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free-oci-kubernetes

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A TerraForm and Flux 2.0 template to easily bootstrap a GitOps managed kubernetes cluster using OCI's free tier

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# Free OCI Kubernetes Cluster with GitOps

> [!WARNING]
> At the beginning of 06.2026, Oracle Cloud has decreased [the free Ampere A1 Compute] resources by
> half: it's now 2 Cores and 12 GB of RAM. It seems that older accounts still get the old qouta, but that can
> change as well. Be sure to adjust your resources accordingly, if you want to stay "100% free".

By applying this repository you will get a completely free (still, as of Q1 2026, using the free tier of
Oracle Cloud) Kubernetes cluster that has important applications already pre-installed and is fully GitOps
driven using Flux CD.

In more details, by following this guide you'll get:

- a completely free Kubernetes cluster, with 2 nodes, each wit 4 core ARM CPU, 12 GBs of RAM and 50 GB of
  storage (using the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure)
- a fully GitOps driven Kubernetes cluster using Flux CD, including
  - Cilium CNI running in kube-proxy-less mode, with Gateway API (HTTPRoutes) for service exposure
  - cert-manager with automatic TLS certificates from Let's Encrypt via Gateway API integration
  - external-dns for automatic Cloudflare DNS record management (optional, requires Cloudflare API token)
  - monitoring setup, including Prometheus, Loki and Grafana
  - personal notifications about the alerts and health of your cluster
  - optional extra features, like a wireguard VPN server exposing your cluster deployments

## Index

- How to create your own cluster - this document
- [Design considerations](design.md)
- [Extras](extras.md) - optional extra modules

## Getting started

### Intro

Before we can start creating the cluster, we need to first bootstrap our cloud infrastructure, our security
keys and other secrets that we need to run all the applications.

### 1. Tools you need to have installed

Before we start, make sure that you have installed (tested on Linux, should work on other OSes as well):

- tofu (>= 1.11) - this is a fork of the well-known TerraForm project, we'll use it to bootstrap our cloud
  infrastructure
- flux - the CLI for controlling flux deployment
- sops - a secret encryption tool that we use to securely keep all secrets in the repository
- gpg - encryption tool that we will use as a backend for `sops`
- [oci oracle cloud cli](https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/API/SDKDocs/cliinstall.htm) - a CLI tool
  to control infrastructure in the OCI

### 2. Preparing your repository

Your cluster will be driven form your own repository, that has to be a copy of this one. Create a fork of this
repository (I recommend keeping it private) and check it out on your local drive. If not stated otherwise, all
the commands and files in this guide will assume we're in the root directory of your repository.

### 3. Bootstrapping the cloud infrastructure

Before you start creating any infrastructure, you need to register a new account with Oracle Cloud. You need
to have a valid credit card to register, even though the whole setup here is tailored to not use any paid
resources and max out the free tier the OCI offers.

Go to <https://signup.oraclecloud.com/> and create a new account. Some services, especially related to
Kubernetes, are not included in the free tier, but are still available to be used for free. Do be able to use
them, you have to upgrade your billing tier. Go to your
[billing settings](https://cloud.oracle.com/invoices-and-orders/upgrade-and-payment), then click on "Add card"
and "upgrade your account". Once again, all the resource we use are available (at the time of writing and ofr
the last at least a year) for free. Now you have to wait until your billing tier change is processed.

#### 3.1. Creating the infrastructure

In your terminal, run:

```sh
oci setup config
```

This will guide you through the process of setting up CLI access to OCI infrastructure. Read the documents
printed by the `setup` command to learn where to find necessary input data.

Next, go to the `tf/` directory in the repository and fill in information about your cloud account. Copy the
template settings file `cp variables-private.tf.tpl variables-private.tf` and edit it:

- insert your public SSH key as the `default` value for `ssh_public_key`
- enter 'bastion allowed IPs', these are the IP addresses allowed to connect to the bastion host created for
  the cluster nodes
- enter your default `compartment ID` -
  [here's how to find it](https://docs.oracle.com/en-us/iaas/Content/GSG/Tasks/contactingsupport_topic-Locating_Oracle_Cloud_Infrastructure_IDs.htm)
- enter your region and 2 Availability Domains within it
- don't enter `git_token`, as we want this value to be secret (don't save it on your hard drive).

