Linode free upgrade: worth it?
We've had some "free upgrades" pending in Linode for a while now. The current (old) instances are running 2x Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2680 v2 @ 2.80GHz, 2GB RAM, 48 GB disk space.
The new (upgraded) instances promise 2 vCPUs again, although I'm not sure about the CPU specs. I couldn't find much info.
Since we don't care about the increased RAM or traffic (CPU is the bottleneck), is it actually worth the service disruption to apply this free upgrade?
What has been your experience? Any CPU benchmark numbers?
3 Replies
watrick
Linode Staff
A "free upgrade" means that there have been changes to the spec on the Linode billing plan that you have since you spun up the Linode. Because the only way to provide these additional resources to a Linode requires a reboot, Linodes are not forced to take these upgrades and require the account owner to take action if they want them. As you mention, it comes with different resources, and there's no need to take the upgrade if you don't think you need it. The last time we updated our plans was in 2018, which was announced on our blog.
Based on the specs you listed, it looks like you're on a legacy 2GB Linode plan. Should you upgrade, you'll be on the current 4GB plan:
The current 4GB plan for $20/month has the following:
- 4GB RAM
- 2 cores vCPU
- 80GB SSD Storage
- 4TB Transfer Pool
A legacy 2GB plan I believe you're on is for $20/month and has the following:
- 2GB RAM
- 2 cores vCPU
- 48GB SSD Storage
- 3TB Transfer Pool
The current 2GB plan for $10/month has the following:
- 2GB RAM
- 1 cores vCPU
- 50GB SSD Storage
- 2TB Transfer Pool
If you want to stay on the 2GB plan and reduce your monthly, you can open a Support ticket and we can configure it so that a reboot would update the plan to the new 2GB plan.
Thanks. I'm already familiar with what you wrote (I even address it in my post). None of it answers my question though.
What has been your experience with such upgrades? Any CPU benchmark numbers?
_Brian
Linode Staff
Although a Linode upgrade will incur a migration to new hardware to a host with availability for the new plan type, the benchmarks on the new hardware will likely be very comparable or better than your current host.
With that said, if you do end up on a host with hardware you don't find preferable, you can always request a migration.
Although we'll tell you we can't guarantee you can stay on your preferred hardware forever (ie in case we need to migrate you for some reason) we'll comb through the fleet and put you back on another Intel if that is your preference.
I know you've twice asked for CPU benchmarks, but without knowing which host our allocator will choose for your Linode before the migration, anything short of listing every CPU we've used to build a host since we built your current host could be potentially misleading.