12 hours to restore 80GB Linode?
I have an 80GB Linode, I've been using Linode's automatic weekly backup option for years now. I was really surprised to find out how the long the restore process takes.
I deiced to restore a backup today, rather than restoring to a new Linode I just restored over the existing one. The restore has been roughly 8 hours and still only 70% complete. I assumed it would take about the same time to restore as it does to make the backup (6 minutes).
What's the reason for limiting the restore speed? And how can anyone expect to restore a larger Linode?
1 Reply
mjones
Linode Staff
The restore process can take a while for larger Linodes, as it has to restore each individual file. When backing up your data, only those files that have changed are backed up so it's usually a much quicker process.
Generally speaking, a Linode with a large number of files will take longer to restore than a Linode with less, even if they have the same total amount of data. It takes a bit of time to write the metadata for each file to the disk when it's being restored, and while it's not a lot for a single file it can add up if there's millions of files on a single Linode.
A quick way to count the number of files on your Linode is to check the number of inodes:
df -i
If it's more than you expect, you can find the directories with the most files on your Linode with the following command:
du --inodes -S / | sort -rh | sed -n \
'1,50{/^.\{71\}/s/^\(.\{30\}\).*\(.\{37\}\)$/\1...\2/;p}'
If you'd like, we can take a look at things from our end. Just open a ticket and myself or another member of the Support team will be happy to help.