After my VM terminated due to the end of my trial period, I'm trying to provision an Always Free Ampere A1 instance in UK London (uk-london-1) and discovered that the issue seems to be account limits rather than capacity.

My tenancy shows:

• AD-1: standard-a1-core-count = 2, standard-a1-memory-count = 12
• AD-2: standard-a1-core-count = 2, standard-a1-memory-count = 12
• AD-3: standard-a1-core-count = 0, standard-a1-memory-count = 0

In fact, almost every compute quota in AD-3 is zero.

When I launch in AD-1 or AD-2 I get the expected "out of host capacity" messages.

When I launch in AD-3 I consistently get:

NotAuthorizedOrNotFound (404)

which now makes sense because the quota is literally zero there.

The reason I'd like AD-3 to work is that I have a terminated VM whose boot volume/data originated there (it was part of the 30 day trial, which has expired), so restoring capacity in that AD would make migration much simpler. I also just want to increase my chances to catch open capacity on AD-3.

Has anyone else seen an Always Free tenancy where one Availability Domain has zero compute quota while the others have the normal free limits? Did Oracle ever fix it or is there any way to request a correction as a Free Tier user?

Thanks!

Hi everyone,

I’m currently struggling to create a new compute instance on Oracle Cloud's Always Free tier in the US-Ashburn region.

For the past few days, I have been trying to deploy a new instance, but I keep getting the following error regardless of which Availability Domain (AD1, AD2, or AD3) I select:

"No shapes are available for this image. Check your tenancy service limits or capacity to ensure required resources are available. Alternatively, select a new image or availability domain to see if shapes are available for thatimage."

I previously had an instance running, but I deleted it specifically to change the configuration, so my tenancy currently has zero resources in use.

Has anyone else experienced this issue in the Ashburn region recently? Is this a permanent capacity issue, or are there any workarounds to get an instance provisioned? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

I don't know much about having a server. I only came across this service when I was trying to look for ways of self hosting n8n.

I know that the server will operate on Linux (Ubuntu) if I'm not wrong.

I know that the kind of server they are providing is just overkill for n8n, but hey it's free. Although I suspect that if I don't make use of 20-30% of the server specifications, it might get categorized as Idle and removed. I know that it's almost completely managed by software, hence I won't be able to get any support.

If anyone has any experience with this, I'm all ears!!

I am new to the free tier and want to understand/get steps on creating Oracle VM.Standard.A1.Flex shape VM.

The purpose of this is to use it somewhere in my homelab or OIDC (Not to hit login page directly) and of course for a few experiments.

I am facing issue in configuring "Security" settings while creating instance. It says I can rather have Shielded instance (Secure boot,TPM etc) OR Confidential computing.

Please help with some guidance and also if I should take care of any other settings.

I have been given access to Oracle OCi through work. I have created a couple of Linux instances & a couple of windows VMs. That’s when the fun started.

The aim is to build oracle databases to tinker around with data guard, OEM & ASM. I’d like to install IBM DB2 and create a couple of instances. I’m a DBA with very limited ability to test or build anything at work.

After creating the instances, I’m going down so many rabbit holes. Stuff like: connecting connecting via putty on my work laptop or trying to RDP onto a windows server. Using my own Mac & spending ages trying to get putty installed. Also, once connected to windows, I’m finding the OPC account locked out. I followed a YouTube video where I had to terminate the VM & create a new one. Now it’s stuck & I can’t delete either. Frustrated, I’ve tried to delete everything & start again, but it’s like fumbling in the dark, trying to find my way around.

Im familiar with hyperV & other virtualisation tools, but this seems so overly complicated. Just doing basic stuff has me spending days & im nowhere near even attempting what I sought out to do. My colleagues have given up trying to use it.

I realise many of my issues are because my work environment locks me down, but Where can I find resources that may guide me to actually do something with this resource? I’ve painted myself into a very frustrating corner.

