this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2023
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34
Oracle Free Tier VPS Self Hosting Ideas (self.selfhosted)
submitted 1 year ago by AverageGoob to c/selfhosted
29 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Hello SelfHosted!

I have recently setup my own free tier oracle VPS and am looking to get my feet wet with some simple services that I can host on there to get started.

I should mention I have successfully setup SSH with the private key so that part is good to go.

Any ideas are welcome!

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

I'd like to really really caution people about Oracle Free Tier.

They've been known to suddenly ban free tier users, with no explanation or recourse. Happened to me and many others. I had a lemmy instance on it, hadn't started my backup plan yet cause I was dumb, and Oracle just emailed me that my "trial was over", server immediately shut down, and support stonewalled me.

Couldn't even get my data. So if you want to try it, make sure you have a backup plan and a plan on what to do if they pull the plug.

Some have been using it for years, though. Just be ready.

[–] SheeEttin 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah. Don't use any Oracle product, ever, for any reason, for any length of time at all. They are absolute garbage.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

It did seem hugely generous in terms of what you get.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I've been lucky to have no issues with them for over a year, but one thing I've noticed is everyone who has had issues has been running a VPN of some sort; were you maybe?

It'd be interesting to see if that's whatever keeps causing the ban triggers.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Mine is about a year old as well. I'm also curious to know what triggers these bans. I also noticed people bringing up Minecraft servers on r/oraclecloud. I personally have a Valheim server running for months but I haven't had any issues.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I'd like to know too. I've been using the free tier for years now and hosted a bunch of different stuff on it (no VPN though) and never had any problems

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Nope. Literally just Lemmy, signed up and administered while not behind a VPN

[–] prlang 4 points 1 year ago

Thanks for the warning. Oracles got the worst reputation but I might have given em a shot if it cost me nothing.

[–] AverageGoob 3 points 1 year ago

The plan isn't to have any mission critical services on here. Mostly just to have a sandbox environment to test things out before I actually pull the plug on a reliable VPS service.

[–] DunkinCoder 2 points 1 year ago

Glad someone mentioned this already. It's a nice sandbox or test environment but nothing prod will ever run there.

[–] beigegull 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oracle a company to actively avoid doing business with or realying on in any way.

Spend the $5 for a commodity VPS from literally any standard vendor. I suggest Vultr.

[–] jerrimu 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Best cheapest vps I’ve found is nerdrack

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You mean Racknerd correct?

They are great, I have a couple of servers with them (including the one that's hosting my lemmy instance)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I snagged a couple of VPS from Racknerd in the Black Friday sale. One of them became a home for my Mastodon instance and now the other gets my new Lemmy instance. No issues to speak of with them yet, so I'm perfectly happy with 'em.

[–] eric 11 points 1 year ago

I use my Oracle free tier for Tor Snowflake. It was a service I didn’t really want to run myself and not something I ever need to connect to so if Oracle suddenly shuts down my server for any reason then it’s no loss for me. In the meantime it provides value for people in countries with harsh internet censorship, so I’m happy to just set it up and leave it.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Searx NG worked well for me. I currently have Matrix running on another, set up with the ansible docker repo. Actually trying to set lemmy up on another.

I converted to pay as you go so they would open up the smtp ports so I could use postmoogle with Matrix but i still only use the always free shapes and still havent incurred a charge in roughly 6 months

[–] AverageGoob 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Sounds cool! Could you link to matrix? Looking up matrix as you can imagine provides a lot of movie related results lol

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

https://matrix.org/ is what you're after.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy is the ansible docker deploy. Absolutely bloody amazing. They have a chat-GPT bot available for install now as well, though you'll need a premium API key to use it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

That's a great idea, I have my SearXNG instance running on my local box but moving that and some other low computer/storage stuff there would at least make my home network more secure.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Just FYI Oracle has language that reserves the right to shut down free tier machines that they deem “idle”.

https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/FreeTier/freetier_topic-Always_Free_Resources.htm

[–] StrayPizza 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You can prevent this by adding a credit card to your account. It “upgrades” your status, and then as long as you stay in the free tier allocations you won’t be charged.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Man I would be so nervous to trust Oracle with my credit card though.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Do https://privacy.com then! Can set it to like $10 limit in case they charge a tiny bit to test the card and you'll never spend more.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They do a $100 test charge IIRC when upgrading to their PAYG (pay-as-you-go) tier. They also don't like virtual/prepaid CCs.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Ah that is unfortunate.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

personally i run uptime kuma on mine. I link it to my home over tailscale and use it to monitor all my home systems and alert if if anything goes down.

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