with it, much better than AWS. Apart from the periodic shutting down of servers that Gary mentioned (which doesn't happen if you have a paid account) I really don't have any complaints.
Let me get this straight, you're saying as long as you pay then you get reliable (ie usable) service? What was the point of this video again?
everything is free except the blok volume,which only seems to last a month in trial,after that they will smartly lock you out giving you no choice but to upgrade.Nothing is free here....
Can someone explain what this is used for? What exactly can you do with this?
@@ArturoGarzaID If you need a server that needs to have maximum uptime, then I would recommend that you get a paid service from Oracle or someone else. But if you need a service where a little down time can be tolerated, then this is worth considering. Personally I use this as a git server for my personal projects, for doing some heavy calculations that I don't want to burden my local workstation with and for a continuous service that collects data from various parts of the internet. If you are developing a project that will take some time before it goes live to real users then you could also use a free server until you get real users at which point it would be wise to upgrade to a paid version. I have also considered running a NextCloud server, there are many possibilities. I don't know what @Mr_ravee_ is refering to, but you get up to 200Gb of free storage included, I have had my server running for free for more than a year.
I'm in South Africa and it's saved me a lot of money on hosting charges. I run a php server on it and it's been great so far. I got free SSL keys as well installed so it's been great
Could u help me sign up I'm from South Africa
How did you get free ssl?
Yassssss!
I have been using OCI for my personal projects, and it's been a blast.
Highly recommended.
same here. I rum a bunch of services on their free tier using docker.
Could you tell us best combinations that works smooth?
It was an year ago that another youtuber explained the same free tier service from Oracle. I followed the instructions but was not able to apply. I used my email account and a valid credit card that was verified with a charge of 1€ (don't remember the precise amount) but never got an access to my instance. I live in Italy, not in an obscure country. I attempted to contact Oracle support but without success, no answer from their side. I'll try again now after your video but I'm skeptical.
I did this 20 days ago. I provisioned an instance with 12 ARM ampere cores and 72GB of RAM. Ended up using it to seed the most popular linux distro images, hosting a personal price checking application and my almost-empty website. A few days ago it started actually "costing" (it started using up the 250€ you get for free for the first month) so I reduced it to 4 cores and 24GB of ram. From what I understand that level should be maintainable "always-free".
Most annoying part of the experience was the firewall stuff for sure. The OCI tech mess basically has 3 firewalls on top of each other. Iptables (disable that!), the web UI thing (which has non-optional fields that no other rule configurator has), and the firewall-cmd CLI app. After fiddling with all those I finally managed to open some ports to get torrents and my website working.
The ampere cores have VERY rougly 50% of the single-thread perf as a core of 3900X.
P.S.: I learned of the existence of the GUI SSH client MobaXTerm during this. Having used a few clients like putty, solarputty, wsl cli as just ssh interface, I recommend this over any of them. Probably best feature is built-in seamless file browser that can even follow you as you navigate with cd
MobaXterm rocks.
I run Ubuntu on the Ampere VM and iptables -L shows empty chains. So nu problem there.
ALWAYS take advantage of these promos! IBM did one and I had free mainfame access for a year. Invaluable experience.
I like the price!!
On the other hand, it is Oracle. They WILL screw you, sooner or later. No thanks.
Getting Payment issues while signing up
Error processing transaction
We're unable to complete your sign up. Common sign up errors are due to: (a) Using prepaid cards. Oracle only accepts credit card and debit cards (b) Intentionally or unintentionally masking one's location or identity (c) Entering incomplete or inaccurate account details. Please try again if this applies to you. Otherwise, contact Oracle Customer Service.
For users in India, the main issue is in charging of credit cards that have specific requirements in India. I converted my free tier account into PAYG account (pay as you go) and used some paid services. Oracle is yet to charge for that usage even after over 6 months. I stopped using the paid and free services since then. I don’t want to risk keeping important resources over there. Anyway, it applies only to users in India and for individual users. Business customers may not face such issues as there are different ways to pay as a business from India and there are less restrictions while paying as a business.