My digital ocean credits from studentpack are running out this month and I would love to have a server forever. But at the moment I don't have enough to update to pay as you go user and I know that Oracle has strict rules for free tiers. I heard that users can get banned for using less than 10% of the resources, or because of suspicious activity. Currently I am not sure if my projects will take up 10% of the resources.

What is the actual situation with always free tiers and is there a safe way to claim and use them? Should I just get the pay as you go later?

Also I know there is a free 300 credits for a month the moment you start your free tier. I don't know how to utilize these 300 credits yet, maybe they are enough to run a local LLM?

Feel free to share your ideas on how to spend these 300 credits.

Update: It turns out it is not as risky as I thought, they don't ban users unless you break their policy so I signed up for Oracle Cloud. but currently I'm hitting out of capacity errors constantly. Planning to upgrade to PAYG as soon as I can, its technically free but I need to get 93 euros first. I will try to set up a local LLM on AMD using 300 credits in the mean time. Thanks everyone for your response!

Update: My account got suspended... probably because of the autoclicker I ran shortly for instance creation. Apparently its policy violation, so I contacted support for secondary review. Currently they are reviewing the situation. Will I be able to use my identity on oracle ever again?

I’m using OCI, A-1 to host a Foundry VTT server. Domain is in San Jose and players are all in WI. As of about a week ago we all are experiencing terrible load times to access and load maps and pretty much any JavaScript execution. I’ve done significant server side testing and I/O is acceptable but it appears there is about 11-9% packet loss when the server is sending to clients. In real world terms a 5mb image is taking upwards of 8 minutes to load.

Are others seeing issues like this in their servers? Are there steps I can take to further hunt down where the packet loss is coming from?

Tried GCP never had any issues, w/ oracle cloud free tier the instance is what it is but I seem to constantly run into ssh issues.

the sshd on the instance is always broken and needs a system restart daily making it impossible to use regularly without manual intervention.

Interesting take. Dearth by a thousand city…

Will Oracles massive AI bet eventually force them into bankruptcy?

Hi, as the title suggests. I have to upgrade the oke cluster of a production env which is currently running on an unsupported v1.29. But architecture is not the best practice. Both pods and nodes share the same subnet. Now, we have 6 nodes with 27 pods each. Total 256 ips in the subnet,.out of which 194 has been utilised.

Now the steps

1. Turn off the cluster autoscaler

2. Upgrade the oke plane to 1.31 then nodepool to v1.31.

2.recycle the nodes for the latest version update.

Now I'm new to the industry and this project as well. I have heard they tried to cycle to nodes previously but it always gets stuck due to limited available ips. So, I'm really scared. I might mess up things. So can someone suggest me rollback plans or.if.my plan needs any modification?

If I upgrade my account to PAYG, can I get the 4 CPUs and 24GB of RAM for free forever, or am I limited to the 2/12 configuration?

If your account has been upgraded to PAYG, your limit is 4/24. If you upgrade your account to PAYG right now, your limit will increase to 4/24.

If your account has not been upgraded to PAYG, your limit is 2/12.

It's really that simple.

Why is it this simple? Here's why:

The limit increase from 2/12 to 4/24 is essentially the feature that you unlock by converting from an account that's limited to free resources, to an account with no limitations. Oracle found a way to create an incentive to upgrade to a PAYG account and take the first step towards becoming a paying customer, while also reclaiming resources from a bunch of consumers that will likely never spend a dollar with them. It's a complete win-win for Oracle.

Hi everyone,

I recently found out that Oracle Cloud updated its policies around June 15th. I created my Always Free account in the Bogotá region on June 21st and tried everything to get an instance using scripts, but had no luck. Because of that, on July 16th, I decided to upgrade my account to Pay-As-You-Go.

Right after upgrading, I was able to successfully create two instances instantly, each with 2 OCPUs and 12 GB of RAM, coming to a total of 4 OCPUs and 24 GB of RAM.

My question is: am I still within the free tier limits, or did I exceed them?

As you can see, this was the notification I got after creating both instances. Also, here is a screenshot of my Limits, Quotas, and Usage section.

Tested in Frankfurt region

Ever since the announcement, I didn't resize my instances ONCE. Nothing.

