Production Infrastructure: Hetzner VPS vs. Oracle Cloud ARM Free Tier Nodes

Let's talk infrastructure cost optimization. If you're running side projects, microservices, or custom game servers, the hardware landscape has changed drastically.

Oracle Cloud's Ampere A1 Compute instances offer up to 4 ARM CPUs and 24GB of RAM completely free, which is unbelievable for hosting lightweight databases, Node.js backends, or Dockerized toolchains. However, provisioning them can feel like playing a lottery due to regional capacity limits.

On the other hand, Hetzner's AMD-backed VPS nodes offer unbeatable predictable pricing, stellar network routing in Europe, and absolute rock-solid reliability for production web apps.

How is everyone managing deployments across these? Are you using Docker Swarm, raw Nginx reverse proxies with HestiaCP, or spinning up full Kubernetes clusters for simple projects?