How to easily install Ubuntu Focal Fossa LTS on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

Ubuntu right now is the hottest and most popular Linux distribution and with the latest Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, it only gets better.

In this article, we are going to install Ubuntu Focal Fossa LTS on Oracle Cloud. The steps are very easy and it takes less than five minutes to complete.

For the uninitiated, Ubuntu 20.04 LTS nicknamed “Focal Fossa” is a long term support release. This means that this distribution will be supported for up to 5 years by Canonical. Supported here means commitment to patch, updated and maintain the operating system.

Released in April 2020, supports ends in April 2025. So a little more than four years left to live with this Linux operating system.

Oracle Cloud virtual instances

Oracle Cloud offers a free tier whereby you are given the opportunity to launch two virtual machine to install Ubuntu Focal Fossa LTS on Oracle Cloud compute platform.

And the best thing about these virtual machines is that they are always free which is super great for beginners to lower down their startup cost.

Oracle virtual machines are called “Shape” and below are the specifications for this free compute services:

So if you want to deploy a database driven website, you have the opportunity to deploy the website and database into separate virtual servers to enhance your data security.

Furthermore it is always a good idea to separate them because if your website gets hacked, at the very least if the setup was proper, the attacker should only have limited access to your database.

Please do note though that you’ll need a credit card to be able to register for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and to enjoy the always free tier benefits. Plus you’ll receive a credit amount of US$300 to test other services that are available in OCI for 30 days.

Install Ubuntu Focal Fossa LTS on Oracle Cloud

Lets begin to install Ubuntu Focal Fossa LTS on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure compute instance by login into your OCI account.

Next at the ‘Quick Actions‘ block, click on the ‘Create a VM Instance‘ button to proceed with selecting the specifications and image for the virtual machine that you want to deploy.

Give your virtual machine name that best describes it and then click on ‘Edit‘ and then click on the ‘Change Image‘ button. A list of available operating system images will then popup. To install Ubuntu Focal Fossa LTS on Oracle Cloud, please select the Canonical Ubuntu 20.04 image. You can use the images below for guidance.

For the network settings, you can leave it as default or create and set up rules manually or by using the virtual cloud network (vcn) wizard if you wish too. Just ensure that in the ‘Assign a public IPv4 address’ is set to ‘Yes’ if you want your instance accessible from the Internet.

The next task in this guide to install Ubuntu focal fossa LTS on Oracle Cloud is to save the private SSH key. This is very important as you will need it to remote into your virtual server through Putty. The private key will not be available for download again if you did not save it during this stage.

For the ‘Configure boot volume‘ section, you can either leave it or choose the available check boxes according to your preference. It you still want to fine tune your virtual instance, feel free to to adjust the configuration and options at the by clicking on the ‘Show Advance Options’ link.

Usually I just leave most of it on the default settings and click on the ‘Create‘ button to begin provisioning of the Ubuntu 20.04 server.

Once the install Ubuntu Focal Fossa LTS on Oracle Cloud finishes setup, please open up Putty and connect to your Linux virtual machine via SSH using the saved private key downloaded earlier on.

Conclusion

To install Ubuntu Focal Fossa LTS on Oracle Cloud is fairly simple. Provisioning of the server also takes less than five minutes to complete. The compute free tier offered by Oracle is very generous when compared to other big players in the cloud infrastructure market even though the company was quite late coming into the scene.

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