Oracle Free Tier VPS Self Hosting Ideas

https://lemmy.world/post/276810

Oracle Free Tier VPS Self Hosting Ideas - Lemmy.world

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!

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

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

Matrix, the open protocol for secure decentralised communications

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.
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.

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.

Yeah. Don't use any Oracle product, ever, for any reason, for any length of time at all. They are absolute garbage.
It did seem hugely generous in terms of what you get.
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.
Thanks for the warning. Oracles got the worst reputation but I might have given em a shot if it cost me nothing.
Glad someone mentioned this already. It's a nice sandbox or test environment but nothing prod will ever run there.

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.

Best cheapest vps I’ve found is nerdrack

You mean Racknerd correct?

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

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.
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.