Deploying a VPS

Here you will learn how to setup a VPS under Oracle's free tier.

Deploying a VPS

To begin, click on the three dashes in the top left corner. Go to Compute and click on Instances.

Click on "Create Instance"

Type a name of your choice.

Under Image click on Change Image, click on Ubuntu, and choose Canonical Ubuntu 22.04.

We do not support nor recommend Ubuntu 24.04. Due to the introduction of PEP 668 and the upgrade of Python to a newer version, a lot of issues regarding dependencies have been created. We plan on supporting Oracle Linux, which uses DNF as its package manager, in the future.

Make sure you choose Always-Free Eligible images.

Although this guide has instructions for Ubuntu 22.04 only (currently), you can choose whatever OS you'd like as long as you are familiar with installing the required dependencies.

If you'd like to change the RAM/OCPUs of your VPS, you can click on Change shape under Shape.

Although you can choose up to 24 GB of RAM for free, Modmail runs perfectly on 1 GB of RAM unless you are planning on hosting more than one instance or have a quite large server.

Click on Next (bottom left) and go to Security. There's nothing of importance in Security so click on next and go to Network.

If you already have a VCN and subnet, it is recommended to use the same one. Please note that you can't create more than 2 VCNs under Oracle's free plan. Ingress and egress rules apply to all VPSs under the subnet. If you're planning on using different security rules, create a new VCN and subnet (as long as you don't go above the quota).

Scroll down to Add SSH keys, select Generate a key pair for me, and click on Download private key.

Click on Next to go to Storage. If you'd like to change the default storage, click on the toggle under "Specify a custom boot volume size and performance setting". Please note that you can't have more than 200 GB of space (in total) under Oracle's free plan.

Once you are done, click on Next and once you review everything, click on Create.

Depending on your region, you might get a "Out of capacity for shape VM.Standard.A1.Flex" error. In that case go back to Basic information. Above Availability domain you'll see a warning which specifies which availability domain supports the VM.Standard.E2.1.Micro shape. Select the availability domain and then scroll down to Shape. Click on Change shape, scroll down to Shape series, choose Specialty and previous generation and select VM.Standard.E2.1.Micro.

You are now ready to move to the next page!