Which card you used when upgrading to payg? My card was charged 100$ worth inr but haven't refunded yet and upgrade also still showing in progress
I tried their so called free server which they without any notice simply closed and also banned from creating any resources. Their customer care is total waste and they simply say "we can't tell any further on this" kind of template reply. It seems first they were accepting debit cards and that time I registered but without any notice they changed their policy and wanted credit cards and without informing or giving a chance to enter the credit card details they simply blocked all resources. Problem is now when I try to register freshly with an credit card it isn't allowing because my mobile number is already with them. I cannot give some other mobile number as it won't pass through credit card verification.
Even if I change my mobile number and link to the credit still it is not allowing as they already have my credit card number as well which I tried earlier! It is not even allowing to create even a paid account. Usual "we can't help..." template reply from their customer care even when I like to take a paid account.
As for those free servers which I tried for a limited period it works fine but at times it simply just not accessible. For any serious web hosting it is better to take some paid server than rely on oracle because even if we are paying 100s of $ in their paid account still the customer care is very very bad. Better to avoid them totally.
My debit card is not working wt to do ,if I buy SBI credit card will it work ?
@@vinusuhas4978 credit card should work. You can also try other debit card make sure to enable international transactions before trying.
Excellent for running your own iPerf3 server. I have the Ampere 4 core, 24Gb RAM, 4Gbps ethernet Ubuntu server. Works a lot more reliable than an Ookla SpeedTest.
I had it for about a month. When I came back the instance is gone. I selected always free image and arm processor. Was going to start some lessons on ncurses. Always back up your data.
Past 1 year i'm trying to register it with different Email id's and different credit cards . But always the payment it fails
How can we access to the instance using vnc or similar????????
its requesting a two step validation system in which one is forced either to download an app on the cel (thus sacrificing all your info) or using a FIDO authentication key... unfortunate
Thank you for this. I was paying $30 a year for a racknerd VM instance with only marginally better resources. I'm going to transition my stuff to this because it's just easier to not have to worry about having to pay for server renewals and things like that.
Do keep backups somewhere else.. Maybe setup a cloud sync with gdrive or other alternatives. It's not reliable. So better to make backups periodically.
Will be using in the college Linux course I'm teaching so my students don't have to worry about getting credits for one of the big three cloud providers. Thanks!
Good luck trying to create one, its out of capacity.
I'd advice against this unless there's a way around the payment info section. The payment info part might scare the students, especially if they don't have any payment sources. This is coming from a recent graduate, so I'm not trying to speak for all. 😊
I'm surprised the college doesn't have the infrastructure to allow students this option, especially for an official class.
@@rbjolly We're a community college with extremely limited resources, unlike a university. Also, the goal is to familiarize students with cloud infrastructure rather than local VMs.
I've used this in the past setup for remote desktop but stupidly I had deleted my machine when I wasn't using it and then I hadn't been able to provision a new one due to limited resources a while ago, I came back to try it out again and as of 12/21/23 instead of free it says it will cost $2 a month for the "boot volume" . I don't see any way around it as of now.
Was on a meeting with Oracle sales and they recomended this :)
I have been using the free tier for a month now and so far everything is running smoothly. Setting up an IPv6 address was a bit tricky. But it works now. Sending mail does not work because outgoing ports 25 and 465 are blocked. However, I do not need this feature at the moment. You can apply to have these ports opened if you need them, as far as I know.
Thanks for the video, I have very bad experience with the "always" free tier at oracle.
It was was all fine for 6-7 months or so. However suddenly I got a mail that my account was deleted.
That was that. No way to reactivate it, 0 response from support.
Oh, that isn't good. Thanks for sharing, I will keep my eyes open to see if others have similar problems.
Yes Many of my friends' accounts got banned just the same way after random days... It's not reliable... So. Whatever you do should be backed up Some place safe.
@@GaryExplains it's common with OCI Free Tier specifically for my Country India. They ban accounts without any notice or anything. One day your instance is working the next day you wake up and the instance is deleted and the account is banned
But I guess there must be a reason, like using a unique single use virtual card number, or downloading torrents, or something like that. It says very clearly that they check the card number from time to time to make sure it is still valid.
