Language warning.
Documented my journey backing up my Oracle Cloud server. With their latest changes to always free, I don’t think my instance will last very long. This isn’t a tutorial, there are probably many much better ways to do this.
nfs over the internet is usually bad idea. Network delays is killer for NFS. You can use ssh instead. And add some mbuff for better results.
I’m completely with you regarding ssh/scp
But I don’t know what you mean with mbuff (guess, memory buffer?)
Haven’t found anything with a quick search, but as I often need ssh/scp to work through customer VPNs, everything that makes that faster or more stable is a very welcomed thing :-)
I’ve done similar things with ssh pipe tunneling and dd ala:
, dd if=/dev/sda | ssh user@host “dd of=/some/other/file/or/disk” ,
Should really do it while the root is ro, but in a pinch this will mostly be ok on a quiet machine.
You might be able to run rsync afterwards to spot check if you are paranoid.
If you didn’t need block level I would have suggested just using rsync or rclone.
I only use this really to get a free public ipv4. (Since not all clients support ipv6 only) Is there any other free/better way to get an ipv4?
What changes are they making to always free?
Cut the free SKU in half.
https://terminalbytes.com/oracle-cloud-free-tier-changes-2026/
