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| How to use the Oracle Cloud free offer and create an Ubuntu Cloud VPS PC on Oracle Cloud: capcutsoftware |
I will show you how to get a free,
yes, that's completely free forever,
Ubuntu machine.
It is from a major cloud provider worth about $200 billion,
so is not likely to disappear any anytime soon.
On screen you can see the finished product,
which is completely separate from my local PC and network,
so can not slow down on either
and because it is not on my local network,
you can access it from anywhere in the world.
And if I open Stacer, a graphical performance monitor,
you can see it comes with a massive four CPUs,
24 gigabytes of memory,
and almost 200 gigabytes of disc storage.
If I open a text editor on the Ubuntu instance
and notepad file on my local windows PC,
I can copy the contents of the local PC file
up to the Ubuntu instance
even though it is running hundreds of miles away
in a data centre somewhere.
So after this short introduction,
I will show you how it was all done.
Cloud Tech Introduction
("Lights - Alternative Version" The Places)
("Lights - Alternative Version" The Places ends)
The Oracle Cloud Always Free Offer
("Trip to Roma" Swirling Ship)
If you key into Google Search
the words Oracle Cloud Free Tier
and then select the first link,
it will take you to this page.
If I just scroll down,
I can show you what is included in this always free offer.
("Trip to Roma" Swirling Ship continues)
Yes, there are extra services
that are available for 30 days,
but the resources I am showing you here are always free.
So that's a massive 24 gigabytes of memory,
four arm-based CPUs,
and 200 gigabytes of storage.
So to get that,
if I scroll back up,
you can see a button labelled Start for Free,
which, when pressed, starts the registration process.
There may be some basic verification processes
to complete as part of this signup process
as it is just trying to ensure you're a real human
and not an internet bot trying to abuse the offer
by getting many individual accounts with lots of resources.
So after signing up,
you will be taken to this webpage,
and as you can see at the top of the screen,
there is a purple banner explaining that
you are currently on the free plan.
And unless you specifically upgrade to a paid account,
which we are not going to do,
you will never be charged.
As this topic has generated many questions
and comments on other YouTubers' channels,
Creating an Oracle Cloud Instance
like, why do some companies offer
these free forever resources, et cetera?
I have put a link to one of their question
and answer videos in the YouTube description
that hopefully answers any questions you have.
("Trip to Roma" Swirling Ship continues)
I select the option to create a VM instance.
I give the instance a name.
I move down to the image and shape box and select edit.
I change the image to Canonical Ubuntu,
("Trip to Roma" Swirling Ship continues)
then operating system version 20.04,
and press the select image button.
("Trip to Roma" Swirling Ship continues)
I change the shape from the default AMD to Ampere.
I select the default size
and increase it to use all four CPUs.
A yellow warning box appears just letting us know
we are at the limit of this free account for CPUs now.
So we ignore it and press create.
("Trip to Roma" Swirling Ship continues)
For SSH key, we select paste key.
At this point, I stop and download
and install the Windows PuTTY SSH client
importantly from the official website.
It includes an application called PuTTY General,
which is an SSH key generator.
So I open that
and generate an SSH key.
I then copy the onscreen public key part
and paste it into the website's SSH key box.
Before pressing the create button,
I increase the boot volume size,
so it uses all 200 gigabytes.
When I do so,
I see the yellow warning box again,
simply indicating that I am using
all 200 gigabytes of space.
So I just ignore it and press create.
At this point, I get an error saying that
the data centre, also known as an availability domain,
does not have the resources available at the moment
to satisfy the request.
Normally, it only to takes a few days to restock.
But rather than wait,
I simply scroll to the top
and change where this server is to be placed
in another data centre
or availability zone in this region.
("Whistling All the Way Down" Assaf Ayalon)
I then press create,
and because this availability zone
does have the requested resources,
it starts to provision the server.
This provisioning can take up to a minute,
so in the meantime, I return to PuTTY Gen
and save the private half of the key that we will need later
to connect to the provision server via SSH.
("Whistling All the Way Down" Assaf Ayalon continues)
Now, the server has finished provisioning,
we need to let our RDP remote control traffic,
which is on port 3,389
through the Oracle's console-based firewall
through to the instance
as we will be using it in a minute to display its desktop.
So to do that,
I select the instance's subnet,
then its default security list
("Whistling All the Way Down" Assaf Ayalon continues)
to which I add a new ingress rule
with the information you can see me enter the onscreen form.
