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If you're going to pay for AWS, might as well use Oracle's free tier. It is extremely generous. And you have to specifically change a setting to leave the free

If you're going to pay for AWS, might as well use Oracle's free tier. It is extremely generous. And you have to specifically change a setting to leave the free tier; So you it's not that easy to get accidentally billed for a misconfig. Yes, yes...I know..."ORACLE"!? choking sounds But at this point, they're no worse a company than Amazon. I've been very happy with their free tier for my home use. There's a bit of learning curve...just like AWS, but they give you a ton of free stuff, including training.

nulbyte 3y ago
+1 for Oracle. Their free tier for compute is better than Google's: Up to four free ARM VMs and up to two AMD VMs.
- matthewaveryusa 3y ago
  And the 10TB of free egress. Their proprietary stuff is very generous as well. Also 3000 emails/day -- really great offering tbh
metadat 3y ago
Oracle OCI will randomly shut your instances down, which is super annoying. I stopped bothering to boot them back up again. Used to be a huge proponent, it was a good 4 years of freebies. But this too shall pass.
- unmole 3y ago
  > Oracle OCI will randomly shut your instances down, which is super annoying. In the 3+ years of running 2 instances on OCI, I'm yet to see this.
- Eldt 3y ago
  And you won't be able to start up again if they don't have enough capacity for your free instance
- mappu 3y ago
  Do you know what causes this to happen? Mine's been doing alright with uptime 05:20:09 up 631 days, 23:10, 1 user, load average: 0.01, 0.02, 0.00 on my "Always Free" instance.
  - Deathmax 3y ago
    You might not be on a "Always Free" account then. AFAIK, you're not subject to reclamation if you add a payment method to the account. Here's the link to their documentation on reclamation of idle resources: https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/FreeTier/freetier_topic-Always_Free_Resources.htm#compute__idleinstances https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/FreeTier/freetier... > Idle Always Free compute instances may be reclaimed by Oracle. Oracle will deem virtual machine and bare metal compute instances as idle if, during a 7-day period, the following are true: > * CPU utilization for the 95th percentile is less than 15% > * Network utilization is less than 15% > * Memory utilization is less than 15% (applies to A1 shapes only) And here's the email that I get whenever they reclaim an instance: > 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. Your Boot and Block Volumes remain unchanged and available to you. 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.
    - mappu 3y ago
      Yes - so i'm not sure why it doesn't seem to actually happen to me, my instance definitely sits idle like that a lot. All free Oracle accounts must have a payment method, it was mandatory when creating the account. Screenshot of my "Always Free" banner in the Oracle web interface: https://imgur.com/a/hTZfkek https://imgur.com/a/hTZfkek
- gempir 3y ago
  It's not super random. They email your before at least. Mine has been shut down once in 3 months. Which I think is fair enough considering I run 2 machines with 8gb RAM each and 2 arm cores each. Insane value.
  - raffraffraff 3y ago
    Why not run two machines with 12gb RAM each? There's a total of 24gb available on the always free tier. I'm running 4x 6gb nodes in a k3s cluster.
    - gempir 3y ago
      Then I do that. I just misremembered the exact sizes because I haven't logged in in so long.
_cenw 3y ago
there have been a few reports of oracle randomly terminating services for people who only use the free tier, i’d rather pay a meager fee than get unpredictably evicted
- geraldhh 3y ago
  tbh running a free service on the internet requires unilateral termination of service for "bad citizens". totally different story whether it was justified in specific cases.
- dizhn 3y ago
  I am not sure this is 100 percent but the Internet says you can upgrade to the paid tier and they won't evict you. You can use the same always free resources. In terms of unexpected fees, if you open a free tier account, let the free trial expire, basically whatever you can then do will also be free when you upgrade.
lmz 3y ago
They sent sales people to call me after I signed up for their cloud. Only once for me though since they determined I was just a nobody.
ralphc 3y ago
Last I looked they demanded a credit card, even for the free tier, and choked on a gift card credit card, they wanted a "real" one. Has this changed?
- nunez 3y ago
  Isn't AWS the same?
  - ralphc 3y ago
    I'm not sure. I have my "play" AWS account, for Alexa apps, connected to my Amazon account but I don't really have a single credit card on my Amazon account, it always asks which one to use, so I don't think so.

