Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Documentation

Using the Console

This topic provides basic information about the Oracle Cloud Console. To access the Console, you must use a supported browser.

About the Console Home Page

When you sign in to the Console, you see the home page.

Features of the home page

The home page offers features for both new and experienced users. For new users, the Get Started tab provides features to help you start learning about and working with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. The Dashboard tab supports widgets to help you quickly access and monitor your resources and billing usage.

Features of the Get Started Tab

The Get Started tab includes features that are particularly helpful for new users or users who want to jump in and quickly create common resources.

Quick Actions

Use the Quick Actions tiles to navigate directly to common tasks, like creating a VM instance, setting up a network with a wizard, and setting up a load balancer. Use these links to set up your environment.

Start Exploring

The Start Exploring section provides links to tutorials, developer tools, and blogs that demonstrate how to use Oracle Cloud Infrastructure to build solutions.

  • In the Get Started category, find introductory materials that you can use to learn more about basics, such as information about virtual training classes, key concepts, and introductory demos.
  • In the Deploy Websites & Apps category, find tutorials that leverage both basic and more advanced features available to build solutions.
  • In the Explore Developer Tools category, explore the developer kits, tools, and plug-ins that you can use to facilitate the development of apps and to simplify the management of infrastructure.
  • In the Manage Bills category, learn about the billing and payment tools that to help you manage your service costs.

Features of the Dashboard Tab

The Dashboard tab includes widgets you can use to explore your resources and billing usage.

The Resource Explorer and Billing widget on the Dashboard tab

Get an Overview of All Your Resources with the Resource Explorer

Use the resource explorer to get an overview of the number and types of resources that exist in a selected compartment and region.

To use the resource explorer to find resources:

  1. On the Console home page, click the Dashboard tab.
  2. The resource explorer displays the list of services and count of resources in the selected compartment  and region . By default, the root compartment is selected. To view another compartment, select it from the compartment picker.
  3. Expand the entry for a service to see the count for each resource-type within the service.
  4. To see more information about a resource-type in the list, click the resource-type to open the detailed list. To navigate directly to a specific resource in the list, click the Display Name.

Monitor Your Usage with the Billing Widget

Administrators and users with appropriate permissions can view the billing widget. The billing widget lets you quickly view your current charges or usage and the days elapsed in your billing cycle. Your view depends on your account type.

  • Pay-as-you-go customers see the current charges and the numbers of days elapsed in the current billing cycle.
  • Universal credit customers see the total credits used and number of days elapsed in the credit period.
  • Trial customers see the total credits used and number of days elapsed in the trial period.

To get a more detailed view of your spending, click the Analyze Costs link to go to the Cost Analysis tool where you can generate charts and reports of aggregated cost data for your Oracle Cloud Infrastructure consumption. If your account is a free tier or promotional trial account, you'll see an option to Upgrade your account. If you have a paid account, you'll see the option to Manage payment method to view or change your payment method.

Navigating to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Services

Open the navigation menu in the upper left to work with services and resources. Services and resources are organized by functional group. For example, to work with Compute service instances: Open the navigation menu. Under Core Infrastructure, go to Compute and click Instances.

Switching Regions

Your current region is displayed at the top of the Console. If your tenancy is subscribed to multiple regions, you can switch regions by selecting a different region from the Region menu.

Image of the Console with the region selector highlighted.

Working Across Regions

When working within a service, the Console displays resources that are in the currently selected region. So if your tenancy has instances in CompartmentA in US West (Phoenix), and instances in CompartmentA in US East (Ashburn), you can only view the instances in one region at a time, even though the instances are in the same compartment.

Using the following figure as an example, if you select US West (Phoenix) and then select CompartmentA, you see instances 1 and 2 listed. To see instances 3 and 4 in the Console, you must switch to US East (Ashburn) (and then you no longer see instances 1 and 2).

Conceptual rendering of a compartment with instances in different regions

To view resources across regions that are in a specific compartment, you can use the tenancy explorer.

IAM resources (compartments, users, groups, policies, tags, and federation providers) are global, so you can see those resources no matter which region you have selected in the Console.

