UKH

Briefly...

....no credit card, Linux/Ubuntu VM, at least 12 months, 10 hrs per week - any cloud recommendations?

Just wondering if anybody has any experience of IBM/Azure/other cloud. There's too many for me to sign up for a try out

My geeky nephew is using Raspberry Pi and coding little mobile apps.

He wants to try cloud so I thought Ubuntu server VM* would be good.

*not sure what the difference between VM & VPS is

Raspbian & Ubuntu both Debian based so there's that familiarity

I've only used AWS (VM, Ubuntu) but sign up requires credit card. 

Has anybody use IBM Cloud Lite permanently free? I don't think it requires credit card (is that right?). Not sure if permanently free includes VMs. Does not need to be 24/7. Looks like you get VM 750 hrs in 12 months rather than permanently free but 12 months is OK.

750hrs is pa plenty as long as he shuts it down when not in use.

Smallest spec was I think $0.10 per hour, seems a bit pricey compared to AWS which I think goes town to about $0.03 per hour.

Should I be looking at Azure or something else for no credit card, free for ever or at least 12 months, not a 3-30 day trial, Linux (preferably ubuntu) VM.

Many thanks.

VM means Virtual Machine.

VPS means Virtual Private Server.

There's no difference between the two, they're the same thing.

Personally, I'd recommend that you just stick with using a Raspberry Pi, as cloud stuff will probably end up costing you something.  It's easy to rack up a big bill without trying.  AWS used to have a free tier but it seems like that's mostly gone.

I've never used IBM Cloud Lite, but they're obviously dishing out free stuff in the hope that you'll pay for something eventually.  I'd be surprised if they don't take your credit card details when you sign up.

Realistically you're never going to get a 'free for ever' VM.  Those days are largely over I think.  Tho having said that Oracle are still offering a couple of free VMs as they're desparate for people to use their offering.

Ohhh, now that's interesting...

...I'd not even thought of Oracle and their Always Free includes VMs.

Credit card - see below. That might be doable, as it its "almost" no credit card, if I believe the final paragraph.

Why do I need to provide credit or debit card information when I sign up for Oracle Cloud Free Tier?

To enable us to provide free Oracle Cloud accounts to our valued customers, we need to ensure that account holders are real people. We use your email, phone number, and credit/debit card for account set-up and identity verification. For users in the United States, you may see temporary charges of $1 on your account statement. Users in other countries will see a similar charge in their local currency. These are verification holds that will be removed automatically, typically within 3 to 5 days.

We will not use your credit/debit card information to automatically upgrade your Always Free or Free Trial to paid without first getting your explicit approval.

I think all of them do need a card to back up the freebies in case you get overly enthusiastic but Azure does a pretty good free tier I think (I have an msdn sub from work so havent paid much attention). I think you could set him up an account and put a restriction on it.

Digital ocean do some pretty good reasonable range so might be worth a look.

Microsoft dev essentials has some not bad freebies and if they have an ac.uk address I think they do some additional stuff for students without needing card details.

https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/dev-essentials/

Kualo in the UK start at £4.99/month (less than 1p per hour) for “Solo”, a basic VPS with an IP address.  I think they have various billing options.

Cloud is a bit of a pain for a kid as you need to step up the security having a relatively raw IP connection not sat behind NAT etc; I think I’m probably teaching granny to suck eggs here but at minimum a firewall blocking all ports apart from SSH, and disabling password login in favour of cryptographic keys is I think wise…

AWS is ssh only & pem files by default, I just assumed the other would be similar. I think my nephew can cope with it all very easily, the little* bugger makes me feel thick.

*correction, he's bloody taller than shortarse uncle elsewhere now