Oracle has announced Oracle Cloud Free Tier, including new Always Free services for anyone to try its self-driving database and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure for an unlimited time. The services are aimed at encouraging organizations, developers, students, and educators to use the Oracle Autonomous Database and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, including Compute VMs, Block and Object Storage, and Load Balancer—essentials for building complete applications on Oracle Cloud.
Oracle says that its Always Free Autonomous Database will remain free for as long as it is used. Always Free services are available in all regions of the world and are available to anyone, including those with paid accounts using Universal Credit pricing and new Free Tier accounts.
“We are thrilled to offer Always Free Oracle Autonomous Database and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure,” said Andrew Mendelsohn, executive vice president, Database Server Technologies, Oracle. “This enables the next generation of developers, analysts, and data scientists to learn the latest database and machine learning technologies for developing powerful data-driven applications and analytics on the cloud.”
The new program enables developers to build applications using any language and framework on top of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and Autonomous Database. They can get started quickly without waiting for IT to provision and learn new technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning. Enterprises can use Free Tier to prototype, prove out new technologies, and do testing before moving production workloads to the cloud. They can sample robust enterprise infrastructure capabilities like load balancing and storage cloning. Additionally, students can learn how to use the latest technologies and become better prepared for their careers.
Oracle also provides free developer tools so developers can build and deploy new data-driven applications faster on Oracle Autonomous Database. Developer tools include Oracle Application Express (APEX) for low-code Web application development, SQL Developer Web for user interaction with the database, Machine Learning Notebooks, REST interfaces for easy access and publishing of database data, and drivers for all popular programming languages. The Oracle Cloud Developer Image includes the latest tools, choice of development languages, OCI Software Development Kits (SDKs), and database connectors. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure resources can all be operated by console, REST APIs, and SDKs, or automated with Terraform.
As part of today’s news, Oracle also will be providing educators and students with the Oracle Cloud Free Tier through Oracle Academy, Oracle’s global, philanthropic educational program. Starting in early 2020, Oracle Academy Institutional members will enjoy easy signup, and educators will be able to create free accounts for their students. Additionally, Oracle Academy is developing academic curriculum on Oracle Autonomous Database and Oracle APEX.
Oracle’s Free Tier program has two components:
· Always Free services, which provide access to Oracle Cloud services for an unlimited time
· Free Trial, which provides $300 in credits for 30 days to try additional services and larger shapes
The new Always Free program includes access to the components that users need to build and test applications in the cloud: Oracle Autonomous Database, Compute VMs, Block Volumes, Object and Archive Storage, and Load Balancer. Specifications include:
· 2 Autonomous Databases (Autonomous Data Warehouse or Autonomous Transaction Processing), each with 1 OCPU and 20 GB storage
· 2 Compute VMs, each with 1/8 OCPU and 1 GB memory
· 2 Block Volumes, 100 GB total, with up to 5 free backups
· 10 GB Object Storage, 10 GB Archive Storage, and 50,000/month API requests
· 1 Load Balancer, 10 Mbps bandwidth
· 10 TB/month Outbound Data Transfer
· 500 million ingestion Datapoints and 1 billion Datapoints for Monitoring Service
· 1 million Notification delivery options per month and 1000 emails per month