What's the difference between a migration and a clone?

You can clone a Linode by following the instructions in our guide. When cloning a Linode, you will need to create a new Linode in another datacenter, after which you have the option to clone either one or more disks, or your entire Linode over to the newly created one. This means paying for 2 Linodes until the process completes. Our billing is hourly, so you would only be charged for the second Linode for the time it was on your account. A clone can technically be completed while the system is booted, however this is not recommended, as it may leave the cloned Linode in an inconsistent state. For that reason, it is recommended to power off your Linode when cloning it.

A migration is something that we set up on our end, after which you have a 24 hour window to press the button to move your Linode over to the new datacenter. If you did not press the button within that window, then your Linode would be migrated automatically. With a migration there is no way to avoid downtime, however the result is the most guaranteed to be successful. Since you do not have to create a second Linode in order to do this, there is no additional cost associated with a migration.

In either case, the end result is that your Linode is moved to another datacenter, so how you proceed is up to you. You can use our Speed Test to determine which datacenter will provide you with the fastest connection. You can follow the instructions in this post to use the test.