I've got 3 free instances running for over 2 years now; only a few restarts (for security updates I think?)
Just using it for website and ftp-server in the cloud
0 billing
I've been using the Always Free Tier for over a year now. I've set up one instance running Ubuntu Server as my main VPN server using Wireguard. All my mobile device data traffic (except phone calls) goes through this VPN. The only issue is that every two months they "reclaim" idle resources by stopping server instances they deem to be "idle". Despite ALL my data going through this server 24 hours a day, it still doesn't use enough resources to avoid being considered as "idle". It's not a big deal because they'll give you 7 days notice, then all you have to do is the restart the server and everything's back to normal; they don't actually delete any of your resources.
The Always Free tier (at least with the VM.Standard.A1.Flex shape) gives you:
- Up to 4 server instances (limited because each one needs at least a 47GB boot volume, and there are a maximum of 200 GB allowed).
- 4 CPUs total.
- 24 GB memory total.
- 1 GB/s bandwidth.
- 10 TB/month outbound data transfer.
- Unlimited inbound data transfer.
And I've never been charged for anything.
Excellent video, many thanks Gary, I will use it
There's a catch... They will reclaim the resources if your usage don't match their terms. But you can start the VMs again, after they reclaim it.
If only I had mentioned that in the video!
i wonder if there's any kind of cPanel?
It is very good, I've been running one for some time. Small web server, albeit apache2, also iperf3 as a daemon. Also run Virtual Radar Server which enables me to amalgamate a number of ads-b (aircraft) feeds into one output.
Thanks been struggling with getting the ssh keys to work in Linux, they work just fine in Putty on that other Os! Perhaps a video on using the config folder for ssh keys?
Using it but their console is not good but once vm runs it is really good 6 gb is sufficient for any docker testing on public net
The first sample is always free; that's how they hook you! 😋
Hey Gary,
that's pretty cool. I've used AWS and Azure before. But this is a nice reason to play with the Oracle Cloud as well.
Just signed up to practice some data engineering. Thanks Gary!
can I set up google cloud or oracle cloud free trial with a an Ubuntu VM to run a low cost 24/7 streaming of my old videos to my TH-cam channel. This is the next big thing for TH-cam... do this and include additional good price for webhosting my website with the free trial offer and it will be gold.
Perfect for external SMTP relay. Thank You
The Ampere offering is the only way to fly: 4 cores, 24GB RAM, 200GB storage, and 4Gbps
Wasn't able to allocate Ampere VM in Frankfurt region. Capacity is not available. And you can't change region. Micro is available only. So region choice seems matters.
This is great. I don't need to worry that my intel G620 cpu doesn't have enough power for the simple web development task I am testing out.
Awesome! Thanks!
I don't trust Oracle in "free". See recent actions from Oracle regarding Java...
FREE as in FEAR
All providers run these type of promotions. It costs them nothing. You can learn things you just don't have the infrastructure to do. If you were smart, you'd see the value in this instead of making sill comments about things you know nothing about.
Fuck yea! Tell him!
Oracle cloud is a scam. Please search google with keyword oracle cloud free scam, you can find many evidence it
I know absolutely zero thing about servers but can I use it to download low speed torrents to the ram and then download at full speed from server to my machine?
Presumably you could run a command line torrent program, nohup it and come back later to collect. But that said I don't think you get much space on the free instance, so your torrent would need to be small (and, obviously, legal).
I think if they spot you doing that you will probably get banned due to the legal issues.
I have been using it for the past 2 years and it's works great, I used to use linode but they scammed me so I changed to this and it works much better and it's free
Thanks, I'm already using it.
If I run some game servers and go over the monthly bandwidth, what do they do, do they just shut the instance down until the next month?
They will add it to monthly statement
@@mkpati Even if I only use "always free" resources?
@@masterneme always free resources are limited by usage... If you are running always free tier instances you can use them as you wish... It won't charge you...
