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Free Oracle VPS

Introduction​

Oracle Cloud offers a Compute Instance with 4 OCPUs, 24GB RAM, and 200GB storage within their "Always Free" resources. This guide will show you how to set that up.

A VPS can be used for a variety of purposes, such as hosting a website, running a game server, or even as a remote desktop. You can even use it to host all your Stremio addons and a debrid media server.

info

To use the Oracle Cloud Free Tier, you need a valid credit/debit card. Virtual/Prepaid cards are not accepted.

Setup​

Creating our VM instance​

  1. Sign up for an Oracle Cloud account.

    1. Go to the Oracle Cloud website and click on "Start for free".

    2. Sign up for an account by filling in your details.

      tip

      Many people tend to have issues with the verification process when signing up for Oracle Cloud. If you face any issues, try one of the following:

      • Ensure your billing address matches the address exactly as it appears on your bank statement or banking app.

      • Use an inPrivate window on Microsoft Edge

      • Use a different email address.

      • Use a different card.

      • Disable any adblockers/VPNs.

      If you still face issues, you can try using a contacting Oracle support through the live chat widget in the bottom right corner of the Oracle Cloud website.

  2. Once you have signed up, you will be taken to the Oracle Cloud dashboard. Click on Create a VM instance under the Build section.

    Oracle Cloud Dashboard

  3. Give your instance a name.

  4. Configure the image and shape

    1. Scroll down to Image and shape, and click on Change Image. Select the 'Ubuntu' image and 'Canonical Ubuntu 24.04' image name.

      Change Image

    2. Just below the image, you will see the Shape section. Click on Change Shape and select the Ampere series VM.Standard.A1.Flex shape. Set the OCPUs to 4, and the memory to 24GB. Change Shape

  5. Generate an SSH key pair. If you already have an SSH key pair, you can skip this step.

    1. Open a terminal on your local machine.

    2. Run the following command to generate an SSH key pair, replacing [email protected] with your email address.

      ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "[email protected]"
      • When prompted for which file to save the key in, press Enter to save it in the default location. If you already have an SSH key pair, you can save it in a different location. But make sure to remember where you saved it.
      • When prompted to enter a passphrase, you should enter one. You can generate a passphrase using a password manager like Bitwarden or Proton Pass.

      info

      On older systems, where the ed25519 algorithm is not supported, you can use the rsa algorithm:

      ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "[email protected]"

    3. We will now need to add our SSH key to our SSH agent. Before we do that, we need to start the SSH agent. Open a new Administrator PowerShell window and run the following commands:

      Get-Service -Name ssh-agent | Set-Service -StartupType Automatic
      Start-Service ssh-agent

    4. Run the following command in your non-administrator terminal to add your SSH key to the SSH agent:

      ssh-add C:/Users/your_username/.ssh/id_ed25519
      • If you saved your SSH key in a different location, replace C:/Users/your_username/.ssh/id_ed25519 with the path to your SSH key.

    5. You will now have two files in your ~/.ssh directory: id_ed25519 and id_ed25519.pub. The .pub file is your public key, which you will need for the next step.

  6. In the Add SSH keys section, click the Upload public key files (.pub) button and upload the .pub file you generated in the previous step.

  7. Configure our boot volume.

    1. Scroll down to Boot volume and check the Specify a custom boot volume size box.
    2. Set the boot volume size to 200.
    3. Set the Boot volume performance to 120`.
note

At this point, you may see that you have an estimated cost which is not free. This is because the cost estimator does not take into account the 200GB Free Tier discount. You can confirm this at Oracle's Cost Estimator page.

  1. Finally, click on Create to create your VM instance.
tip

You may encounter an Out of capacity error when creating your VM instance. This is because the free tier has a limited number of instances available: Out of capacity error

You can try again later, or you can try creating the instance in a different Availability Domain by scrolling back up to the top to the Placement section.

You can also switch to a PAYG account, which will allow you to create instances without any restrictions. As long as you stay within the free tier limits, you won't be charged. You can also set up a $1 budget alert to ensure you don't go over the free tier limits.

How to upgrade to a PAYG account
  1. Go back to the Oracle Cloud dashboard.
  2. Click on the hamburger menu in the top left corner and scroll down to Billing and Cost Management.
  3. Under the Billing section, click on Upgrade and Manage Payment
  4. Click on Upgrade to Pay-As-You-Go and follow the instructions.
note

You will see a $100 charge on your card when you upgrade to a PAYG account. This is a temporary hold and will be released either immediately or within a few days. This is to ensure that you have a valid payment method on file. You will not be charged for anything unless you go over the free tier limits.

It can take up to 24 hours for the upgrade to take effect. You will receive an email once the upgrade is complete.

