In episode seven of the Insum Insider, Oracle Cloud & DBA Practice Director Luc Demanche and Oracle ACE Adrian Png take a close look at Oracle’s Free Tier Offer, what it contains, its limitations, and its advantages.
Episode Show Notes:
4 :30 – Introduction of guest panelists Adrian Png and Luc Demanche.
5:28 – Luc notes that this session is the first Insum Insider session that doesn’t talk about APEX. 🙂
Why Oracle Cloud?
6:30 – Luc addresses the question “Why would I want to use the Oracle Cloud?” Luc illustrates his answer with a story.
Luc also observes that Oracle engineers use the Oracle database to build their Cloud products and tune and optimize their resources to run on Oracle Linux and on Oracle Exadata hardware and that this high level of compatibility provides the user with the best possible environment for their Oracle Database among all cloud competitors.
13:45 – Monty and Michel bring in the discussion points of On-prem vs Cloud and scaling resources up and down.
Larry Ellison’s Statement at Oracle Open World 2019
17:40 – Luc and Adrian begin their session on Oracle’s Free Tier with Larry Ellison’s statement from Oracle Open World 2019
Luc expands on Ellison’s statement about the Free Tier containing some of the best Oracle cloud services, including Autonomous Database. Luc also mentions Free Tier’s sequence of free trial (30 days and $300 worth of services). followed by Free Tier.
Free Tier Contents
22:00 – Adrian explains Oracle’s offering, its limitations, and how to use it.
Adrian starts with an explanation of Autonomous Database, which includes:
- Oracle APEX
- 2 Databases that can be provisioned for transactional or data warehouse use
- Limitations
- Storage max is 20 GB (actual amount you can use is 12 GB, similar to Express Edition.)
- There is a maximum amount of parallel database actions allowed (roughly 20)
- Two micro-shaped compute instances
- Ability to host an instance of ORDS (as announced on twitter by Oracle APEX Senior Director Joel Kallman the morning of this episode’s broadcast)
27:05 – Adrian and Luc field a question from participants concerning drawbacks of the Cloud in general
Adrian’s response includes observations on data residency. Luc addresses a lack of user control over when upgrades happen. Michelle mentions that upgrading can also be an advantage.
31:55 – Luc addresses the subject of security on the cloud. He mentions Autonomous Database’s auto-patching capabilities
32:45 – Monty asks Luc how the DBA’s role has changed. Luc and Adrian cover the question. Adrian brings up a recent use case with an Insum client.
39:00 – Luc answers a participant question about whether to use Oracle Bare Metal server or Virtual Machine.
40:15 – Michelle asks Luc and Adrian about easy ways to store data when using the Free Tier, to take up as little room as possible on the database.
Adrian mentions his article in Oracle Magazine on better file storage in Oracle Cloud
43:10 – Luc fields a question about the specifications of the Free Tier.
44:20 – Michelle asks Luc and Adrian why someone should upgrade from Free Tier to a paid plan.
50:40 – Additional participant question on if there is a reason to be on a pay-as-you-go account but only use free tier services.
Upcoming Book on Oracle’s Free Tier
52:40 – Monty mentions Luc and Adrian’s upcoming book about getting started on Oracle Cloud’s Free Tier
Luc mentions that the book covers the Free Tier’s subset of services, what it can do, and an application that Adrian built on the Free Tier.
55:10 – Monty closes out the session. He also invites participants to move over to the Forum for additional discussion.