Also set the URL of your repository as the `spec.sync.url` field in `flux/flux-system/flux-instance.yaml` -
this is the single source of truth Flux (and the bootstrap) use to know where to sync from.

Now, go to [github.com profile page](https://github.com/settings/profile) and generate a fine-grained private
access token (PAT) with `repo` scope (Read and Write access to code). Here are
[more details](https://docs.github.com/en/authentication/keeping-your-account-and-data-secure/managing-your-personal-access-tokens).
Copy the token and paste it into the `variables-private.tf` file as the `git_token` value.

Export the PAT as environment variable

```
 export GH_TOKEN=YOUR_PAT
```

It's time to run `tofu` to bootstrap our cluster and obtain a `kube.config` file for it. Be patient, the first
`apply` step can take pretty long (around half an hour):

```sh
tofu init
tofu apply -var git_token="$GH_TOKEN" -target null_resource.kube_config
```

Your `kube.config` should be ready. You can test it with:

```sh
export KUBECONFIG=$PWD/.kube.config
kubectl version
kubectl get nodes
```

### 4. Bootstrapping the GitOps setup

While waiting for the infrastructure to be created, we can start filling in configuration necessary to set up
Flux on our cluster.

#### 4.1. Generating GPG key and configuring sops

First, we have to configure an encryption tool, that will help us to store all the secrets in the repository
in an encrypted form, but one that is still automatically decrypted on the cluster.

Switch to the repo root folder.

If you don't have a ready GPG key,
[here's a more detailed manual by GitHub about how to create one](https://docs.github.com/en/authentication/managing-commit-signature-verification/).

If you just want a kick-start, generate a new key with

```txt
gpg --full-generate-key
```

Save its key fingerprint that is printed out when the key is ready (and remove space between all the
4-characters blocks). We will use your GPG key with `sops` tool, that will encrypt the secrets for use with
Flux. Now, copy the `sops` config from template:

```sh
cp .sops.yaml.tpl .sops.yaml
```

then edit the file and paste your key fingerprint.

Next, save the private key to your cluster _without putting the key into the repo_:

```txt
kubectl create ns flux-system
gpg --export-secret-keys --armor "[KEY_FINGERPRINT]" |
kubectl create secret generic sops-gpg \
--namespace=flux-system \
--from-file=sops.asc=/dev/stdin
```

#### 4.2. Create a slack profile

This step is not really necessary, but it's very useful. Here we'll create a free slack profile, where we can
receive notifications from Flux and from our monitoring setup. Slack notifications are pretty easy to set up
and still can be completely free, but obviously feel free to change this step later.

First, [create a new slack profile](https://slack.com/get-started#/createnew). Then, create and save slack's
webhook URL using [this instruction](https://api.slack.com/messaging/webhooks).

#### 4.3. Preparing secrets

In the configuration repo, there are many secrets needed, usually passwords to different applications
deployed. All files that need editing and filling in some secrets have file names ending with `.tpl.enc`.

For each such file (see list below), you have to repeat the same procedure:

- copy the file into the same name, but without the `.tpl.enc` suffix
- fill in required secrets, remember to base64-encode them, for example `echo "MY_GRAFANA_PASS" | base64 -w 0`
- **do not put the files into the repo yet, they are still plain-text**
- encrypt the file with the command `sops -i -e flux/[FILE].yaml`
- only now add your secrets are ready to be included in the GitOps repo

You need to process the following files with secrets:

- ./flux-modules/flux-system-extra/github-api-token-secret.yaml.tpl.enc - paste your GitHub PAT again, so Flux
  can report back the status of your commits
- ./flux-modules/flux-system-extra/slack-flux-notification-url-secret.yaml.tpl.enc - enter here the Slack
  webhook you created earlier
- ./flux-modules/monitoring/alertmanager-slack-api-secret.yaml.tpl.enc - again, include the Slack webhook URL
- ./flux-modules/monitoring/prom-stack-grafana-pass-secret.yaml.tpl.enc - create a user password for the
  Grafana web UI