@@mkpati Yes but they have a monthly traffic/bandwidth limit. I was just wondering what do they do when you reach it.
Hi, I have commented on many videos like this but no one answered me, but I want to know what happens if I have many user visitors on my personal website when the server bandwidth is unlimited?
It's bad, it looks like amateurish already when loading an account for a Free Oracle Cloud Service account. I repeated the creation of the account several times, everything was always confirmed (e-mail, payment card) but the account for use was never created and it reports some unspecified error. Inspected. I had everything valid, correct and no VPN. location EU Czech Republic.
I lost my confidence. If it can't create an account on the Internet, what do other cloud services look like! I'm running away.
I wasnt even aware of this!
Thank you! I signed up.
One more thing: it says i can have upto 41.OCPU when i choose Ampere? Didnt see that on yours.
Hi, great video! I understand that I can also store data and share publicly, am i Right? If yes I should get a domain?
Great vídeo!!!
Thank you Gary
It works well except every few months they shut the machines down. Free tiers are not available every time, so you might wait for the free machine to be available to power up again. Not suitable for commercial use.
Seriously? They will shut down your machine without telling u?? What if we open 2 accounts and run the project using docker swarm across 2 separate servers?
@p s I cover that in the video, didn't you watch it. They don't do it "without telling u", I covered that in the video as well.
@@ps3301 They usually do this when the user violates their terms of service, create multiple accounts, they try to use a pre-paid card, etc.
Of course they tell it in advance, but there is no way to stop it once you get the notice. You have to wait for the precise moment to power up your machine again to minimize the downtime and reclaim the resource. It is very difficult to get an Ampere machine. Since my workload is almost constant, i believe they do this to avoid commercial usage, when they shut down they explicitly mention they never shot down paid instances. I can't say it's unfair nor complain because it's a free service.
I didn't understand the idle video part. Can you explain more??
If Oracle thinks you have just started the instance but you aren't using it, like leaving a light switched on during the day time, then it will switch it off. It isn't deleted, but shutdown. You can then restart it.
Is there a guide for using Oracle cloud free with Debian and pihole? Does it cost to have a static IP?
I spent a couple of hours last night trying to register. I tried multiple credit cards and multiple browsers, but the site just freezes at the final stage.
i'm not able to sign up used multiple credit and debits cards any help ?
I guess the best way to get help is from Oracle directly.
Yea, also had issues and just gave up
I contacted them some time ago, you cannot create multiple accounts. They do some checks for the address the Creditcards are registered on or some other checks. Logical I guess, it is a free tier… they don’ want people to misuse this privilege.
@@GaryExplains They were of no help didn't get any usefull information.
@@GaryExplains they won't help. I tried. 😅
The problem for me, is that their system wont let me in with any debig or credit card I've tried. Always says there was a error processing payment
I can't tell if Gary is telling me to be quiet or if he's talking about SSH in the thumbnail 🤔
Noooo he changed the thumbnail😢
Interesting. Thanks for the info. I hate to leave my credit-card somewhere on the internet. Is there a way to change your credit-card credentials to fake data after you established your linux instance?
No, privacy cards or debit cards don't work
If you eventually do get it to work... The account will be banned after 30 days
yt algo sucks it's been so long i have seen this old fella ........
ig it's been a year and sry mate i just forgot your name also so wasn't able to search you on yt also
now subbed and turned on notification also.
I tried half a dozen time always errors out with transaction processing error mesg -its common issue it seems
can i use this to create a VPN?
there are a free tier on google cloud as well ^_^
Not quite the same, it is free of charge, within specified monthly usage limits. "When you stay within the Free Tier limits, these resources are not charged against your Free Trial credits or to your Cloud Billing account's payment method after your trial ends."
@@GaryExplains are you talking google or oracle now?
google:
30 GB-months standard persistent disk
1 GB network egress from North America to all region destinations (excluding China and Australia) per month
Your Free Tier e2-micro instance limit is by time, not by instance. Each month, eligible use of all of your e2-micro instance is free until you have used a number of hours equal to the total hours in the current month. Usage calculations are combined across the supported regions.
