Overview
Oracle Cloud has the most generous always-free tier of any of the big providers, most notably a 4-core ARM box with 24 GB of RAM that doesn’t time out. The catch is that wiring it up in OCI’s console is unpleasant. Oracle World is the OpenTofu/Terraform code I wrote so I could tofu apply myself a working ARM server in one shot, with optional MySQL HeatWave, S3-compatible object storage, idle-detection monitoring, and budget alerts on top.
Resources
| Resource | Spec |
|---|---|
| Compute | VM.Standard.A1.Flex (4 OCPUs, 24 GB RAM) |
| Boot Storage | 50 GB + weekly backups |
| Block Storage | 150 GB at /data |
| MySQL HeatWave | 50 GB, private subnet (optional) |
| Object Storage | 30 GB S3-compatible (optional) |
| Monitoring | Idle-detection alarms, so OCI doesn’t reclaim the box (optional) |
| Budget Alerts | Email on any spend + at 50% / 80% / 100% (optional) |
Architecture
The compute instance sits in a public subnet because OCI NAT gateways aren’t free. MySQL HeatWave, when enabled, lives in a private subnet with no internet route (you reach it via SSH tunnel). SSH is closed by default; whitelist your IP with just ssh-allow and revoke with just ssh-revoke.
Features
- One-command deploy:
just init && just plan && just apply - Open and close SSH access by IP from the command line
- A Claude Code
/setupwalks you through the variables interactively - Stays inside Oracle’s Always Free limits by default
Technology Stack
- HCL (OpenTofu / Terraform)
- Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI)
- Just task runner