Is the GCP/AWS free tier sufficient for the lab exercises?

ChihitoX

I just signed up for this course and wanted to ask those who've gone through it, or the administrators. From your experience, is the GCP/AWS free tier sufficient for the lab exercises?

fcioanca

Hi, the labs were designed in such a way that they can be done on a free tier without issues.

ChihitoX

Thank you. That should make life a little simpler.

serewicz

I have found that the free tier is not powerful enough for the master node with v1.12. In the Overview of lab 3 (installation) you'll find it says 3vCPU and 5G for the master server, with 1vCPU and 5G minimal for the worker node if using VirtualBox. My testing shows you can use 2vCPU and 7.5G on GCE and not have issues.

I think you'll find the containers on the master node have OOM errors and never fully run. While it may work for you, be aware you may find other issues due to lack of resources.

Regards,

chrispokorni

On GCP you receive a "credit" of a certain amount for 1 year. Your usage for the "free tier 1 year" is billed against that credit. If you are not cautious about your usage, you will run out of credit pretty fast. I used to stop my instances as soon as I was done working on them, to avoid wasting my credits. I used the 2 vCPU instances and I was ok for an entire year.

-Chris