Free Oracle Cloud ARM VPS: 4 Cores & 24 GB RAM Setup Guide

Most cloud providers (AWS, Google Cloud, DigitalOcean) offer free tiers that expire after 12 months or limit you to 1 GB of RAM and 1 tiny vCPU, which is barely enough to compile a modern Node.js application.

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) completely disrupts the industry with their Always Free Tier:

• 4 OCPU Cores on high-frequency Ampere Altra ARM processors.
• 24 GB of RAM.
• 200 GB of NVMe-backed Block Storage.
• Up to 4 separate instances (you can run 1 monster 24 GB server or split it across multiple smaller VMs).
• 10 TB of outbound data transfer per month.

Here is the complete step-by-step tutorial to provisioning and hardening your forever-free 24 GB RAM cloud server.

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Step 1: Create Your Oracle Cloud Free Tier Account

1. Visit oracle.com/cloud/free and click Start for free.
2. Select Your Home Region Carefully: This cannot be changed later! Pick the data center closest to you or your target audience (e.g., US East, Frankfurt, London, or Mumbai).
3. Complete identity verification. A credit/debit card is required for fraud prevention, but you will not be charged as long as you stay within Always Free limits.

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Step 2: Configure Virtual Cloud Network (VCN)

Before launching compute, set up basic networking:

1. Go to Networking → Virtual Cloud Networks.
2. Click Start VCN Wizard → select Create VCN with Internet Connectivity.
3. Accept default CIDR blocks (10.0.0.0/16) and click Create. This automatically creates an Internet Gateway and Public Subnet.

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Step 3: Launch Your Ampere A1 Compute Instance

1. In the OCI Console, go to Compute → Instances and click Create instance.
2. Name: Give your server a name (e.g., prod-server-arm).
3. Image and Shape:
   • Click Edit.
   • Operating System: Select Canonical Ubuntu 24.04 or 22.04 LTS (Minimal AArch64).
   • Shape: Click Change shape → switch to Ampere (ARM-based Processor) → select VM.Standard.A1.Flex.
   • Drag the sliders to:
     • Number of OCPUs: 4
     • Amount of Memory (GB): 24
4. Networking: Select the Public Subnet created in Step 2 and ensure “Assign a public IPv4 address” is checked.
5. Add SSH Keys:
   • Choose Generate a key pair for me (and download both private and public keys), or paste your existing id_rsa.pub public key.
6. Click Create.

Your instance will transition from Provisioning to a bright green Running status in about 60 seconds.

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Step 4: Connecting via SSH

Open your local terminal and connect using the default ubuntu username:

chmod 400 /path/to/your/private_key.key
ssh -i /path/to/your/private_key.key ubuntu@<YOUR_PUBLIC_IP>

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Step 5: Essential Firewall & Port Configuration

Oracle Cloud instances use two layers of firewalls: OCI Security Lists (Cloud level) and iptables/ufw (OS level).

To open HTTP (port 80) and HTTPS (port 443) for web servers:

1. In OCI Console:

1. Go to your Subnet → click Default Security List.
2. Click Add Ingress Rules:
   • Source CIDR: 0.0.0.0/0
   • IP Protocol: TCP
   • Destination Port Range: 80, 443
3. Click Add Ingress Rules.

2. In Ubuntu OS:

Oracle’s default Ubuntu images come pre-configured with restrictive iptables rules. Open the ports inside the OS:

sudo iptables -I INPUT 6 -m state --state NEW -p tcp --dport 80 -j ACCEPT
sudo iptables -I INPUT 6 -m state --state NEW -p tcp --dport 443 -j ACCEPT
sudo netfilter-persistent save

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What Can You Run on a 24 GB RAM Server?

With 24 GB of RAM and 4 ARM cores, you can comfortably run:

• A full production ERPNext + MariaDB + Redis stack.
• Multi-container Docker workloads running Next.js, Postgres, and Celery workers.
• Self-hosted developer tools (Gitea, Jenkins, N8N, Portainer).
• High-concurrency WebSockets and backend microservices.

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Summary

Oracle’s Always Free tier is the undisputed champion of developer cloud hosting. With proper security list configuration, you have enterprise-grade compute ready for production workloads indefinitely.

Need help setting up cloud infrastructure, Docker clusters, or migrating to ARM architectures? Schedule a technical consultation with Klickspell.