Switching Languages

The Console automatically detects the language setting in your browser. However, if you want to view the Console in a different language, you can change it by using the language selector in the Console.

Image of the Console with the language selector highlighted.

The language selector supports the following languages:

Supported Languages
  • Chinese (Simplified)
  • Chinese (Traditional)
  • Croatian
  • Czech
  • Danish
  • Dutch
  • English
  • Finnish
  • French (Canada)
  • French (Europe)
  • German
  • Greek
  • Hungarian
  • Italian
  • Japanese
  • Korean
  • Norwegian
  • Polish
  • Portuguese (Brazil)
  • Portuguese (Portugal)
  • Romanian
  • Russian
  • Serbian
  • Slovak
  • Slovenian
  • Spanish
  • Swedish
  • Thai
  • Turkish

The language you choose persists between sessions. However, the language setting is specific to the browser. If you change to a different browser, the Console displays text in the language last selected in the language selector. If it's the first time you're viewing the Console in a particular browser, the Console displays content according to the browser's language setting.

Chat Online with an Oracle Representative

If you signed up for an Oracle Cloud Free Trial, use the online chat to get help. If you’ve purchased Oracle Cloud services, it’s recommended that you use My Oracle Support to get help.

To start a live online chat with an Oracle Support or Sales representative, click the Live Chat icon at the top of the Console.

Follow the prompts in the chat box to interact with an Oracle agent.

Understanding Compartments

After you select a service from the navigation menu, the menu on the left includes the compartments list.

Compartments help you organize resources to make it easier to control access to them. Your root compartment is created for you by Oracle when your tenancy is provisioned. An administrator can create more compartments in the root compartment and then add the access rules to control which users can see and take action in them. To manage compartments, see Managing Compartments.

The list of compartments is filtered to show you only the compartments that you have permission to access. Compartments can be nested, and you might have access to a compartment but not its parent. The names of parent compartments that you don't have permission to access are dimmed, but you can traverse the hierarchy down to the compartment that you do have access to.

Compartments list

After you select a compartment, the Console displays only the resources that you have permission to view in the compartment for the region that you are in. The compartment selection filters the view of your resources. To see resources in another compartment, you must switch to that compartment. To see resources in another region, you must switch to that region, or use the tenancy explorer.

For more details about compartments, see Setting Up Your Tenancy and Managing Compartments.

Filtering the Displayed List of Resources

To help you locate a resource, some resources let you filter the list that is displayed.

Filters include:

State: You can display only the resources that are in the state you select. Valid values for state can vary by resource. Examples are:

  • Any state - includes all lifecycle states for the resource
  • Available
  • Provisioning
  • Terminating
  • Terminated

Availability Domain: For resources that reside in a single availability domain , you can limit the list to the resources that reside in the availability domains you select. For a list of availability domain-specific resources, see Resource Availability.

Tags: Resources that support tagging let you filter the list by tags.

To filter a list of resources by a defined tag
  1. Next to Tag Filters, click add.
  2. In the Apply a Tag Filter dialog, enter the following:
    1. Namespace: Select the tag namespace.
    2. Key: Select a specific key.
    3. Value: Select from the following:
      • Match Any Value - returns all resources tagged with the selected namespace and key, regardless of the tag value.
      • Match Any of the Following - returns resources with the tag value you enter in the text box. Enter a single value in the text box. To specify multiple values for the same namespace and key, click + to display another text box. Enter one value per text box.
    4. Click Apply Filter.
To filter a list of resources by a free-form tag
  1. Next to Tag Filters, click add.
  2. In the Apply a Tag Filter dialog, enter the following:
    1. Key: Enter the tag key.
    2. Value: Select from the following:
      • Match Any Value - returns all resources tagged with the selected free-form tag key, regardless of the tag value.
      • Match Any of the Following - returns resources with the tag value you enter in the text box. Enter a single value in the text box. To specify multiple values for the same key, click + to display another text box. Enter one value per text box.
    3. Click Apply Filter.

Signing Out

To sign out of the Console, open the Profile menu (User menu icon) and then click Sign Out.