Compute Engine free tier does not charge for an external IP address.
@@GaryExplains they shutdown registration page, have you know that??
Greetings! What do you say about Ampere with 4 core and 24GB? They write that I have free first 3000 CPU hours and 18000GB hours per month. 4*24*30 = 2880 and 24*24*30 = 17280, so less then limits. What should I do for use this offer?
Are you sure it is the first 3000 hours PER MONTH and not just the first 3000 hours in total (as a one off).
@@GaryExplains I found another channel, he tells that per month
th-cam.com/video/g7sP33QtuxM/w-d-xo.html
What is the link to the offer, is it Oracle?
Edit: I had a quick look and yes that seems to be the offering for Arm servers which is great. My problem is that none are available in my area which I covered briefly in the video.
Does it work for any country?
Can't really do much with a one core instance.
you can have a total of 3 free instances ( 2x single core - dual thread AMD EPYC with 1GB RAM each + 1x eight cores AMPERE with 24GB RAM)
Followed exactly and nothing worked. Oracle is painful. After about seven tries, I got an instance to work. Got errors like "capacity full", "no VCN", etc. This might be free but Linode is so much better. 🙂 However, I do have to say it's nice having a free tier from a big company.
I found the firewall an issue even after opening the ports. Oddly resolved by installing ufw and opening ports there as well as on Oracle's system.
As always, great video! But, please consider using a stock photo rather than a text-to-image ai background, it looks very unpleasing with all the wonky unrealistic shapes.
You notice the background that much?
@@GaryExplains It may just be me, but one of the advantages of listening to videos rather than actual people is that you can let your eyes ponder wherever you want without appearing rude. So, yes, at least I am spending quite some time looking at video backgrounds.
Nothing is Free
If you are Not Paying,
You are the Product. 😂
I've found it to be a huge hassle to set up an account. My bad for being a Brit living abroad and needing a VPN. The closest I got to success was verifying email, confirming with credit card only to be rejected at the final hurdle because I was "using a tool to hide my location". I'll wait until the summer when I'm in the UK before I try again. :-)
If you are living abroad then surely you also have a local bank account in the country where you live? No?
@@GaryExplains I live in China, which raises all sorts of additional complications. Yes, I have a local account, but I specifically want a host that is outside this specific walled garden.
Its all cool and all - but I can't create one :/ "Out of capacity for shape VM.Standard.A1.Flex in availability domain AD-1. Create the instance in a different availability domain or try again later. If you specified a fault domain, try creating the instance without specifying a fault domain, otherwise try creating the instance in a different availability domain. If that doesn’t work, please try again later."
In the region you selected that instance is not available probably.
And here I am still cannot create a Free Tier VPS. Still out of host capacity (Asia;SG)
yeah this video is going down 😬
Mentioning Oracle and showing their Logo in a unauthorized/non-sponsored TH-cam video is prohibited by Oracle
Larry has to pay for his yachts somehow
The server instance gets deleted automatically, so many users reported the same in the community. Very bad experience from Oracle cloud.
I created an account after watching this video, created a Linux VM and installed WireGuard on it. After working nice for a week, I suddenly could not access the server. I created a support ticket and it took 8 days for them to tell me that my account has been suspended. No prior warning, no e-mail, nothing. And the link support provided to reactivate my account does not work. This free tier is just a joke. Please stay away from it if you want to keep yourself sane.
always got an out of capacity message
Whats the max config we can get for free?
24GB RAM, 200GB Storage, 4 arm vCPU Cores, 4 Gbps Connection
Sounded great, just what I needed, a free VPS. Signed up, filled in my email address, name, home details, super secret password and credit card. Details correct, card accepted, but for some reason they couldn't identify my location, even though I'd just given it to them? Tried again, no verified location, no deal, couldn't get any further. Gave up :-(
"The Free Trial services may be used until your US$300 of free credits are consumed or the 30 days has expired, whichever comes first." Oracle site ??
"When your 30-day trial period for the expanded set of services ends [which includes the $300], you can continue using Always Free services with no interruption." Oracle site.