How to set up a $1 budget alert
  1. Go back to the Oracle Cloud dashboard.
  2. Click on the hamburger menu in the top left corner and scroll down to Billing and Cost Management.
  3. Under the Cost Management section, click on Budgets.
  4. Click on Create Budget.
  5. Use the following settings:
  • Budget Name: dont_charge_me
  • Budget Amount: 1
  • Day of the month to begin budget processing: 1
  • Threshold Metric: Forecast Spend
  • Threshhold Type: Percentage of Budget
  • Threshold: 1%
  • Email Recipients: Your email address
  • Email message: Your current usage exceeds Always Free resources. Please check your usage to avoid charges.
  1. Click on Create.
How to check if my current usage is forecast to exceed the free tier limits
  1. Go back to the Oracle Cloud dashboard.
  2. Click on the hamburger menu in the top left corner and scroll down to Billing and Cost Management.
  3. Under the Cost Management section, click on Cost Analysis.
  4. Check the Show Forecast box.
  5. Set the End Date to a future date, such as after a few months.
  6. Click on Apply.
  7. You will now see a forecast of your usage. There will be a graph showing your usage over time, and a table showing your usage by service.
  8. Ensure it is all 0.
  1. Your instance will now begin provisioning. This can take a few minutes. Once it is done, make your way to the dashboard of your instance. You should already be on the dashboard, but if you aren't, you can find it by clicking on the hamburger menu in the top left corner and scrolling down to Compute and then Instances.

Connecting to our VPS​

  1. Copy the public IP address of your instance.

    Instance Dashboard

  2. Open a terminal on your local machine and run the following command, replacing your_ip with the public IP address of your instance.

    ssh ubuntu@your_ip

    • If you are prompted to add the host to your list of known hosts, type yes and press Enter.

    • If you set a passphrase for your SSH key, you will be prompted to enter it. (You will not see any characters as you type, but it is being entered.)

      tip

      To avoid having to type the IP address every time you want to connect to your instance, you can create a Windows Terminal Profile.

      How to create a Windows Terminal Profile

      To do this:

      1. Open Windows Terminal and click on the down arrow next to the tabs. Then, while holding down the Shift key, click on Settings.

      2. This will open the settings.json file in your default text editor. It will look something like this:

        {
            "$help": ...,
            "$schema":  ...,
            "actions": ...,
            ...
            "profiles": {
              "defaults": {},
              "list": [
                ...
              ]
            }
        }

      3. Add the following profile to the list array in the profiles object, replacing your_ip with the public IP address of your instance:

        {
          "closeOnExit": "never",
          "name": "Oracle VPS",
          "commandline": "ssh ubuntu@your_ip",
        },

        It should look something like this (the ... represents other objects in the file, that are abstracted for brevity):

        {
            "$help": ...,
            "$schema":  ...,
            "actions": ...,
            ...
            "profiles": {
              "defaults": {},
              "list": [
                {
                  "closeOnExit": "never",
                  "name": "Oracle VPS",
                  "commandline": "ssh ubuntu@your_ip",
                },
                ...
              ]
            }
        }

      4. Save the file and close the text editor.

      5. Close Windows Terminal and reopen it. When you click on the down arrow next to the tabs, you should see a new profile called Oracle VPS. Click on it to connect to your instance.

  3. You are now connected to your VM instance. You can now install any software you need, set up a web server, or do anything else you need to do.

Additional Information​

Opening ports​

By default, all ports are closed on your Oracle VPS. You will need to open the ports you want to use.

  1. Go to the dashboard of your instance.
  2. Under Primary VNIC, click on the link next to Subnet:.
  3. Under Security Lists, click on the Default Security List for vcn-....
  4. Click on Add Ingress Rules.
  5. Fill in the following details:
    • Source Type: CIDR
    • Source CIDR: 0.0.0.0/0
    • IP Protocol: TCP
    • Source Port Range: All
    • Destination Port Range: The port you want to open, such as 443 for HTTPS.
    • Description: A description of the rule, such as Allow HTTPS traffic.
  6. Click on Add Ingress Rules, or Another Ingress Rule if you want to add more rules.

Using SCP to transfer files​

If you need to transfer files to and from your Oracle VPS, you can use SCP.

  1. Open a terminal on your local machine.

  2. Run the following command to transfer a file from your local machine to your Oracle VPS, replacing your_ip with the public IP address of your instance and file.txt with the file you want to transfer.

    scp file.txt ubuntu@your_ip:/path/to/destination

  3. Run the following command to transfer a file from your Oracle VPS to your local machine, replacing your_ip with the public IP address of your instance and /path/to/file.txt with the path to the file you want to transfer.

    scp ubuntu@your_ip:/path/to/file.txt /path/to/destination
tip

Your user folder - the folder you are in when you first connect to your Oracle VPS - is located at /home/ubuntu. You can use the ~ symbol to represent your user folder, so /home/ubuntu is the same as ~. e.g., scp file.txt ubuntu@your_ip:~/file.txt will transfer file.txt to your user folder on your Oracle VPS.