Yeah, I signed up specifically to try out the Ampere instances (and when chosing the home region it said x, y, z were at capacity so I chose w), but wasn't able to actually create an Ampere instance because of lack of availability. I ended up just using a free x86 instance for a different project, but it was pretty disappointing.

Do they provide free IPv4 for the x86 instances?

Yes

So when i sign up I should the phone number of my nemesis? Noted.

I typically use some number I find on the company's website, like: https://www.oracle.com/corporate/contact/ Same for web feedback forms where I don't want follow-up questions, [email protected].

Until your nemesis says “Yeah upgrade my account for all that cool stuff!”

that's when things really start heating up between my nemesis and my other nemesis (and people talk about the equifax leak like it's a bad thing!)

They verify the number in the sign up process.

You can change the zone within the region. There were no free Ampere instances in the Frankfurt AZ1, I found them in AZ2. Though it only works for the Ampere. 1vCPU x86 VM can only be spun up in AZ1.

Gotcha. I had signed up in a US region and there was nary an ARM server to be found. I was quite disappointed. Then sales people reminded me of my disappointment weeks after.

I signed up months ago so I could get enough virtual crap to start a "working" k8s cluster for messing around with, doing CV KA etc. Haven't used it yet (doing other stuff) but am planning on kicking off next month. I got a single salesy email, and I replied that the account is for personal use, I have no money and no intention of monetising my tire-kicking, so it's forever free-tier. That was the end of it. You also have to explicitly flip a switch so they are allowed to charge you. If you don't, you simply can't deploy anything beyond the free tier. That's my understanding of their documentation of the free tier, but that was made clear enough.

You have to keep trying. Capacity renews every so often. Save the VM as a job and try to run it every day or so, or there's a script floating around that you can run on one of the tiny standard free VMs to attempt until it works

I've been using it for a year for one of their Ampere instances and haven't received any phone calls. Might be because I'm in the UK (region UK South (London)), I imagine they're much more call happy in countries where the laws are looser.

In the US. When you first sign up you are initially placed in a free trial. After the free trial period ends you fallback to the free tier. While in the free trial period I received one phone call which I let go to voicemail and besides the emails welcoming me to Oracle Cloud and regarding account creation I received 3 or 4 reminding me that the trial was ending and I would revert to the free tier. Since then, which has been months, I haven't received either calls or emails.

If you wait a bit, you can get what you want to try.