Deploy on Oracle Cloud

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) offers an Always Free tier that includes small virtual machines. The Always Free Ampere machines use Arm processors (aarch64), so a Rullst image for them must be built for linux/arm64. This guide covers the OCI-specific steps. After you can log in, everything is the same as on every provider and lives in Deploy to a Linux VM: read it alongside this page.

Official documentation: https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/home.htm. Free-tier shapes, quantities and availability change and differ by region and account: check Oracle’s current Always Free documentation before you rely on them. Free Arm capacity in a popular region is sometimes unavailable; try again later or pick another availability domain.

Arm or x86?

Ampere A1 (Arm). Build for linux/arm64. Rust and the generated Dockerfile work natively on Arm, so the simplest way is to build on the VM itself with docker compose up -d --build (step 4A of the shared guide). Ampere VMs are usually fast enough for this.
Building elsewhere. On an x86-64 computer, build for Arm with docker buildx build --platform linux/arm64 -t my-app:<tag> --load .. This needs QEMU emulation (Docker Desktop includes it; on Linux install qemu-user-static) and an optimized Rust build under emulation is slow. For anything beyond a trial, build on the VM or on an Arm CI runner.
x86 micro shape. Oracle’s x86 free VM is very small (see its current memory); it cannot comfortably compile Rust. Build the image elsewhere with --platform linux/amd64 and move it (step 4B of the shared guide).

1. Create the instance

In the OCI Console, Compute, Instances, Create instance:

Image: Ubuntu LTS (or Oracle Linux; this guide assumes Debian-family commands).
Shape: choose Ampere (VM.Standard.A1.Flex) and set the OCPUs and memory within the Always Free limits shown in the console.
Networking: use the default VCN and a public subnet with a public IPv4 address.
SSH keys: paste your public key. The default login user is ubuntu (or opc on Oracle Linux).

2. Firewall: two places

OCI blocks traffic in the cloud network and the image may block it on the VM. You must open both.

In the cloud network: open the VCN’s Security Lists (or the instance’s Network Security Group) and add ingress rules (source 0.0.0.0/0, TCP) for destination ports 22, 80 and 443 (and UDP 443 if you want HTTP/3; without it browsers use HTTPS over TCP).

On the VM: Oracle’s Ubuntu images ship with iptables rules that reject other ports. Allow 80 and 443 before the final reject rule and save them:

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 apt install -y iptables-persistent && sudo netfilter-persistent save

Check the rule numbers with sudo iptables -L INPUT --line-numbers first: the new rules must come before the REJECT rule. On Oracle Linux use firewalld (sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --add-service={http,https} and --reload). Docker adds its own rules for published ports, so the cloud rules from the first part are the ones that decide what the internet can reach.

3. DNS

Create an A record pointing to the instance’s public IP address. For a stable address, reserve a public IP instead of the ephemeral one, so it does not change if you recreate the instance. Check with dig +short your-domain.example.

4. Log in and continue

ssh ubuntu@<ip-address>

Then follow Deploy to a Linux VM from step 3. If you move an image from another computer, make sure it was built for linux/arm64 (docker image inspect my-app:<tag> --format '{{.Architecture}}' should print arm64).

Oracle Cloud notes

Logs stay on the instance (see Logs).
Free accounts and idle instances can be reclaimed under Oracle’s current policy; read the Always Free terms and keep your own off-VM backups.
Boot-volume backups are available in the console; they are not database backups.

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