[Updated] Creating a Free Blog on OCI

Shahvaiz Janjua

• 8 min read
[Updated] Creating a Free Blog on OCI

In this updated article we'll walkthrough the steps to create a free blog hosted on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, utilising Oracle's very generous Ampere A1 instance which gives you 4 OCPUs (8 Threads) & 24GB RAM for FREE. We'll be also be using the Always Free Network Load Balancer & Bastion Service. We'll first have a very short introduction into the various components involved in this setup, then look at the process and start getting to work! Feel free to skip the theory and jump to whatever section you're interested in.

Components:

Components Involved:

  • OCI - Network Load Balancer
  • OCI - A1 Ampere Compute Instance
  • OCI - Bastion Service
  • OCI - Other Core Networking (VCN, Subnet, Internet & NAT Gateway etc)
  • Ghost
  • Lets Encrypt
  • NoIP

Explanation of some Components Involved:

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

Oracle Cloud Free Tier offers Always Free services, which includes a Compute VM which we'll use to host our free website

OCI - Network Load Balancer

Network Load Balancer provides the benefits of flow high availability, source and destination IP addresses, and port preservation. It is designed to handle volatile traffic patterns and millions of flows, offering high throughput while maintaining ultra low latency. Network load balancers have a default 1 million concurrent connection limit. Network Load Balancer is the ideal load balancing solution for latency sensitive workloads.

Ghost

Ghost is a free, opensource and simple web application from which you can create and manage your blog and contents. It has the combined advantage of automatically configuring nginx as a reverse proxy and for HTTPS, as well as obtaining the SSL Certificate and making a crontab entry to automatically renew these certificates.

Let's Encrypt

Let's Encrypt is a free, opensource and automated Certificate Authority. Let's Encrypt offer FREE SSL/TLS Certificates! They are only valid for 90 days, but can simply be renewed.

NoIP

NoIP offer free hostnames under select few domains, they also provide you with complete control over the DNS records for that hostname, so we can the website address directly to our Free OCI VM

Process & Architecture

Process

The process itself is quite straight forward. First we'll setup the underlying infrastructure in OCI to support the provisioning of our Free VM. We'll then Create and Configure the domain and DNS and point it to our OCI VM (This must be done before configuring Ghost in order to obtain and configure SSL Certs). We'll then finish up by installing Ghost!

Architecture

The architecture is quite straight forward. We have a Public Subnet and a Private Subnet. The Network Load Balancer, which resides in the Public Subnet and has a Public IP, will receive HTTPS traffic from Public Internet and will direct it to the Private Compute instance, inside the Private Subnet, hosting our blogging software.

The Compute Instance in a Private Subnet is not directly accessible via Public Internet, for security reasons. The Compute Instance can however talk out to the internet via NAT Gateway in order to obtain required software and updates. We'll utilise the free Bastion Service to access the private Compute Instance to perform our admin tasks.

Tutorial

If you don't already have an OCI tenancy then go and grab your Always Free account...

Create Networking

To speed things a long we'll use the Network Wizard; which we can select from the Launch resources window in Get Started tab in the Home Screen


  • Ensure "Create VCN with Internet Connectivity" is selected
  • Click "Start VCN Wizard"

Fill in all of the information pertaining to our VCN setup

Enter the VCN Name and Populate the VCN CIDR Block and Subnet CIDRs. Click "Next"

Review the Networking Information, Click "Create"

Networking Resources will be provisioned and can be viewed once Provisioning is completed

Update Security Rules

When viewing the VCN, navigate through the following;

  • Click "Security Lists" under "Resources"
  • Click on the private subnet security list
  • Select first line (with TCP Protocol & Destination Port 22)
  • Click Edit
  • Append Destination Port Range with ",443,80"
  • Click Save changes

Create Compute Instance

Select Create VM from the Launch resources window in Get Started tab in the Home Screen, then fill out the VM configuration information;

  • Change the image to Canonical Ubuntu 20.04
  • Change the shape VM.Standard.A1.Flex with 4 OCPUs & 24 GB memory
  • Ensure you select the private subnet for the Subnet of the Primary VNIC
Download the SSH keys or upload your own, then click Create

Create Network Load Balancer

Select "Set up a load balancer" from the Launch resources window in Get Started tab in the Home Screen

Click "Create network load balancer" populate the require information

Ensure you select the public subnet under "Choose networking". Click "Next"
Select "TCP", "Use any port" will be selected by default. Click "Next"
Add your Compute as a backend. Under "Specify health check policy" change the Protocol to "TCP" and the Port to "22". Click Next, review and Create the Network Loadbalancer

Create Bastion

Click on the Hamburger symbol on the top left of the console.
Under "Identity & Security", click "Bastion" and then "Create Bastion"

Provide a name and select the VCN and private Subnet, allow 0.0.0.0/0 or your computers public IP/32 in the CIDR allowlist

Once the Bastion service is created, click on the service and click "Create session"

provide a username, select the compute instance we created and upload an SSH key

Once the session is created, copy the SSH command

Click on the 3 dots on the right side of the Session and click "Copy SSH command"

Save this command

ssh -i <privateKey> -N -L <localPort>:10.0.1.222:22 -p 22 ocid1.bastionsession.oc1.eu-frankfurt-1.amaaaaaaztrrnmqaba365sr2ckqrmedj3gxuazdlprxexfxvtacjhej2dxda@host.bastion.eu-frankfurt-1.oci.oraclecloud.com

