One of the best things about Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is its extremely generous Always Free Tier.
For anyone learning Linux, cloud computing, Oracle databases, DevOps, Kubernetes, or infrastructure automation, OCI Free Tier is an excellent platform to start with.
Recently, I created my very first OCI virtual machine instance and explored its system resources directly from the Linux terminal.
In this blog, I will share:
- Storage details
- CPU information
- Memory allocation
- Swap configuration
- Filesystem layout
- What these resources mean for beginners
The OCI Free Tier VM
The instance was created successfully and came with:
- Oracle Linux
- AMD EPYC processor
- Persistent block storage
- Swap memory
- XFS filesystem
After logging in as root, I started inspecting the server resources.
Checking Disk Space
The first command I executed was:
[root@instance-vm1 ~]# df -h
Output:
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on devtmpfs 4.0M 0 4.0M 0% /dev tmpfs 250M 0 250M 0% /dev/shm tmpfs 100M 9.8M 90M 10% /run efivarfs 256K 17K 235K 7% /sys/firmware/efi/efivars /dev/mapper/ocivolume-root 30G 5.6G 24G 19% / /dev/sda2 2.0G 451M 1.5G 23% /boot /dev/mapper/ocivolume-oled 15G 185M 15G 2% /var/oled /dev/sda1 100M 7.5M 93M 8% /boot/efi
Understanding the Storage Layout
1. Root Filesystem
The primary root filesystem:
/dev/mapper/ocivolume-root
has:
- Total Size: 30 GB
- Used Space: 5.6 GB
- Free Space: 24 GB
This is where the operating system, applications, packages, and user data are stored.
For a free-tier instance, 30 GB is actually very good for:
- Linux learning
- Docker containers
- Small databases
- Web servers
- Development environments
- Terraform labs
2. Separate OLED Volume
An interesting mount point exists:
/var/oled
mounted from:
/dev/mapper/ocivolume-oled
This dedicated 15 GB volume is related to Oracle Linux system components and telemetry services.
It currently uses only:
185 MB
which means almost the entire space is free.
3. Boot Partition
The system also includes:
/boot
with:
- 2 GB size
- 451 MB used
This partition stores:
- Linux kernel
- initramfs
- bootloader files
4. EFI Partition
The instance uses UEFI boot mode:
/boot/efi
This confirms the VM uses modern EFI firmware instead of legacy BIOS.
Checking Memory Resources
Next, I checked RAM usage:
[root@instance-vm1 ~]# free -m
Output:
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 498 205 174 0 140 293
Swap: 497 145 352
Understanding the Memory
The instance contains:
- ~500 MB RAM
- ~500 MB swap memory
Although this is a lightweight VM, it is still sufficient for many tasks:
- Linux practice
- Shell scripting
- Web hosting
- NGINX/Apache
- Python applications
- OCI CLI usage
- Terraform labs
- Small Oracle client tools
Why Swap Memory Matters
The system also includes swap:
Swap: 497 MB
Swap acts as virtual memory when RAM becomes full.
This helps prevent crashes during memory spikes.
OCI automatically configured swap using:
/.swapfile
as shown in:
/etc/fstab
Checking CPU Information
Now comes the most exciting part — the processor.
I executed:
[root@instance-vm1 ~]# cat /proc/cpuinfo
CPU Details
The VM is powered by:
AMD EPYC 7551 32-Core Processor
This is an enterprise-grade server processor commonly used in cloud data centers.
Important details:
- Processor Vendor: AMD
- Architecture: x86_64
- CPU Speed: ~2 GHz
- Virtualized Environment
- AVX2 support
- AES encryption support
Interesting Observation About CPUs
The output shows:
processor : 0 processor : 1
which means the VM exposes:
- 2 virtual CPUs (vCPUs)
This is impressive for a free cloud VM.
Many free-tier offerings from other cloud providers provide far fewer resources.
Filesystem Type — XFS
The root filesystem uses:
xfs
XFS is a high-performance enterprise filesystem commonly used in:
- Oracle Linux
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux
- Large storage systems
- Cloud environments
It offers:
- Excellent scalability
- Fast metadata operations
- High reliability
- Good performance for databases
Exploring /etc/fstab
The file:
/etc/fstab
contains persistent mount configuration.
Interesting entries include:
/dev/mapper/ocivolume-root /dev/mapper/ocivolume-oled /.swapfile
OCI also provides important warnings:
SCSI device names are not stable across reboots
This is why Oracle recommends using:
- UUIDs
- Persistent mappings
instead of raw device names.
What Can You Learn Using This Free OCI VM?
Even this small free-tier instance is powerful enough for learning:
- Linux administration
- Bash scripting
- Python automation
- Docker basics
- Terraform
- Ansible
- OCI CLI
- Networking
- Web hosting
- SSH security
- Git and DevOps workflows
Why OCI Free Tier is Amazing for Beginners
OCI Free Tier stands out because it offers:
- Always Free compute instances
- Block storage
- Public IP addresses
- ARM and AMD shapes
- Cloud networking
- Autonomous Database free instances
For students, developers, and DBAs, this becomes an excellent free cloud lab environment.
My First Impression
I was honestly surprised by:
- The enterprise-grade AMD EPYC CPU
- Persistent storage
- Dedicated swap space
- XFS filesystem
- Clean Oracle Linux setup
Even though the VM has limited RAM, it is more than enough for learning and lightweight workloads.
Key Resource Summary
| Resource | Value |
|---|---|
| CPU | 2 vCPUs (AMD EPYC 7551) |
| RAM | ~500 MB |
| Swap | ~500 MB |
| Root Storage | 30 GB |
| Additional Volume | 15 GB (/var/oled) |
| Filesystem | XFS |
| Boot Mode | UEFI |
| Operating System | Oracle Linux |
Conclusion
Creating my first OCI free-tier VM was an exciting experience.
It demonstrated how Oracle Cloud provides real enterprise-grade infrastructure even in its free offerings.
From AMD EPYC processors to XFS storage and persistent block volumes, the environment feels very similar to production cloud infrastructure.
For anyone wanting to learn:
- Cloud computing
- Linux
- Oracle technologies
- DevOps
- Infrastructure automation
OCI Free Tier is one of the best free platforms available today.
And this was just the beginning of the journey.
No comments:
Post a Comment