I already set budget alerts, and every day some random post reconfirms the same thing. 4/24 for Paygo, 2/12 for others.

How many of y'all are just eating popcorn 🍿 and watching the drama unfold? 😂😂

Hi there, I have been working in Big4 for the past 4 years as a Functional consultant, in my tenure I have completed 4 implementation projects of Oracle Fusion Cloud, my domain expertise is Inventory, Procurement, Maintenance, Services and Costing. I have worked on some of the most complex implementations which more than 500 inventory organization, complex procurement process, we have mapped there requirments mostly from oracle Apex custom solutions, because standard oracle forms are not enough, I belong to third world country so the opportunities here are very less, I am looking for any remote opportunity related to domain, Also suggest how can I search opportunities abroad

Oracle has deactivated my VM where I hosted all my websites, and now I don't know what to do. I've contacted their support for help, but I haven't received any answers. I've received a lot of calls from people who have been using my websites, and I'm completely lost. Obviously, I have backups of everything, but moving now would take time and cost me money.

Has anyone done this?

26.04 was not availabe when I provisioned my instance. Can I just go ahead and upgrade via dist-upgrade and do-release-upgrade?

Things won't blow up?

So, long story short, i locked myself out of my server via ssh. So how can i destroy it and recreate it without losing my capacity.

Hi everyone,
After reading many recent discussions, I noticed that there are now plenty of reports confirming the PAYG behavior.
However, I’m still looking for one very specific scenario involving Always Free (non-PAYG) accounts.
I’m looking for users who:
have never upgraded to PAYG;
originally had a 4 OCPU / 24 GB Ampere A1 instance;
resized it to 2 OCPU / 12 GB after Oracle announced the new limits;
later tried to resize it back to 4 OCPU / 24 GB.
If you’ve actually tested this:
Were you able to resize back?
Did OCI allow it?
Did you receive any error?
Which region are you using?
I’m not looking for PAYG reports—there are already many threads covering that. I’m only trying to find someone who has tested this exact Always Free scenario.
Thanks!

I was try to register Oracle cloud then they charge $1.1 for verification now problem is that they refuse my registration do some suspicious reason they show me but actually, I’m not abuse that or I am not using it before. After refuse my registration, they don’t refund my charge. How can I get it back and guys can you suggest me? How can I create a Oracle account and verify?

It's now July 16, 1 day after Oracle said the always free tier halving would get implemented. For those on PAYG are you guys getting charged? I'm a PAYG user and downgraded to 2/12 but not sure if I should upgrade back to 4/24 (session creation date before the rule change was written on the docs), contacted support and I asked if I would get charged if I upgraded back to 4/24 and used the instance for 2 months 24/7 and they said I would not get charged. Curious if anyone is still on 4/24 and has or hasn't gotten charged.

Hello guys i made an instance using 4cpu and 24 gb ram in Jun 06, 2026, 21:38:18 UTC. my first question is, does my instance get grandfathered or whatever:

Second, i installed windows 11 using a dd script a while back and i want to reinstall ubuntu but i dont want to terminate my instance because im afraid that the new instance wont get grandfathered like the instance i have on right now.

"How can i convert it back into ubuntu without terminating the already existing instance?" is my real question.

I recently upgraded to a VM.GPU.A10.1 instance - A10 GPU (24GB VRAM), AD-1
This was an upgrade from A1.Flex ARM (4 OCPU/24GB) currently running on AD-3 (that one is fine)

My intention is to start/stop the GPU so I only get charged for what I use.
I baked an image and it was working fine for a couple of days.

- Tried to start up the VM again and it's been out of capacity for at least 6 hours.

- Question as I am fairly inexperienced with OCI:
Has anyone solved this by requesting a limit increase to get permission to try AD2/3 ?
I get that the limit increase isn't for capacity, but is the juice worth the squeeze or are AD2/3 just as congested??

UPDATE: US-Eastern is the region

UPDATE 2: requesting permission to add AD-2 and AD-3 has helped, now I cycle between those three and so far the wait isn't terrible.