Ideas for using the Free Trial Credits?

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1

Does anyone have some good ideas for using these through the 30 day trial period?

2

If you’re going to be using nodes after your free trial, I’d wait until after your free trial so you don’t lose anything.

3

Run some bitcoin mining software /s. It’s a sure way to get your account terminated

4

You can use oracle for whatever you want except mail server because all stmp port are blocked by oracle for security reasons

5

Don’t use it at all because you can forget to delete instance and you can be charged

6

Nobody is really answering the ops question. Here’a a couple of things you can use the Oracle free instance for:

  1. VPN server.
  2. A Gitlab runner (build host)
  3. Deploying development versions of software you wrote.

Whatever you do, make sure you backup any valuable data somewhere outside of Oracle.

7

I’m using it as a remote backup location of my homelab (4 k3s, storage/fileshare vms).

I’ve outgrown the Block storage free tier by +200gb now.

Note that I use it as one other backup location (It has a datacenter near my place so, a good place when i need to add so.e services that would require low latency)

8

Folding at home / earning Banano. I’m up to 3c per day!

9

PiVPN is a good option for Oracle Cloud.

10

I like homelab stuff, automating with Ansible, etc.

Would be nice to have some stuff setup for the Always Free Tier, but it would be a shame to pass on using the credits.

11

I’m going to wait, yes. Going to treat everything I use on the Free Trial as potential throwaway, though I’m not expecting to get things deleted.

Any way of extending the credit usage period, if I ask nicely?

12

You can just use free resources and after trial ends you don’t lose anything

13

LOL, I think I’ll pass, thanks :slight_smile:

14

That’s incorrect: you can use a relay service with port 587. The free Mailjet plan allows 200 e-mails per day.

And in fact I’m assuming you are correct in saying that something changed and nowadays you can’t request OCI to open egress traffic on port 25 anymore. I didn’t hear or read anything about it, so I won’t argue with you.

I can send e-mail using port 25 if I want, but then there is the real issue: a lot of mail servers block mail coming from some IP ranges that belong to OCI, AWS etc…, and that’s the kind of issue that is irremediable (for those IP ranges), so the relay service will always be necessary, I guess: the function of my mail server is basically to send mail to itself, so I’m not able to know how extensive this issue is, I only detected problems with Outlook.com and/or Microsoft 365 (don’t remember which or if both), but Gmail works fine.

In fact, to build an e-mail server for a subdomain and do your best to make it work flawlessly (I mean, to have this goal) can be extremely fun, if one would enjoy and benefit from the lessons. But it wouldn’t consume credits, can be done entirely within the always free tier.

15

Good advice on the instances. Though it seems to miss the point of this post.

16

This is the strategy that came to mind when I was talking to support about the trial credits. They told me I won’t get charged at all unless I upgrade my account, I’m really really broke so I’m not doing that anyway but still. I had my AWS account deleted for accidently incurring like $1000 in quantum and AI services I was messing around with their UX is horrendous, it’s their fault.

I feel like Oracle may prefer if you don’t use the credits, because that’s less costs on them it’s almost like they are trialing you too to see if you’re desperate to use up credits and such. They are trialing you to see what kind of customer you are something like that.

17

But what if they don’t upgrade the account to a paid account? Let’s imagine they let the trial period end and let the account turn into a free one: will there be any risk? I would guess they wouldn’t be able to surpass the bonus value during the trial period and things would stop working.

But I have no idea!

18

Sounds great, thanks for the suggestions!

I haven’t checked out GitLab in a while, might try to spin an instance or two.

19

Yes, but are you on the free tier now? Sounds like you’re not.

How much do I have on the Free Tier if I want to implement a backup solution? Or is it so small it’s not really worth it?

20

I’d be avoiding crypto if I could, don’t want my account terminated :slight_smile:

Anything not too heavy on the CPU?