The OCI CLI is a small-footprint tool that you can use on its own or with the Oracle Cloud Console to complete Oracle Cloud Infrastructure tasks. The OCI CLI provides the same core functionality as the Console, plus additional commands. Some of these, such as the ability to run scripts, extend Console functionality.

In this blog, we will use OCI CLI command line tool to create "Always Free" autonomous database. Then, we will use the tool to stop, start, and delete the autonomous database.

Prerequisites:
- An Oracle cloud fee trial or paid account.
- Installed and configured OCI CLI client. I have OCI client installed and configured on Linux virtual machine.

Create Always Free Autonomous Database

To create new autonomous database, we use command "oci db autonomous-database create [options]". There are required and optional parameters to run the command.

Use command "oci db autonomous-database create --help" to get command's reference.

-- is-free-tier parameter indicates if this is an Always Free resource. The default value is false. Note that Always Free Autonomous Databases have 1 CPU and 20GB of memory. For Always Free databases, memory and CPU cannot be scaled.

The main parameters to define:
--compartment-id: The OCID of the compartment of the Autonomous Database.
--db-name: The database name. The name must begin with an alphabetic character and can contain a maximum of 14 alphanumeric characters. Special characters are not permitted. The database name must be unique in the tenancy.
--display-name: The user-friendly name for the Autonomous Database. The name does not have to be unique.
--db-workload: The Autonomous Database workload type. Accepted values are: OLTP, DW, APEX, AJD
--admin-password: Autonomous Database admin password.

Once you execute the command, go to OCI console and navigate to "Oracle Database > Autonomous", you can see new always free autonomous database in Processing state as shown below.