Github action to automate oracle cloud free instance launch

14 November 2025 (3w ago)

Use at your own risk ⚠️

Try to Create OCI VM

This snippet contains a GitHub Actions workflow that automatically tries to provision an "Always Free" VM.Standard.A1.Flex (Arm) compute instance in your Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) account.

This is necessary because the "Always Free" Arm instances are a popular resource and are often unavailable due to high demand, resulting in an "Out of host capacity." error. You can try to upgrade to pay as you go plan which has a very good chance of getting available instance. Be sure to remain in free limits and check your costs frequently.

Features

  • Fully Automated: Runs entirely within GitHub Actions. You don't need to run anything on your local machine.
  • Persistent: The workflow runs on a 10-minute schedule, continuously retrying until it successfully provisions your VM.
  • Secure: All sensitive credentials, keys, and IDs are stored in encrypted GitHub Secrets. The repository itself contains no private information and is safe to be public.
  • Fast: Uses GitHub's caching to store the oci-cli installation, so subsequent runs are much faster.
  • Informative: Sends detailed notifications to a Discord channel on every attempt, showing the full success or error log (e.g., "Out of host capacity").

How to Use

To use this, you need to Fork this repository and set up your OCI credentials as GitHub Secrets. You can directly copy the workflow action code given at the bottom and paste in a new action workflow file .github/workflows/create-vm.yml at the root of any of your public repository.

Prerequisites

  • An Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) "Always Free" account.
  • A GitHub account.
  • A Discord server/channel to receive notifications.

Step 1: Fork This Repository

Click the "Fork" button at the top-right of this page. This will create a copy of this repository in your own GitHub account. All the following steps will be done on your fork.

Step 2: Generate Your OCI API Credentials

This is the most detailed step. You need to gather 11 pieces of information from your OCI account and your computer.

A. Core IDs (Tenancy, User, Region)

  1. Log in to your OCI Console.
  2. Tenancy OCID: Click your Profile icon (top right) -> Tenancy: [your_tenancy_name].
    • Copy the OCID value. This is your OCI_CLI_TENANCY.
    • Note: For "Always Free" accounts, this is also your COMPARTMENT_ID.
  3. User OCID: Click your Profile icon -> User Settings.
    • Copy the OCID value. This is your OCI_CLI_USER.
  4. Region Identifier: Look in the top-right corner of the console (e.g., "Singapore").
    • Hover over it or click it to find the identifier (e.g., ap-singapore-1). This is your OCI_CLI_REGION.

B. OCI API Key (Private Key & Fingerprint)

  1. On the same User Settings page, click "API Keys" from the left-hand menu.
  2. Click the "Add API Key" button.
  3. Select "Generate API Key Pair".
  4. Click "Download Private Key" and save the oci_api_key.pem file. Do not lose this file.
  5. Click the "Add" button.
  6. A "Configuration File Preview" will pop up. From this box, copy the fingerprint value. This is your OCI_CLI_FINGERPRINT.

C. VM-Specific IDs (Subnet, Image, AD)

  1. Subnet ID:
    • Go to the OCI Console menu (☰) -> Networking -> Virtual Cloud Networks.
    • Click on your VCN (there is likely one default VCN).
    • Click on "Subnets" in the left menu.
    • Click on your public subnet (e.g., Public Subnet ...).
    • Copy the OCID of the subnet. This is your SUBNET_ID.
  2. Availability Domain (AD) Name:
    • Go to the OCI Console menu (☰) -> Compute -> Instances.
    • Click "Create Instance".
    • In the "Placement" section, look at the "Availability Domain" dropdown. You likely only have one.
    • Copy its name exactly as it appears (e.g., KClJ:AP-SINGAPORE-1-AD-1). This is your AD_NAME.
  3. Image ID:
    • On the same "Create Instance" page, in the "Image and shape" section, click "Change Image".
    • Select "Canonical Ubuntu" (or another OS of your choice).
    • Click the name of the image (e.g., "Canonical Ubuntu 22.04"). A details panel will slide out.
    • Copy the OCID of the image. This is your IMAGE_ID.
    • You can now cancel the "Create Instance" wizard.
    • If you still can not find the image, check this website and choose your image and copy ocid mentioned according to region.
    • set this IMAGE_ID in your action env.
  4. OCPUs and RAM
    • The default settings in this action is to provision instance with 2 OCPUs and 12 GB memory.
    • you can change this in action line 59 --shape-config '{"ocpus":2,"memoryInGBs":12}' \
  5. Boot Volume and Name
    • The default settings in this action is to provision instance with 100GB boot volume with name coolify-vm.
    • you can change bootvolume in action line 65 --boot-volume-size-in-gbs 100' \
    • you can change instance name in same command (action line 64) --display-name "coolify-vm"