Yes, you get credit to use extra services. Those will stop after 30 days if you don’t upgrade. The free tier services remain forever.
It’s such a buggy sign up process that ties you to a credit card etc. Not a big deal but it doesn’t actually seem to want to work so… there’s that 😒
It's impossible to sign up.
oracle customer service is the worst among all services, I cant signup and they cannot help me at all when I email them
Oracle is charging me for a subscription where I didn't enable ANY features. This happened today, April 22, 2024.
read some horror story's where people have had their oci account terminated for no reason and no recourse - not sure i'd trust larry with my cc either
I doubt it was for no reason, of course the people say it was for no reason as they aren't going to confess to downloading torrents or having multiple accounts or using virtual card numbers or whatever.
@@GaryExplains you are right - all i have to go off is their word. nothing wrong with virtual credit cards however - they can bounce a payment, just like a normal card
It is interesting, but i think i wont use it in the near future. Thanks for the Video!
They have shutdown the page registration...
I haven't checked but I doubt that. Oracle has been offering this service for several years.
@@GaryExplains update: they does not shutdown the page or services. It is not able to use from Venezuela. We need a VPN for use that.
Hello, I can confirm that the service is for free. My account is already after trial period and my instance compute with amount of resources within Always Free rules is still working. During account registration they took me 1EUR from debit card and gave me it back. So it is in real for free ;-). The issue what I countered is an access from public network after trial period. I can uses ssh connection but other services stopped be seen from public network. Does anybody know about such limitation in this service. I used "Security list" from subnet configuration in WWW control panel. But after trial period it has stopped work. Does anybody know what is different way to configure ports to public network or there is some limitation in Always Free service? ;-) Regards
how can i login using a password now?
I don't think you can. You need to download the key that you got when you created the instance .
@@GaryExplains i had the key, i just wanted to login using a password instead, it worked out, thanks anyway 👍
@@GaryExplains one more question, i chose the minimum specs, and i have 250$ , can i use them to upgrade now? I still don’t get it honestly
I don't have a credit card :C
Can't sign in
😢I Don't have a credit card, Please.. anyone can help me to create a Oracle free tier account?
Hi Gary. Thanks for the tutorial. I can say right away... thanks for "holding my hand"... I needed it. I managed to create an 'instance" of AlmaLinux OS 9.2.20230516 AArch64. The Launch mode is PARAVIRTUALIZED... and the instance is supposedly running. However, I'm not sure if the "instance" is kwazikwetl perambulating (or is that not Oracle speak? ... not sure.) Anyway, I've had enough of Oracles alphabet soup names, for ordinary computing concepts... before I login...so in true Shyamalan style... I'm goin to go run my self over with my lawn mower.
Someone was telling me recently "Oracle is evil..." Who might that have been...?
i guess everybody says that. oracle is one of the greediest companies around
@@willi1978 Right, somehow I never payed them a cent, while using their Enterprise grade Linux OS with all the updates for free, and Cloud VM for my webserver in Oracle Free tier cloud for several years now... sure.
👍👍
No more free boot volumes...
would be nice if it didnt refuse all my cards
Oracle has so horrible reputation, sending you enormous bill, that I cannot accept the offer validating my request with my payment card, even it is free, I consider it is too risky.
Every user of cloud computing has horror stories of unexpected large bills, nothing special about Oracle specifically.
@@GaryExplains Not exactly. I was working for a huge bank few years ago and they received a nice bill, so the bank decided to migrate to Postgresql. This is why I was working for them.
That is a different thing. Oracle database is a commercial product. Postgresql is open source and I guess they used it without any support contract etc. That isn't about cloud computing.
I'll help everyone out that stumbles on this vid...it ain't free. Well I'm sure you could dwindle the services down to weaker than raspberry pi zero, but what's the point of that? I guess just to say you did?
Oh...and good luck finding an open data center. I would have paid a few bucks just to not have wasted my time.
"free"
* still requires your credit card information *
And?
