Image vs. backup

Are images still limited to 6 GB?

I believe so, yes. Although I find it odd Linode are charging 10c/GB but then limiting the size per image. This limit may only apply to uploaded images, however, rather than images taken from a Linode. This article shows a screenshot with an 8.9GB image.

If you’re planning on using images as backups, 2 points to note are images will need to be manually taken - or automated via the Linode CLI/API from your Linode. They also won’t be rotated/cleaned up. The backup service takes care of both these points for you.

So… if I sign up for the backup service ($10/mo.) is it as easy to create a new server from a backup as it is an image?

Yep, you can either deploy a new Linode from your backup using the Create Linode screen, or from the Backups tab of your existing Linode. You can also choose to overwrite an existing Linode with the backup image.

The backup service is charged the same as Linodes, so you can add it on and try it out, then remove it later and only pay for the time it was active. Just bear in mind once it’s been cancelled on a Linode, you need to wait 24 hours before you can re-enable it on the same Linode again.

And is the backup size part of my disk storage allowance?

You get 4 backup slots which are based on the size of your Linode - 3 automatically-rotated and 1 manual snapshot. The backup space doesn’t come out of your disk allowance. The only thing to bear in mind is you cannot restore to a smaller Linode. So if your current Linode has 50GB disk allowance, you can only restore it to another Linode with 50GB or more disk allowance.

Finally, can I assume the backup is offsite… not on my server… because if it crashed… you don't want to lose the backup too!!!

I believe that it is stored on physically separate hardware within the same data centre, so it is not off-site, but should survive a loss of your Linode’s physical server.

I personally use the Linode backup service to allow for snapshots (e.g. when upgrading the OS or packages) and quick restores of the whole server (DR/major incident scenario), then use Restic to backup the file system and databases to Backblaze - which costs me just less than $3 a month, and covers the “off-site” backup and provides for more fine-grained restores.

I documented my backup process for MariaDB/MySQL in this article. I have written another similar one for the filesystem but I’m waiting for this to be approved and published.

If you create a new Linode from a backup I assume you get a new IP requiring you to change your DNS "A" records?

If you create a new Linode from a backup I assume you get a new IP requiring you to change your DNS "A" records?

Yes, you would.

Providing you still had the old Linode, you could use the IP Transfer utility to swap the IPv4 addresses so you wouldn’t need to change the A records.

However this doesn’t work for the IPv6 address or IPv6 pools, and AAAA records.