If you want to create a new application, test it, and deploy it on the cloud, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure provides an always-free tier for compute instances and MySQL HeatWave instances (and more).
If you are a developer, it can also be complicated to start deploying to the cloud, as you need to figure out the required steps for networking and related tasks.
To help you, you can use the oci-hackathon-starterkit, which lets you deploy to OCI with one click.
In this series dedicated to the starter kit, we will see how to deploy a basic setup in OCI and then how to use our new environment with different development platforms.
The starter kit was created with the Oracle-sponsored TEDAI hackathon in mind. But of course, it can be extended to any project.
Starting with OCI
The only requirement to start with the starter kit is an OCI account.
Such an account can also be created using the promotion link you may receive during our events, which offers free credits.
Please go to http://signup.cloud.oracle.com/, and if you got your free credits promotion by email, please use the same address to sign up.
You will get a similar screen after entering your email:
Then follow the wizard and choose your customer type as an individual:
You require a payment method (credit card) to enable your free trial, and you won’t be charged unless you upgrade your account:
After creation and logging in, you will see the OCI Console. Mind the message about using the Free Trial:
And now you are ready!
Using the starter kit to deploy on OCI
The Architecture
The starter kit allows you to deploy an architecture similar to this one:
It contains a compute instance (by default always free) that can be used as an Application/Web Server and a MySQL HeatWave DBSystem instance that can be used to store relational data, Documents (NoSQL JSON), or more with the Vector Store.
You can create an application using your favorite language and store your data using the classic MySQL Protocol (SQL), the X Protocol (NoSQL), or even the MySQL REST Service.
Time to Deploy
You can stay connected to the OCI Console, and in another tab, go to the starter kit GitHub page: https://github.com/lefred/oci-hackathon-starterkit and click on the button “Deploy to Oracle Cloud“:
If you are already connected to your OCI account, you will then be redirected to the OCI Resource Manager Stack console; if not, you will have to sign in first.
Follow the wizard, choose an admin account and password, then select the shape for the compute and the MySQL DBSystem.
For the compute instance, the default is to use the Always Free Ampere shape, but this also depends on your region:
However, as said previously, not all regions still offer free Ampere instances. If it’s the case, choose another shape such as VM.Standard.E2.1.Micro.
By default, the Stack also deploys the always-free Trier MySQL HeatWave. But you can also use your eventual credits to deploy a more powerful instance:
When ready, make sure you check the “Run apply” box and click on “Create”:
All the complicated resources and those selected will start to be automatically deployed in OCI:
This process takes some time; once finished, it should turn green. If the job fails, it is likely related to the lack of capacity of the selected shapes:
The job also prints the output at the end of the logs:
You can also follow the full process on this video below:
Conclusion
We saw how easy it is to deploy resources in OCI without having to deal with Virtual Cloud Networks, Security Lists, subnets, or gateways.
The following article in the series will cover how to connect to our deployed instance.
Stay tuned!
