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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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 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.
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.