@@GaryExplains Not just credit card details but also mobile number linked to that card and it claims it is for verification. But they store our mobile number and also credit card details. If it is totally free and without our permission they aren't going to charge then why they worry so much about asking our details? Main problem with them is all goes well till resource creating page then nothing will be created and all our details will be them. Hence we can't try again with same card or same mobile number. Through comments I come to know many from India are facing the same problem like me. May be you are lucky or the comments here which are against Oracle are unlucky people.
If you don't understand why, when I explained why very clearly in the video, then I can't help you further. What I don't understand is that Oracle is offering something for free and people still find a way to complain about it 😂
Do note: I was getting this... and I was having activity on the instance
They will shut it down weekly
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Customer,
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) has reclaimed idle Always Free compute resources from Always Free customers by stopping the compute instance(s). Reclaiming idle resources allows OCI to efficiently provide services to Always Free customers. Your account had one or more idle compute instances that have been stopped. You can restart your compute instance as long as the associated compute shape is available in your region. In the future, you can keep idle compute instances from being stopped by converting your account to Pay As You Go (PAYG). With PAYG, you will not be charged as long as your usage for all OCI resources remains within the Always Free limits.
If only I had mentioned that in the video... Oh wait...
Please stop recommending this service as they do terminate your account without prior notice, even for new accounts with active services e.g a RSS reader and some simple docker containers. They just terminate your account, even after just about two weeks of testing their service daily and there is nothing you can do. You cannot even delete your account when the tenancy is terminated. Very poor service!
I haven't had any problems and I have been using it for more than a year. Lots of people here in the comments have said very positive things about it. If you try to cheat the system with a virtual card number or use multiple accounts then it seems that Oracle does close those accounts.
@@GaryExplains I used a good valid card, and in was the only account ever created. Did not do anything that could be considered cheating and they just terminated the tenancy without any notice or anything. So please do not tell me they are OK as they do not deserve the promotion for the free tier presented everywhere on TH-cam.
Ok, that sounds like a valid problem. However I have not had that experience so I made this based on my experience, not yours. I can't ask 8 billion people about their experiences of any product or service before I make a video, i can only base it on mine, and mine have been positive.
For example, there is a comment here from Maurits Dijkens, it reads, "I've got 3 free instances running for over 2 years now; only a few restarts (for security updates I think?) Just using it for website and ftp-server in the cloud. 0 billing." So he didn't have the same problem as you and he has been using it for 2 years.
@@GaryExplains I am glad people can use it, for me it was impossible. And after they terminated the tenancy after about 17 days, now I cannot use my account at all and also cannot even delete it if I want. So in my opinion it is was not a great experience.
Oracle killed solaris in cold blood so i wouldn't touch this with a 10 foot pole.
Why so attached to Solaris? Every other version of Unix basically died, including OSF/1, Ultrix, etc, in favor of Linux.
@@GaryExplains Hi Gary, thanks for answering. After Oracle bought Sun, all the projects changed (i am mostly thinking of java and zfs). I'm not too deep in illumos scene so i highly recommend everybody to watch Bryan Cantrill talks, or just read the wikipedia article: Acquisition of Sun Microsystems by Oracle Corporation
Yes, I know what Oracle did. But it bought the company and it had the right to do whatever it wanted with it, regardless if you or I liked it. But my question was, why are you so attached to Solaris. Surely Linux won, regardless of what Oracle did or did not so with Sun.
Yes, I'm a bit of a grammar Nazi - LINode. 🙂
*Edit:*
Fun fact: the leading dot (.) which hides files under Linux was originally a programming shortcut to hide current (.)and parent (..) directories. But as the code only looked for the leading dot, anything beginning with one also wouldn't be displayed.
I thought that was pronunciation not grammar?
@@GaryExplains As a spoken & written English Nazi apparently I don't differentiate; syntax, prononciation, spelling it's all the same. 🙂
Which makes you unqualified, I guess 😁😛
@@loc4725 What do they call someone that gets upset over the misuse of the German language?
@@prezadent1 Nationalsozialistischer deutscher Sprachperfektionist.
I won't tell anyone - I promise