Create & Configure Domain

Head over to https://www.noip.com/ and grab your free domain

Create an A record for your domain

Ensure your IPv4 Address is the Network Loadbalancer Public IP

Install Ghost

Connect to VM

Let's look at the SSH command we copied

ssh -i <privateKey> -N -L <localPort>:10.0.1.222:22 -p 22 ocid1.bastionsession.oc1.eu-frankfurt-1.amaaaaaaztrrnmqaba365sr2ckqrmedj3gxuazdlprxexfxvtacjhej2dxda@host.bastion.eu-frankfurt-1.oci.oraclecloud.com

All we need to do to setup an SSH tunnel is give it the private key location and a local port. Execute this command

ssh -i sjanjua_rsa.ppk -N -L 9500:10.0.1.222:22 -p 22 ocid1.bastionsession.oc1.eu-frankfurt-1.amaaaaaaztrrnmqaba365sr2ckqrmedj3gxuazdlprxexfxvtacjhej2dxda@host.bastion.eu-frankfurt-1.oci.oraclecloud.com

You can then SSH into them

ssh ubuntu@localhost -p 9500

Ghost Setup

Now let's start with the Ghost setup installation.

sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt update

Perform an update of the packages

sudo iptables -I INPUT 5 -p tcp --dport 80 -j ACCEPT
sudo iptables -I INPUT 5 -p tcp --dport 443 -j ACCEPT
sudo iptables-save | sudo tee /etc/iptables/rules.v4

Open up the OS Firewall for ports 80 and 443

sudo adduser ghostusr
sudo usermod -aG sudo ghostusr
sudo su - ghostusr

Create a user for Ghost install, allow the user access to sudo

sudo apt install cron
sudo apt-get install nginx
sudo apt-get install mysql-server
sudo apt-get install build-essential

Install cron, nginx and mysql-server. We'll also install build-essential to avoid an error during ghost install

sudo mysql

Login to mysql

alter user 'root'@'localhost' identified with mysql_native_password by 'oracle99';
quit;

Set the root user password

curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_18.x | sudo -E bash
sudo apt-get install -y nodejs

Install nodejs

sudo npm install ghost-cli@latest -g

Install Ghost CLI

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/ghost
sudo chown ghostusr:ghostusr /var/www/ghost
sudo chmod 775 /var/www/ghost
cd /var/www/ghost

Create a directory to host the Ghost Instance

Run the Ghost installation. You'll need to provide the URL, mysql details and an email address.

Answer Yes to all responses

ghost install 
✔ Checking system Node.js version - found v14.20.0
✔ Checking logged in user
✔ Checking current folder permissions
✔ Checking system compatibility
✔ Checking for a MySQL installation
✔ Checking memory availability
✔ Checking free space
✔ Checking for latest Ghost version
✔ Setting up install directory
✔ Downloading and installing Ghost v5.12.0
✔ Finishing install process
? Enter your blog URL: https://highoncloud.ddns.net
? Enter your MySQL hostname: localhost
? Enter your MySQL username: root
? Enter your MySQL password: [hidden]
? Enter your Ghost database name: ghostdb
✔ Configuring Ghost
✔ Setting up instance
+ sudo chown -R ghost:ghost /var/www/ghost/content
✔ Setting up "ghost" system user
? Do you wish to set up "ghost" mysql user? Yes
✔ Setting up "ghost" mysql user
? Do you wish to set up Nginx? Yes
+ sudo mv /tmp/highoncloud-ddns-net/highoncloud.ddns.net.conf /etc/nginx/sites-available/highoncloud.ddns.net.conf
+ sudo ln -sf /etc/nginx/sites-available/highoncloud.ddns.net.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/highoncloud.ddns.net.conf
+ sudo nginx -s reload
✔ Setting up Nginx
? Do you wish to set up SSL? Yes
? Enter your email (For SSL Certificate) sjspm1@gmail.com
+ sudo /etc/letsencrypt/acme.sh --upgrade --home /etc/letsencrypt
+ sudo /etc/letsencrypt/acme.sh --issue --home /etc/letsencrypt --server letsencrypt --domain highoncloud.ddns.net --webroot /var/www/ghost/system/nginx-root --reloadcmd "nginx -s reload" --accountemail sjspm1@gmail.com
+ sudo openssl dhparam -dsaparam -out /etc/nginx/snippets/dhparam.pem 2048
+ sudo mv /tmp/ssl-params.conf /etc/nginx/snippets/ssl-params.conf
+ sudo mv /tmp/highoncloud-ddns-net/highoncloud.ddns.net-ssl.conf /etc/nginx/sites-available/highoncloud.ddns.net-ssl.conf
+ sudo ln -sf /etc/nginx/sites-available/highoncloud.ddns.net-ssl.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/highoncloud.ddns.net-ssl.conf
+ sudo nginx -s reload
✔ Setting up SSL
? Do you wish to set up Systemd? Yes
+ sudo mv /tmp/highoncloud-ddns-net/ghost_highoncloud-ddns-net.service /lib/systemd/system/ghost_highoncloud-ddns-net.service
+ sudo systemctl daemon-reload
✔ Setting up Systemd
+ sudo systemctl is-active ghost_highoncloud-ddns-net
? Do you want to start Ghost? Yes
+ sudo systemctl start ghost_highoncloud-ddns-net
+ sudo systemctl is-enabled ghost_highoncloud-ddns-net
+ sudo systemctl enable ghost_highoncloud-ddns-net --quiet
✔ Starting Ghost

Ghost uses direct mail by default. To set up an alternative email method read our docs at https://ghost.org/docs/config/#mail

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Ghost was installed successfully! To complete setup of your publication, visit:

    https://highoncloud.ddns.net/ghost/

Checkout your new site!