D. Your SSH Public Key

This is the key you will use to log in to your new server.

  1. Open a terminal on your computer.
  2. Check if you have a key: cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
  3. If it shows a key: Copy the entire output (it starts with ssh-rsa...). This is your SSH_PUBLIC_KEY.
  4. If it shows "No such file": Run ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 2048. Press Enter three times to accept the defaults. Then, run cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub again and copy the key.

Step 3: Create a Discord Webhook

  1. Open your Discord server. Right-click on a channel name and click "Edit Channel".
  2. Go to the "Integrations" tab.
  3. Click "Webhooks" -> "New Webhook".
  4. Give it a name (e.g., "OCI Notifier") and click "Copy Webhook URL".

Step 4: Configure GitHub Secrets

Go to your forked repository on GitHub.

  1. Click the "Settings" tab.
  2. In the left menu, click "Secrets and variables" -> "Actions".
  3. Click the "New repository secret" button for each of the 11 secrets listed below.

VM Secrets

  • OCI_COMPARTMENT_ID (Value: Your Tenancy OCID from Step 2A)
  • IMAGE_ID (Value: Your Image OCID from Step 2C)
  • OCI_SUBNET_ID (Value: Your Subnet OCID from Step 2C)
  • AD_NAME (Value: Your Availability Domain name from Step 2C)
  • SSH_PUBLIC_KEY (Value: The ssh-rsa... key from Step 2D)

Authentication Secrets

  • OCI_CLI_REGION (Value: Your region from Step 2A, e.g., ap-singapore-1)
  • OCI_CLI_USER (Value: Your User OCID from Step 2A)
  • OCI_CLI_TENANCY (Value: Your Tenancy OCID from Step 2A)
  • OCI_CLI_FINGERPRINT (Value: The fingerprint from Step 2B)
  • OCI_CLI_KEY_CONTENT (Value: Open the oci_api_key.pem file you downloaded in Step 2B with a text editor. Copy the entire contents, from -----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY----- to -----END PRIVATE KEY-----, and paste it here.)

Notification Secret

  • DISCORD_WEBHOOK_URL (Value: The URL you copied from Discord in Step 3)

Step 5: Run the Workflow

You're all set! Now you just need to start the process.

  1. Go to the "Actions" tab of your forked repository.
  2. In the left sidebar, click on "Try to Create OCI VM".
  3. You will see a message: "This workflow has a workflow_dispatch event." Click the "Run workflow" button on the right, and then "Run workflow" again.

This will start the first run. From now on, the schedule will automatically run it every 10 minutes. You can check the "Actions" tab to see the logs from each run. You will also get a notification in Discord every time it tries.

🚨 CRITICAL: What to Do on Success

One day, you will get a green "success" notification in Discord. This means your VM has been created!

As soon as you see this, you MUST disable the workflow.

  1. Go to the "Actions" tab in your repository.
  2. Click on "Try to Create OCI VM" in the sidebar.
  3. Click the three-dot (...) menu on the right.
  4. Click "Disable workflow".

If you do not do this, the action will continue running every 10 minutes and will try to create another VM, which will just fill your logs with errors.

Your VM will be provisioning in the OCI console. You can now log in using the SSH key you provided.

Action Workflow code:

Workflow code