FYI Oracle Cloud "Always Free" not so free anymore?

[LitleBill]

I couldn't get access to A1 or AMD shapes without upgrading, just like @KNERD

It still says "you exceeded the number of regions..." so switching regions is not possible.

I was told that "A1 flex Shape" is not completely free, it has a boot volume charge,
So only the" E2 micro shapes are free, as they don't have the boot volume charge,


By the way "1 GBit "is the bandwith allowance or speed?

 

[kenn10]

None of my A1 Ubuntu instances say "always free" after you create them but I have never accrued any charges.

I don't know what region you are in but in Ashburn, it is sometimes tough to get an A1 instance. It can take hours, days or weeks to snag one.

 

[KNERD]

I couldn't get access to A1 or AMD shapes without upgrading, just like @KNERD

It still says "you exceeded the number of regions..." so switching regions is not possible.

I was told that "A1 flex Shape" is not completely free, it has a boot volume charge,
So only the" E2 micro shapes are free, as they don't have the boot volume charge,


By the way "1 GBit "is the bandwith allowance or speed?

After doing a bit of long research as their documentation is convoluted, I came to find out the region availability is not automatic. You have to put in a ticket to request an expansion of a number of areas.

I posted it over 25 hours ago and still no response.

What a disaster this is becoming.

 

[KNERD]

Who are rapidly fleeing California and the West coast ..... https://buildremote.co/companies/companies-leaving-california/

And helping to recreate the mess in the new area they are in.

 

[LitleBill]

After doing a bit of long research as their documentation is convoluted, I came to find out the region availability is not automatic. You have to put in a ticket to request an expansion of a number of areas.

I posted it over 25 hours ago and still no response.

What a disaster this is becoming.

Funny how the definition of "free" became "free for interpretation"
and now always free will get another level of that

 

[kenn10]

The way both Oracle and AWS are laying off employees, I'm not surprised that there is no customer service on a free tier. I'm surprised the free tier is still there. Now its "maybe always free but we're not sure..."

 

[tjspcs]

After doing a bit of long research as their documentation is convoluted, I came to find out the region availability is not automatic. You have to put in a ticket to request an expansion of a number of areas.

I posted it over 25 hours ago and still no response.

What a disaster this is becoming.

Could have told you that without the long research. Check posts #7 & #9

https://www.voip-info.org/forum/threads/london-oraclecloud-free-maintenance-stopped-my-free-and-always-free-instances.27034/#post-170967

 

[KNERD]

Could have told you that without the long research. Check posts #7 & #9

https://www.voip-info.org/forum/threads/london-oraclecloud-free-maintenance-stopped-my-free-and-always-free-instances.27034/#post-170967

How long did they take to respond? Still nothing from them on my end.

 

[wardmundy]

Ask yourself how much your time is worth and then do the math. When turnkey solutions from CrownCloud are available in multiple locations for $25 a year with an install process that literally takes a couple minutes, perhaps it's time to reconsider your path moving forward.

 

[tjspcs]

How long did they take to respond? Still nothing from them on my end.

Five days passed until getting a response and increasing my region limit as I had requested.

 

[KNERD]

Five days passed until getting a response and increasing my region limit as I had requested.

It turns out they responded to me the next day, but I got no notice of it.

Oddly, the request requires a minimum of 4 regions. They came back and said they could only do 3, and to wait until July.

So I put in another request (with 4 again) telling them 4 is the minimum, but 2-3 regions would be fine.

 

[KNERD]

Ask yourself how much your time is worth and then do the math. When turnkey solutions from CrownCloud are available in multiple locations for $25 a year with an install process that literally takes a couple minutes, perhaps it's time to reconsider your path moving forward.

There are a lot other things one can do with those 4 Free ARM instances than just put a PBX on them

 

[KNERD]

Update: They did give me an additional 3 regions. I tried Chicago, Phoenix, and Mexico.

The first two do have AD1-3, but again all still $2 a month. Mexico has AD1 and also $2 a month.

 

[wardmundy]

$2 a month brings you up to the CrownCloud pricing without the free snapshot backup.

 

[LitleBill]

I have to agree, the crowncloud installation is so much smoother. and much smaller number of strange network issues .

@KNERD I am a curious if their Mexico region is closer than Phoenix one

I think only the E2 micro shapes don't have a " $2 Volume charge"

 

[KNERD]

I have to agree, the crowncloud installation is so much smoother. and much smaller number of strange network issues .

@KNERD I am a curious if their Mexico region is closer than Phoenix one

I think only the E2 micro shapes don't have a " $2 Volume charge"

The location for Mexico is listed for Queretaro which is basically in the middle of the country,

I have one A1 instance running since this past December, and no charge is being incurred. I also set up one in January and recently deleted which also incurred no fees.

 

[kenn10]

I've had A1's and E2's running since we began discussing Oracle in this forum. Never incurred any charges. I was limited in the number of instances until I figured out I needed to delete the old boot volumes. At one point, I had a custom storage bucket for Debian that they notified me would incur charges but once I deleted it, no charges.

 

[KNERD]

The thing is once you are subscribed to a region, you cannot unsubscribe from it. I was hoping to try out some others. According to their support, I have to wait until July to obtain more open slots to try out. Very unusual for sure.

 

[ostridge]

I've had A1's and E2's running since we began discussing Oracle in this forum. Never incurred any charges. I was limited in the number of instances until I figured out I needed to delete the old boot volumes. At one point, I had a custom storage bucket for Debian that they notified me would incur charges but once I deleted it, no charges.

I also discovered the issue of not being able to create a new instance, with something like outwith resource allowance. No mention that boot volumes would be exceeded, but there is a free tier allowance of 200gb block storage which gets used up for boot volumes at a rate of minimum 47Gb per instance. You can detach and attach block volumes to running instances - the 1st attached as the instance boot volume, and subsequent boot volumes can be mounted and edited, just as if it were an ancillary hard drive attached to the instance.
From your browser, log into the Oracle Cloud Dashboard
In the 'Navigtion' menu (click on the 3 bar icon at top left of page) then -
Storage > Block Storage >Block volumes > Boot volumes
Here you can detach or attach existing boot volumes to your instance.
Still on 'Free account' - never ever charged for any of 4 boot volumes.

 

[wardmundy]

Oracle seems to be playing games with the "Always Free" instances. We got an email about a week ago saying two of ours were not being used and would be disabled. We have crontab jobs running on all 3 instances plus Asterisk, MySQL, Apache, and SendMail so... they are not idle. Yesterday, I spent a couple hours updating everything on all 3 instances. Then, last night they disabled and shut down two of them and sent me another email saying they weren't being used. We've restarted both of them this morning so we'll see how long that lasts.

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Customer,

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) has reclaimed idle Always Free compute resources from Always Free customers by stopping the compute instance(s). Reclaiming idle resources allows OCI to efficiently provide services to Always Free customers. Your account had one or more idle compute instances that have been stopped. You can restart your compute instance as long as the associated compute shape is available in your region. Your Boot and Block Volumes remain unchanged and available to you. In the future, you can keep idle compute instances from being stopped by converting your account to Pay As You Go (PAYG). With PAYG, you will not be charged as long as your usage for all OCI resources remains within the Always Free limits.