Can you clone a linode and open it under a different Linode account

There are a couple of ways that you can approach this. Something to think about is downtime.

The first thing to keep in mind is that Support can transfer Linodes between accounts. This process is done by opening Support tickets from both the sending and receiving accounts confirming the transfer, along with any additional services, such as the Backup Service or any Block Storage volumes. The transfer doesn't result in any changes to the Linode itself and does not require any downtime. The information we'll need from you to do this is:

From the sending account:

• Which Linode you'd like to transfer
• Account that you'd like to transfer it to

From receiving account:

• Acceptance of the transfer
• Linode's name and the account name in the original ticket
• The ticket number (#xxxxxxxxx) of the original request

Backup Service

The easiest way to accomplish what you're looking to do would be by utilizing the Backup Service. With this service, you can run a manual snapshot, then restore that to a new Linode. Once that restore completes, transferring the Linode to a new account would only require the two Support tickets. No downtime is needed, though there is an additional cost incurred here. The extra cost is minimal and you can cancel the Backup Service once this is completed.

The two other options will require downtime to the Linode you're looking to make a copy of:

Clone

Like the option with the Backup Service, you can simply clone a Linode, then open Support tickets to transfer the new Linode to your other account. To prevent the corruption of data, you'll want to power down your Linode before cloning.

Copying Disks in Rescue Mode

The last recommendation wouldn't require a Support ticket, as it's a direct copy of a disk between two Linodes, regardless of what Linode account they're on. This will require downtime of the Linode you're copying since you need to boot into Rescue Mode. Instructions for this approach are in the following guide:

Copying a Disk to a Different Account

Thanks for the reply - very clear and useful.

The original Linode already uses the Backup service, so it sounds as though the best route is to create a new Linode from Backup on that account and then request via support to transfer the new Linode to the new customer account.

We would then intend to delete substantial amounts of data from the new Linode and downsize the plan - I presume that will not be an issue?

That wouldn't be a problem at all. Downsizing isn't as straight forward as resizing up, so this Community Questions site post might be helpful:

Downgrade Linode to smaller size plan

Thanks again for your helpful advice.