You may have received a promo/feature code when you attended a conference, meetup, or hackathon, but you have no experience with IBM Cloud yet, and you want to access the free Kubernetes cluster in the IBM Cloud as soon as possible, because you can use the cluster for your own “playing” and “testing”.

To create a the free Kubernetes cluster you need a “trial” (no credit card needed) or a “pay as you go” (credit card needed) IBM Cloud Account. You activate an IBM Cloud trial account with your promo/feature code. In both cases you can use the  free Kubernetes cluster.

The remaining usual questions are:

• How to enter a promo/feature code?
• How to instantiate a free Kubernetes Cluster ?

I created a short youtube video related to these questions below.

If you don’t want to watch the video, these are the simple three steps you have to follow:

1. Register at IBM Cloud:

• Register yourself on IBM Cloud with the link you got on your feature/promo code or register here on IBM Cloud.

2. Insert a promo/feature code:

• New instructions are here:
  • … my blog post: How to enter your promo code in the newer IBM Cloud UI? (UPDATE)
  • … or on the IBM Cloud documentation

• FYI: No longer valid:
  • Select “Manage->Billing” in the menu on the IBM Cloud WebUI
  • Insert your promo code

3. Create a free Kubernetes Cluster:

• Select the Kubernetes service from the catalog and press free cluster.
  
• Give the cluster a name like cloud-native
• Press create
• Follow the instructions in the “Access” tab, to access your cluster with kubectl from your local pc.
  

That’s all.

When you start with IBM Cloud you educate yourself with the badge IBM Cloud Essentials related to IBM Cloud before you access the IBM Cloud. BTW, this way would be the best choice ;-). With IBM Cloud Essentials  you have free education and an official badge.

I hope this was useful for you and let’s see what’s next?

Greetings,

Thomas

PS: By the way, you can use the IBM Cloud for free, if you simply create an IBM Lite account. Here you only need an e-mail address.

#ibmdeveloper, #ibmcloud, #featurecode, #promocode, #trial, #free