nulbyte 3y ago

+1 for Oracle. Their free tier for compute is better than Google's: Up to four free ARM VMs and up to two AMD VMs.

matthewaveryusa 3y ago
And the 10TB of free egress. Their proprietary stuff is very generous as well. Also 3000 emails/day -- really great offering tbh

metadat 3y ago

Oracle OCI will randomly shut your instances down, which is super annoying. I stopped bothering to boot them back up again. Used to be a huge proponent, it was a good 4 years of freebies. But this too shall pass.

unmole 3y ago
> Oracle OCI will randomly shut your instances down, which is super annoying. In the 3+ years of running 2 instances on OCI, I'm yet to see this.
Eldt 3y ago
And you won't be able to start up again if they don't have enough capacity for your free instance
mappu 3y ago
Do you know what causes this to happen? Mine's been doing alright with uptime 05:20:09 up 631 days, 23:10, 1 user, load average: 0.01, 0.02, 0.00 on my "Always Free" instance.
- Deathmax 3y ago
  You might not be on a "Always Free" account then. AFAIK, you're not subject to reclamation if you add a payment method to the account. Here's the link to their documentation on reclamation of idle resources: https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/FreeTier/freetier_topic-Always_Free_Resources.htm#compute__idleinstances https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/FreeTier/freetier... > Idle Always Free compute instances may be reclaimed by Oracle. Oracle will deem virtual machine and bare metal compute instances as idle if, during a 7-day period, the following are true: > * CPU utilization for the 95th percentile is less than 15% > * Network utilization is less than 15% > * Memory utilization is less than 15% (applies to A1 shapes only) And here's the email that I get whenever they reclaim an instance: > 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. Your Boot and Block Volumes remain unchanged and available to you. 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.
  - mappu 3y ago
    Yes - so i'm not sure why it doesn't seem to actually happen to me, my instance definitely sits idle like that a lot. All free Oracle accounts must have a payment method, it was mandatory when creating the account. Screenshot of my "Always Free" banner in the Oracle web interface: https://imgur.com/a/hTZfkek https://imgur.com/a/hTZfkek
gempir 3y ago
It's not super random. They email your before at least. Mine has been shut down once in 3 months. Which I think is fair enough considering I run 2 machines with 8gb RAM each and 2 arm cores each. Insane value.
- raffraffraff 3y ago
  Why not run two machines with 12gb RAM each? There's a total of 24gb available on the always free tier. I'm running 4x 6gb nodes in a k3s cluster.
  - gempir 3y ago
    Then I do that. I just misremembered the exact sizes because I haven't logged in in so long.

_cenw 3y ago

there have been a few reports of oracle randomly terminating services for people who only use the free tier, i’d rather pay a meager fee than get unpredictably evicted

geraldhh 3y ago
tbh running a free service on the internet requires unilateral termination of service for "bad citizens". totally different story whether it was justified in specific cases.
dizhn 3y ago
I am not sure this is 100 percent but the Internet says you can upgrade to the paid tier and they won't evict you. You can use the same always free resources. In terms of unexpected fees, if you open a free tier account, let the free trial expire, basically whatever you can then do will also be free when you upgrade.

lmz 3y ago

They sent sales people to call me after I signed up for their cloud. Only once for me though since they determined I was just a nobody.

ralphc 3y ago

Last I looked they demanded a credit card, even for the free tier, and choked on a gift card credit card, they wanted a "real" one. Has this changed?

nunez 3y ago
Isn't AWS the same?
- ralphc 3y ago
  I'm not sure. I have my "play" AWS account, for Alexa apps, connected to my Amazon account but I don't really have a single credit card on my Amazon account, it always asks which one to use, so I don't think so.