("Whistling All the Way Down" Assaf Ayalon continues)
And when finished, I go back
("Whistling All the Way Down" Assaf Ayalon continues)
Connect to the Oracle Cloud Instance via SSH
to connect to the instance I have just created
because as yet, I haven't put XRDP in the desktop on it.
I open PuTTY, the Windows SSH client.
("Whistling All the Way Down" Assaf Ayalon continues)
For host name,
I enter Ubuntu, an @ sign,
followed by the instances IP address.
("Whistling All the Way Down" Assaf Ayalon continues)
I then select the SSH auth tab
and browse to the private part of the SSH key
that I created and saved earlier in PuTTY Gen.
("Whistling All the Way Down" Assaf Ayalon ends)
This part is optional.
I browse to the appearance tab
and change to a bigger font that is both easier to read
and displays better on this video.
("Come Back Home" Assaf Ayalon)
Now, before I open the connection,
I return to the main tab.
("Come Back Home" Assaf Ayalon continues)
Name and then save the settings.
("Come Back Home" Assaf Ayalon continues)
Only now do I start the connection.
("Come Back Home" Assaf Ayalon continues)
As this is the first time this machine's SSH client
has connected to this instance,
it just gives a warning.
I accept it and proceed with the connection.
Configure the Oracle Cloud Instance
On screen you can see my open SSH connection window
from a moment ago
and below it, the five configuration commands
that I copied out of the YouTube description.
If I zoom into the SSH window,
while I cut and paste each,
you can more easily see the typical response
when each are run.
This first command updates the repositories
so they point at the latest version of each module
and then upgrades any out of date module
so as to include all known bug fixes
and security patches.
("Come Back Home" Assaf Ayalon continues)
The second command instals the Ubuntu Desktop,
the XRDP remote control software,
and the Stacer performance graphical monitor,
which you saw in the introduction.
And I have found very useful
as it summarises any instance's CPU,
memory, and disc usage.
This installation command normally runs
for five or 10 minutes,
but through the magic of video editing,
it will only take a few seconds.
("Come Back Home" Assaf Ayalon continues)
All Oracle instances come with
a set of iptables firewall rules
that block most ports on the instance,
but we are already using
the console-based firewall for that.
And maintaining two firewalls can be complex
and I would only normally suggest it
when the instance has to be very, very secure.
As a result,
to remove this instance's unnecessary extra firewall
that is just adding complexity,
this command firstly copies
all existing instance iptables firewall rules
to a backup file
and then truncates the file to zero size,
thereby removing them from when the instance is rebooted.
This command removes the policy that causes the annoying
and frequent window that appears on the desktop
requesting password authorization to create a colour device
every five minutes.
This final command sets the password for the Ubuntu user
that we will be using to connect via RDP.
It is very important that this password is complex, long,
so over 10 characters in length
and not found in a dictionary
to prevent this instance being susceptible
to brute force attacks.
An example of the password I'm using is on screen.
And that's all five configuration commands completed.
All we do now is reboot it
to ensure they're all fully in effect.
The server is now ready for use.
All we have to do now is connect to it.
Connect to the Oracle Cloud Instance via RDP
I open the Remote Desktop Connection Windows application,
copy and paste the instance's IP address
from the Oracle website into the application.
("Japanika" Swirling Ship)
Enter the username as Ubuntu,
tick the box that allows me to save credentials
as unlike the typical XRDP log on screen,
the resultant screen will allow me
to paste in the complex password.
I go to the resources tab
and ensure only clipboard is ticked.
If this video proves popular,
I will look at how it can be improved,
so local drive mapping also works,
but for now, it doesn't.
I return to the main tab.
Here I do have an option to save
all these settings in a file.
However, for now, I just connect.
("Born Twice" Eyal Raz)
I get the complex password,
which I have recorded
and proceed to copy and paste it
into the credentials window.
("Born Twice" Eyal Raz continues)
When connected,
I proceed through the welcome screens onto the main desktop
("Born Twice" Eyal Raz continues)
where the only change I make is under settings,
privacy,
lock screen
where I disable everything.
That is because if this instance were to lock,
it can be problematic connecting to it.
Finally, I find and start the Stacer performance monitor
("Born Twice" Eyal Raz continues)
to prove the instance can see all the CPUs,
memory, and disc.
("Born Twice" Eyal Raz continues)
And that's it, the machine is ready for use.
The YouTube End Cards
On screen, you will find a video showing
how to deploy a Windows server 2019 disc image
and below it, a video I made
showing how I create it in Kali Linux VPS
from the official Kali ISOs.
And if you want to see more videos in the future
like this one,
click on the Cloud Tech logo.
