🌐 Expanding to Multi-Cloud: Provisioning Oracle Linux 10 on Google Cloud's $0 Always Free Tier & Joining K3s
Why settle for one free cloud provider when you can build an automated, resilient multi-cloud Kubernetes cluster across Oracle Cloud (OCI) and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) — completely for $0/month? In this post, I walk through the end-to-end process of: Provisioning an Oracle Linux Server 10.1 instance on Google Cloud’s Always Free Tier (gce10). Applying kernel and daemon memory hardening to reclaim ~250 MB of RAM. Joining gce10 as a worker node into our central K3s Kubernetes cluster across a secure WireGuard mesh. Running a head-to-head performance benchmark comparing Apple Silicon M1, OCI Ampere ARM (arm10), GCP Intel Xeon (gce10), and OCI AMD EPYC (amd10/amd11). 🏛️ 1. Multi-Cloud K3s Kubernetes Fleet Architecture Our fleet previously lived entirely in OCI Tokyo. Adding gce10 in GCP Iowa (us-central1) creates a geo-distributed cross-cloud presence with a dedicated US edge outpost. ...