Arnes Tech Stuff: Setup Oracle Base Database Service in OCI

This is the first step in my The Oracle Database Developer OCI Environment series We begin with setting up the required networking, then the Base Database Service and test the connection.

Create a Virtual Compute Network (VCN)

Navigate to Networking|Virtual Cloud Networks.

In Networking|Virtual Cloud Networks choose Actions|Start VCN Wizard.

Select Create VCN with Internet Connectivity and Start VCN Wizard.

As long as you don’t need something else, mostly go with the defaults. Give it a name, choose your compartment and a CIDR block.

The public and private subnet address ranges derived from the VCN range should be fine, click Next.
Double check, click Create and View VCN.

Go to the Security tab and click on the Default Security List to edit it.

Go to the Security rules tab and select Add Ingress Rules.

Select your Source CIDR and enter 1521 for the Destination Port Range. Important: leave the Source Port Range empty. Give it a name and finish

The new rule should appear in the list and should look like the one for SSH, except for the name and port.

Create Database Base service

Navigate to Oracle Database|Oracle Base Database Service.

Click on Create DB system.

For most settings, I go with the defaults but YMMV, so adapt the settings to your needs.

Give it a name, the compartment should be pre-selected. Adapt the shape and Edition to your like.

Upload your existing SSH public key or let OCI create you a new key pair. When you download a new key pair, save it to the .ssh folder in your home directory (any OS), for example on my Windows desktop it is

C:\Users\Arne\.ssh

Choose your preferred license type.

Select the newly created VCN and subnet. We use the public subnet to have SQLNet access via the internet, equivalent to what we would have with a shared Autonomous Database. For a production environment, you should consider creating the database in a private subnet. Enter a hostname prefix

Change the database name, if you don’t like the auto generated one.

As you probably want to use 23ai, click on Change database image.

When you switch on Display all available versions, you will see that 23.7. is the latest image at the time of writing, though 23.8. is already out. Take this image, we will upgrade it later.

Name the PDB and enter your new password. Disable b ackups, if you don’t need them. Then click on Create.

To watch the progress, click on Work requests.

When finished, switch to the Nodes tab and note down the public IP address.

Connect to instance and check database

Connect via ssh

When you have more than one ssh key pair in your .ssh directory, create a config file to assign the keys to different servers. Create or edit your ~/.ssh/config file and add a new entry like this:

Host <your-public-IP-address>

User "opc"

IdentityFile c:\Users\<your-user-name>\.ssh\ssh-key-2025-04-23.key

eg.

Replace ssh-key-2025-04-23.key with your key file name.

Next connect to your instance via ssh by running:

ssh opc@<your-public-IP-address>

You should immediately be connected to your virtual machine as user opc. Change user to oracle.

If you get prompted for a password when running the ssh command, most probably something is wrong with your files in the .ssh folder. Double check key pair and config files.

First connect to the database

As user oracle take a first look at your database: