Last updated on 4th March 2026

Deploying to Oracle Cloud via DeployHQ: Automated Cloud Deployment

Deploying to your site hosted on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is very simple with DeployHQ. OCI is the fourth-largest cloud provider globally, offering compute instances with full SSH access.

Firstly, you'll need to set up your DeployHQ project, then connect to your OCI instance.

Setting up your project

Head to the Projects screen in DeployHQ, then click the New Project button to get started.

You'll be prompted to enter a name for your project, then select where your repository is hosted.

New Project

Next, click Create project and you'll be taken to a screen where you can log in with your repository hosting account to authorise access and then choose your repository.

Setting up Oracle Cloud

Once you've configured your repository, you'll need to connect to your OCI compute instance.

Finding your instance details

Log in to the OCI Console
Navigate to Compute > Instances
Click your instance name — the Public IP address is shown in the Instance Access section

Default SSH users

OCI uses different default usernames depending on the OS image:

OS Image	Username
Oracle Linux	`opc`
CentOS	`opc`
Ubuntu	`ubuntu`

Root login is disabled on all images. All default users have sudo privileges.

Adding the SSH key

OCI instances use SSH key authentication only — there are no passwords. You'll need to add DeployHQ's public key to the instance.

Copy the SSH public key from DeployHQ's server configuration page, then SSH into your instance and add it:

echo "DEPLOYHQ_PUBLIC_KEY" >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

Adding the server in DeployHQ

Head to Servers & Groups, and click the New Server button at the top of the screen. If you've just added your repository, you will have been taken to this page automatically.

Start by entering a name, and choosing SSH/SFTP as the protocol. Enter your instance's Public IP as the hostname, the correct username for your OS (e.g. opc or ubuntu), and leave the port blank to use the default (22). Enable the option to Use SSH Key rather than password for authentication.

For the deployment path, enter the directory where your files should be uploaded. Common paths:

Apache: /var/www/html/
Nginx: /usr/share/nginx/html/
Custom app: /var/www/your-domain/

No web server is pre-installed on OCI instances — you'll need to install Apache or Nginx yourself before deploying.

Within Deployment options, you can choose to automatically deploy your server and, if you're only deploying files from a certain directory in your repository, enter a Deployment subdirectory.

Important: OCI has a two-layer firewall. The cloud-level Security List allows SSH (port 22) by default, but the instance's OS-level firewall may block other traffic. If DeployHQ cannot connect, check both layers. Also ensure DeployHQ's IP addresses are permitted in your Security List.

Click Create Server to finish, then you can proceed to start your first deployment.

Run your first deployment

By default, DeployHQ will upload the whole repository to your server on the first deployment, because there is no previously deployed commit to compare to.

If your files are already on your OCI instance and up to date with the latest commit, you can follow this guide to skip that first deployment:

Don't deploy your whole repository on the first deployment

Otherwise, just follow this guide to start your first deployment, then after the first deployment, only files that have changed will be uploaded in future.

Running your first deployment

That's it! You've now set up and run your first deployment to your Oracle Cloud instance and your future changes will be uploaded for you automatically, or at the simple click of a button.