{
  "id": 2735032,
  "title": "My Experience Running a Homelab on Oracle Cloud’s Free VPS",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/23/my-experience-running-a-homelab-on-oracle-clouds-free-vps",
  "topic": "tech",
  "section": "Tech",
  "published": "2026-08-23T06:01:59.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Dev.to",
    "slug": "dev-to",
    "url": "https://dev.to/kriss_sachintha/my-experience-running-a-homelab-on-oracle-clouds-free-vps-8a7"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "The author recently returned to writing by documenting their experience of setting up a homelab environment on Oracle Cloud's Free Tier VPS. As a software engineer, they were motivated to understand concepts like networking, deployment, Linux, containers, firewalls, and DNS through hands-on experience. The VPS had 1 GB RAM, 1 vCPU, and a public IP address.\n\nThe first challenge was running K3s, a lightweight Kubernetes distribution, on the limited resources. After installation, memory usage increased quickly, leaving little room for additional services. The author eventually stopped the K3s server.\n\nInstead, they focused on more realistic tools like Docker containers, Nginx, and iptables firewall configuration. They enjoyed learning about firewall rules and packet filtering with iptables, often asking ChatGPT questions such as \"What does this rule actually do?\" to improve their understanding. They also set up a web application using Docker and Nginx.\n\nFinally, they connected the web application to a domain using an A record pointing to the VPS's public IP address. This process involved learning about A records, CNAME records, and the differences between www and @ hostnames. The VPS's 1 GB RAM limitation posed a significant challenge, requiring careful resource management.",
  "summary": "It’s been a while since I wrote a blog post. Recently, I decided to get back into writing and document something I’ve been playing around with: setting up a small homelab environment on an Oracle Cloud Free Tier VPS. As a software engineer, I’ve always been interested in what happens behind the scenes when an application moves from my laptop to an actual server. Things like networking,…",
  "key_points": [
    "Author documented homelab setup on Oracle Cloud's Free Tier VPS.",
    "Faced memory constraints while running K3s, stopped server eventually.",
    "Learned about firewall rules, Docker containers, and domain setup."
  ],
  "editors_take": "Running a homelab on Oracle Cloud's free VPS forced the author to creatively manage limited resources, ultimately gaining practical experience with Docker, Nginx, iptables, and DNS configuration.",
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}