Don't know about the specific billing issues, but switching to a different size linode is trivial: The current one is shutdown, the images are migrated to the new one, and you restart. Note that any size change will be to a different machine, AIUI, each physical machine hosts linodes of only one size. The only catch might be availability - you probably don't want to wait until the last minute to request an upgrade.

Regarding billing, I can say that from my personal experience, and various bits of evidence on the forums, Linode seems to be the epitome of fairness with respect to prorating, etc.

@Wizzard:

Hi there,

We are looking at getting some linodes.

If we get a couple of 360's, are our site grows in popularity how easy is it for us to bump ur node size up?

Could we run in to an issue where there is no nodes of that size left on the machine we are on? What would happen then, have to move to another machine?

Can we then scale down that node easily enough?

How is the billing handled in this case.

We wouldn't have to wait till the end of the billing month for our size to be changed would we?

Buy additional nodes is easy enough as well?

1 Trivial, if u keep to the same datacenter its very fast, if u move to a different DC it consumes a little more time. Upgrading to a different size means u leave the current server, but doesn't neccesarily mean u leave the DC (check availibility).

2 U will see that linode keeps availibitly pretty open for all current plans.

3 Scale down, yes, trivial Every thing seems prorated. I just upgraded from a 360 to a 540 on the 20th of this month and it cost me $3.34.

4 ^^^ Nope. usually within 24 hours tickets are answered. My last ticket was something like this.

title: 'upgrade to a 540'

message: 'As per the titile of this ticket, feel free to charge my card.'

went to bed and woke up with an awaiting merge to the new 540 xen server.

edit: if u stay in same DC then u won't need to change IP address, so it only a merge to new server and reboot, nothing else was needed for my recent change.

Looking at this

http://www.linode.com/avail.cfm

If you are in anywhere but Newark and want to change on your node size, you going to be in for a wait.

That always like that?

@Wizzard:

Looking at this

http://www.linode.com/avail.cfm

If you are in anywhere but Newark and want to change on your node size, you going to be in for a wait.

That always like that?

right now newark is brand new DC location for linode, so I believe their focus to be on that DC for now.

I have been here for 2 months now and see nodes available in all sizes in just about all DC's on linodes line-up.

In general, if there isn't immediate availability for a Linode plan in a specific datacenter, the wait isn't that long. Customers often move around or leave, or we move our own stuff around to accommodate upgrade/move requests. We also try to allocate new machines to the datacenters with the most demand.

-Chris

I've been a customer for nearly five years and the only time I can recall there being a really noticeable delay was when Linode had to wait while ThePlanet provisioned a new cage at Dallas - and ThePlanet took their time.

Newark probably gets the best service, because caker and co. can go there and fix stuff themselves, instead of Fedex-ing machines to the DC and waiting while the DC techs do the install.