Guides - Change Plans (Resize)

Changing a Compute Instances plan (and plan type) is made easy through the Cloud Manger. This includes upgrading to a larger plan or downgrading to a smaller plan. If you’re expecting a temporary burst of traffic to your website, or if you’re not using your plan’s resource allotment as much as you thought, you can temporarily or permanently resize your instance.

What to Expect

• You can upgrade your Compute Instance to a larger plan, downgrade to a smaller plan, or even change to a different plan type (such as switching from a Shared CPU plan to a Dedicated CPU plan).

• While resizing a Compute Instance, it is powered off and migrated to a different physical host within the same data center. This new host may have slightly different hardware, though performance is consistent across our entire fleet.

• The disks are transferred to the new hardware at a typical rate of ~150 MB/sec. While you can use this rate to approximate any downtime, the actual transfer speeds may vary and downtime may be shorter or longer than expected.

• The Compute Instance remains powered off during the entire resize process. After the resize completes, the instance returns to its previous power state.

• All of your existing data and configuration settings are preserved during the resize and your IP addresses remain the same.

Resizing a Compute Instance

1. Log in to the Cloud Manager and select the Linodes link within the left sidebar.

2. Within the list of Compute Instance, locate the instance you’d like to resize, click the corresponding more options ellipsis dropdown menu, and select Resize. This displays the Resize Linode panel.

3. Select the desired plan.

   • To select a larger plan, review Upgrading to a Larger Plan.

   • To select a smaller plan, you first need to resize the instance’s disks. See Downgrading to a Smaller Plan.

   • To select a different plan type, review Switching to a Different Plan Type.

4. Check Auto Resize Disk if you’d like to automatically resize your Compute Instance’s primary disk. This can only be selected if the following conditions are met:

   • The new plan provides more storage space than the current plan.
   • There is only a single ext3 or ext4 disk (not a raw disk). A swap disk can also be present, but it will not be resized.

5. Enter the Compute Instance’s label in the Confirm field and select the Resize Linode button to initiate the resize.

6. If the instance is powered on, it will now be powered off for the duration of the resize. After the resize completes, the instance returns to it’s original power state.

You are now able to utilize the resources of your new plan.

Upgrading to a Larger Plan

Upgrading to a plan with additional resources and capacity enables you to scale vertically. Larger plans can accommodate increased traffic and provide your application with the additional computing power it needs. Since larger plans come equipped with more resources, you may want to make adjustments to take advantage of these resources.

• Resize Disks: When resizing a Compute Instance to a larger plan, you can (in most cases) opt to automatically resize the disks as well. If your instance does not meet the requirements for this functionality or if you decide not to do this automatically, you can manually resize the disks at any point. See Resize a Linode’s Disk

• Optimize Applications: Many applications can be configured to enhance performance when additional resources become available. This configuration may include increasing the memory limit, enabling multiple threads, and increasing the maximum size of data, cache, logs, or other files. Review the documentation for your application and any software such as PHP, MySQL, Apache, or NGINX.

• Enable Multi-Queue NICS: When upgrading to a plan with two or more vCPU cores, make sure that the multi-queue NICs feature is enabled. In most cases, this feature is already enabled or will be enabled once the Compute Instance reboots during the resize process. However, older distributions may require additional steps. See Configuring Multi-Queue NICS.

Downgrading to a Smaller Plan

Downgrading to a plan with less resources may be helpful when looking to reduce computing costs or after making your application use system resources more efficiently. When moving to a smaller plan, the combined size of the Compute Instance’s disks must be equal to or less than the desired plan’s storage allocation.

1. Determine the storage space that’s included in the new desired plan. This information is listed on the Pricing Page (under the Storage column).

2. Determine the amount of disk space currently being used on your Compute Instance. To do this, log in to your instance via SSH or Lish and run the following command:

   df -h

   Specifically, review the Used column from the output of that command.

   • If you’re using less space than your intended plan requires, you can move onto the next step without any further action.

   • If you’re using more space than your intended plan allows, you need to remove some files to free up some space before moving onto the next step. See the options for doing this in the Download Files from Your Linode guide.

3. Resize the Compute Instance’s disks to fit within the storage space of the new plan. See Resizing a Disk.

Switching to a Different Plan Type

There are quite a few types of Compute Instances available to you, each with their own value propositions and use cases. When resizing your instance, you aren’t limited to the current plan type. You are able to switch to any plan across any plan type, including:

• Dedicated CPU: Optimized for CPU-intenseive applications. This plan type is equipped with dedicated vCPU cores, suitable for almost any workload that requires consistently high CPU performance. Use cases include production (and high traffic) websites, e-commerce sites, machine learning, data processing, and much more. See Dedicated CPU Compute Instances.

• Shared CPU: Balancing performance with value. This plan type is a solid foundation for many common use cases, including development, low-traffic websites, or any workload that doesn’t require consistent 100% CPU usage. See Shared CPU Compute Instances.

• High Memory: Optimized for memory-intensive applications. This plan type is also equipped with dedicated vCPU cores, though they contain more memory than other similarly priced plans. Use cases include large or high-traffic databases, caching servers, and more. See High Memory Compute Instances.

• GPU: The only plan type that is equipped with high performance NVIDIA GPU cards. GPU plans are capable of processing large amounts of data in parallel, performing complex calculations much more efficiently. See GPU Compute Instances.

For help deciding on a plan type, review the Choosing a Compute Instance Type and Plan guide for advice and a comparison of each plan.

To switch to a different plan type, follow the instructions outlined within Resizing a Linode. When choosing the plan, select the tab that corresponds with your desired plan type.