Oracle Cloud - Free Tier

For the cloud enthusiast who wants to explore and start the journey to the Oracle Cloud, Oracle offers free version of various IaaS and PaaS services.

In this post, I will discuss how to provision Autonomous Database, VM and Load Balancer on Oracle Cloud.

What is Free Trial

Oracle provides you with $300 of cloud credits that are valid for up to 30 days when you sign-up. You may spend these credits on any eligible Oracle Cloud Infrastructure service (OCI).

After your trial ends, your account remains active. There is no interruption to the availability of the Always Free Resources you have provisioned. You can terminate and re-provision Always Free resources as needed.

Paid resources that were provisioned with your credits during your free trial are reclaimed by Oracle unless you upgrade your account.

What is always Free resources

All OCI accounts (whether free or paid) have a set of resources that are free of charge for the life of the account. These resources display the Always Free label in the Console.

List of Oracle Cloud Always Free-eligible resources:

1. Compute (up to two instances)
2. Autonomous Database (up to two database instances)
3. Load Balancing (one load balancer)
4. Block Volume (up to 100 GB total storage)
5. Object Storage (up to 20 GB)

Always Free Compute Instance Quota

• Shape: VM.Standard.E2.1.Micro
• Processor: 1/8th of an OCPU with the ability to use additional CPU resources
• Memory: 1 GB
• Networking: 1 VNIC with 1 public IP address and up to 480 Mbps network bandwidth
• Operating System:
• Oracle Linux (including Oracle Autonomous Linux)
• Canonical Ubuntu Linux
• CentOS Linux

Always Free Oracle Autonomous Database Instance Quota

• Processor: 1 Oracle CPU processor (cannot be scaled)
• Memory: 8 GB RAM
• Database Storage: 20 GB storage (cannot be scaled)
• Workload Type: transaction processing or data warehouse
• Maximum Simultaneous Database Sessions: 20

Always Free load balancer Quota

• Shape: Micro (10 Mbps)
• Listeners: 10
• Virtual Hostnames: 10
• Backend Sets: 10
• Backend Servers: 128

Always Free Block Volume Resources Quota

• 100 GB (boot volume and block volume combined)
• 5 volume backups (boot volume and block volume combined)

Always Free Object Storage resources quota

• 20 GB (Object Storage and Archive Storage combined)
• 50,000 Object Storage API requests per month

Signing Up for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Free Tier

Go to https://www.oracle.com/cloud/free/ and sign up for the Oracle Free Trial.
When your request is processed, you will be provisioned a tenancy in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. Oracle will send you a Welcome email with instructions for signing in to the Console for the first time. There is no charge unless you choose to Upgrade to Paid.

Provisioning of Free Tier resources

Oracle provides 2 easy ways to spin up your Free Tier Cloud infrastructure

1. Oracle Cloud Console
2. Terraform

In this blog post we will look at the #1 option.
After your free account is provisioned login to Oracle Cloud Console https://cloud.oracle.com/sign-in

Create Compartment

A compartment is a container for grouping together related resources. In this blog we will group the resources by types. We will create 2 compartments:

1. Database Compartment which will host the ATP DB
2. Application Compartment which will host the VM

Open the navigation menu. Under Governance and Administration, go to Identity and click Compartments.

Enter the following, and click Create Compartment

• Name: FreeTierCompartment
• Description: This Compartment holds all the free tier subscription servers
• Compartment: your_root_compartment_name (root)

Once created you will see the compartment name in the list. Click on the compartment name FreeTierCompartment.

Click on Create Compartment under Child Compartments
Enter the following, and click Create Compartment

• Name: DatabaseCompartment
• Description: This Compartment holds all the database servers
• Compartment: FreeTier

Enter the following, and click Create Compartment

• Name: ApplicationCompartment
• Description: This Compartment holds all the database servers
• Compartment: FreeTier

Once created you will see the compartment name in the list.

Create Autonomous Database

After logging in to the Cloud Account, click on Create an ATP database.
It will bring you to the Create Autonomous Database screen.

• Enter the following, and click Create Autonomous Database
• Choose a compartment: (root)/FreeTierCompartment/DatabaseCompartment
• Display name: Free Tier Autonomous Transaction Processing Database
• Database name: FreeATPDB1
• Choose a workload type: Transaction Processing
• Choose a deployment type: Shared Infrastructure
• Configure the database: Always Free
• Create administrator credentials
• Username: ADMIN
• Password: **********
• Choose a license type: Licence Included

It will take you to the Autonomous Database Details Page – note the Always Free label.

When the provisioning is complete, you’ll see the state changed to Available.

Next click on the DB Connection, download your Client Credentials Wallet. This is used by your applications and tools to initiate a secure connection to your Autonomous DB instance.

Create a password for this wallet and click on Download.

And that’s it. You’ve launched an always free Autonomous Transaction Processing Database with 20 GB of storage in less than 15 minutes.

Create VM Instance

After logging in to the Cloud Account, click on Create a VM instance.

It will bring you to the Create Compute Instance screen.

Enter the following and click Create.

• Name your instance: FreeVM1
• Choose an operating system or image source: Oracle Linux 7.7
• Availability Domain: AD 2
• Instance Type: Virtual Machine
• Instance Shape: VM.Standard.E2.1.Micro (Virtual Machine)
• Virtual cloud network compartment: (root)/FreeTierCompartment/ApplicationCompartment
• New virtual cloud network Name: FreeTierAppPublicVCN
• Assign a public IP Address: Yes
• Boot volume: Default boot volume size: 46.6 GB
• Add SSH key:

Instance provisioning will start.
Once the instance is provisioned status will change to RUNNING.

Create Load Balancer

After logging in to the Cloud Account, click on Set up a load balancer.

It will bring you to the Create Load Balancer screen.

Enter the following and click Create.

• Load Balancer Name: FreeLB1
• Choose Visibility Type: Public
• Choose the Maximum Total Bandwidth: Micro
• Virtual Cloud Networkin ApplicationCompartment: FreeTierAppPublicVCN
• Subnetin ApplicationCompartment: Public Subnet
• Listener Name: FreeLB1Listner1

Once the LB Instance provisioning is completed you can note the Public IP associated with the LB and use it to configure your backend.