**Optional:** If you want to enable `external-dns` for automatic DNS record management via Cloudflare:

1. Copy `flux-modules/kube-system/external-dns-secret.yaml.tmpl` to
   `flux-modules/kube-system/external-dns-secret.yaml`
2. Fill in your Cloudflare API token as the base64-encoded value of `apiKey`
3. Encrypt the file: `sops -i -e flux-modules/kube-system/external-dns-secret.yaml`
4. Uncomment `external-dns-secret.yaml` in `flux-modules/kube-system/kustomization.yaml`
5. Edit `domainFilters` in `flux-modules/kube-system/external-dns-helmrelease.yaml` to set your domain
6. Add the annotation `external-dns: "enabled"` to any `HTTPRoute` you want DNS records created for

Additionally, you have to edit `postBuild` section of a few files to give information like your DNS name for
hosting the cluster or admin's email address (required for `letsencrypt`). The files you need to edit are:

- flux-modules/flux-system-extra/kustomization-flux-system-extra.yaml
- flux-modules/kube-system-extra/kustomization-kube-system-extra.yaml
- flux-modules/monitoring/kustomization-monitoring.yaml
- flux-modules/extras/wireguard/kustomization-wireguard.yaml
- flux-modules/extras/wireguard/kustomization-wireguard-pre.yaml

#### 4.4. Bootstrap Flux

Start by reading the
[official documentation about bootstrapping Flux with Flux Operator](https://fluxcd.control-plane.io/operator/).

Flux is bootstrapped by the
[`flux-operator-bootstrap` module](https://github.com/controlplaneio-fluxcd/terraform-kubernetes-flux-operator-bootstrap),
which runs an ephemeral in-cluster Job that installs the Flux Operator and applies the `FluxInstance`, then
hands ownership over to Flux. A single `tofu apply` does everything - no separate targeted step is needed:

```sh
# run from the tf/ directory
tofu apply -var git_token="$GH_TOKEN"
```

Running

```sh
kubectl -n flux-system get deploy
```

should show you that the `flux-operator` deployment is up and running (`Ready: 1/1`), and

```sh
kubectl -n flux-system get fluxinstance
```

should show the `flux` instance becoming `Ready`. Flux will then deploy all the applications from your GitOps
repository.

Make sure that the `tofu` run is complete. Now, you can commit everything into your GitOps repository and push
the changes, adding all the created terraform and \*.yaml files to your repo. Check that all the files are in,
especially `tofu` state files:

- tf/terraform.tfstate
- tf/terraform.tfstate.backup
- tf/variables-private.tf
- .terraform.lock.hcl

```sh
git commit -am "cluster bootstrap commit"
git push
```

Your work should be done now! From now on, Flux takes over and adjusts your cluster configuration exactly as
in your GitOps repository on GitHub.

You can check the status of the most important object by running the following commands:

```sh
kubectl get gitrepository -A
kubectl get kustomization -A
```

### 5. Next steps

Your cluster is ready. Now you can either forget about the repository you cloned (not recommended, but totally
possible) and modify your repository however you like. Or you can read on
[keeping track and contributing back](#synchronizing-with-source-repository-and-providing-pull-requests).

## Configuring the repository to run automatic Flux upgrade job

## Synchronizing with source repository and providing pull requests

After you bootstrap your own repository, you can forget about the one you forked it from. Still, it is
beneficial to be able to get upstream changes, including new versions and new modules. Below is information
useful in tracking and contributing to the upstream repository.

### Fetching changes from the upstream repository

It is recommended to setup additional git source repository, then fetch and merge the changes with your
selected branch:

```sh
git remote add upstream https://github.com/piontec/free-oci-kubernetes.git  # run only once, if you don't have the upstream definition yet
git fetch upstream main
git merge upstream/main
```

Now you might need to resolve any potential merge conflicts. Once that's done, review the changes and you
should be ready to push them to your branch for Flux to pick-up.

### Preparing pull requests

It's best if you prepare a small and scoped PR. Please make also sure, that your code complies to `pre-commit`
linting tests. To make it run automatically for you, install [pre-commit](https://pre-commit.com/), then run:

```txt
pre-commit install --install-hooks
```

From now on, all the commits will automatically validated.

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