AgentAura on Oracle Cloud: Use an AMD VM, Not Ampere 🔶

By the end of this guide you will have an Ubuntu 24.04 instance on an AMD (x86) shape in your own Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) account, a private key for it, and the four values AgentAura's My Server option asks for. On Oracle Cloud, My Server is the only path: you create the instance in the OCI Console, and AgentAura logs in over SSH.

The steps shared by every provider are in our overview, Getting a Server for AgentAura. The OCI Console changes from time to time, so a label may look slightly different.

1. Create an Oracle Cloud Account

Sign up at signup.oraclecloud.com with your country, name, email address (Oracle sends a verification link), a password, a cloud account name and a home region. Oracle states that the home region cannot be changed after sign-up, so pick one near you. Then come your address, phone number and a card for verification. Oracle accepts credit cards and debit cards that work like credit cards, but not PIN debit, virtual, single-use or prepaid cards. You may see a small temporary hold.

At the time of writing (September 2026), a new account is a Free Tier account: Always Free services with no time limit, plus a Free Trial of US$300 of credit for up to 30 days.

One rule matters here: paid instances created during the trial are reclaimed when the trial ends unless you upgrade the account to a paid one (Pay As You Go). After a grace period Oracle deletes them permanently. You upgrade in the Console's account management area; if you do it during the trial, billing starts only when the trial ends.

2. Decide Where the SSH Key Comes From

The instance form can generate a key pair for you: you save the private key once, and AgentAura accepts that file as it is. Or make your own key, just for this server and without a passphrase:

# macOS or Linux
mkdir -p ~/.ssh
ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -f ~/.ssh/agentaura -N "" -C "agentaura"

# Windows 10 or 11, in PowerShell. When asked for a passphrase, press Enter twice.
New-Item -ItemType Directory -Force "$HOME\.ssh" | Out-Null
ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -f "$HOME\.ssh\agentaura" -C "agentaura"

Oracle's platform images accept ed25519, RSA and ECDSA keys. OCI gets agentaura.pub; AgentAura gets the private key, agentaura.

3. Choose a Shape AgentAura Can Run On

OCI calls instance sizes "shapes". Oracle's docs list two Always Free compute shapes:

Use a paid AMD flexible shape instead: VM.Standard.E5.Flex (or E4.Flex or E6.Flex, whichever your region offers) with 1 OCPU and 4 GB of memory. On x86, Oracle counts one OCPU as a physical core with two threads, so 1 OCPU equals 2 vCPUs, which gives the 2 vCPU and 4 GB we recommend. Oracle's cost estimator shows the price in your region.

4. Create the Network and the Instance

For a first instance, Oracle recommends creating the network first: open Networking, then Virtual cloud networks, and run Start VCN Wizard with Create VCN with Internet Connectivity. It sets up the subnets, the internet gateway and security list rules that include SSH access.

Then open Compute, Instances, and select Create instance:

1. Enter a name. The default compartment and availability domain are fine.
2. Image. The default is Oracle Linux. Select Change image, choose Ubuntu, then the standard (not Minimal) Ubuntu 24.04 image; its builds are named Canonical-Ubuntu-24.04-…. Builds with aarch64 in the name are for ARM. Oracle Linux will not work: its default user is opc, it uses dnf, and AgentAura's installer needs apt.
3. Shape. Select Change shape, then Virtual machine and the AMD series, and pick VM.Standard.E5.Flex with 1 OCPU and 4 GB of memory. Leave Burstable off.
4. Networking. Select the wizard's VCN and its public subnet, and keep Automatically assign public IPv4 address on. Without a public IP, AgentAura cannot reach the server.
5. Add SSH keys. Choose Generate a key pair for me and select Save private key. Oracle keeps no copy; lose the file and the only remedy is a new instance. With your own key, upload or paste agentaura.pub instead.
6. Keep the default boot volume and select Create.

Once it is running, copy the public IP address from the Instance access section of its details page.

5. Keep SSH Open, and Only SSH

Two firewalls sit in front of the server.

The subnet's security list. Open the VCN, its public subnet and the attached security list. There should be a stateful ingress rule for TCP port 22, and its Source CIDR must be 0.0.0.0/0, meaning all addresses. Oracle's docs suggest narrowing default rules to known sources, but AgentAura connects from its own cloud, not from your computer, both for the install and for later logs, restarts, credential reconnects, new agents and updates. A rule that admits only your address breaks all of those; key-only login keeps the open port safe. Add no other ports: the installer sets up an outbound Cloudflare Tunnel, and the default security list allows all outbound traffic.

The firewall inside Ubuntu. Oracle's platform images ship host firewall rules that allow only SSH, which is exactly what AgentAura needs. Leave them alone, and do not enable UFW: Oracle warns it can stop an Ubuntu instance from booting.

The public IPv4 address assigned at creation is ephemeral: it stays with the instance when you stop it and is released when you terminate it. You do not need a reserved IP.

6. Log In Once Yourself

Oracle's private key download is a .key file; we renamed ours agentaura-oci.key. On macOS or Linux:

chmod 400 ~/Downloads/agentaura-oci.key
ssh -i ~/Downloads/agentaura-oci.key ubuntu@203.0.113.10

On Windows, in PowerShell (if ssh calls the key's permissions too open, Oracle's connection guide shows the fix):

ssh -i "$HOME\Downloads\agentaura-oci.key" ubuntu@203.0.113.10

Replace 203.0.113.10 with your address. Then confirm that sudo needs no password, as the installer requires:

sudo -n true && echo "passwordless sudo OK"

If the login is slow or apt reports a lock, first-boot updates are still running. Wait a few minutes before deploying.

7. Fill In AgentAura

In AgentAura, add a server with My Server and enter:

To print the key for copying, run cat ~/Downloads/agentaura-oci.key on macOS or Linux, or Get-Content "$HOME\Downloads\agentaura-oci.key" in PowerShell. Start the deployment and watch the output; a failure names the step and the reason. The quick start covers what comes next.

8. Costs and Cleanup

• Stopping a standard-shape instance from the Console pauses billing for its OCPUs and memory. Shutting it down from inside Ubuntu does not; stop it from the Console as well.
• The boot volume is charged separately at Block Volume prices for as long as it exists.
• To end all charges, terminate the instance from its Actions menu and tick Permanently delete the attached boot volume. Otherwise Oracle keeps the boot volume.
• Removing the agent in AgentAura does not touch anything in Oracle Cloud.

Common Problems

• The AMD shape is greyed out or missing. The image is an aarch64 build, the shape is not available in that availability domain, or your account has no limit for it yet. Pick an x86 build, try another availability domain, or request a limit increase.
• "Permission denied (publickey)". The login user must be ubuntu (not opc or root), or the .pub file was pasted instead of the private key.
• Connection timed out. No public IPv4, a private subnet, or a narrowed SSH source.
• The instance vanished after the trial. It was reclaimed, and Oracle cannot restore it.
• The install fails on Oracle Linux. The installer needs apt; create a new instance with Ubuntu 24.04.

Oracle's references: Creating an instance · Always Free resources · Free Tier FAQ · Billing for stopped instances