Linode for a day or two

Yes, this is possible.

When you add a Linode to your account, you will be invoiced a prorated amount from then until the end of the month. When you are finished, you can remove it via the Linode Manager tab and you will receive a prorated credit back to your account.

You can do this as often as you like. Your credits will always be used before charging your credit card. Everything is prorated to the day.

Excellent, i did not know this could be done, and would even be an encouraged use.

Thanx Tasaro.

@tasaro:

Yes, this is possible.
What is the effect this has on others who have accounts on the box where the temp users are located? Is there a large disk IO? Network activity on the host to host copies? Unless you know ahead of time they are temp accounts how do you minimize impact to your long term customers?

– Jeff

I don't suppose there will be a noticeable impact, unless several linodes are being constantly created and recreated on the same host. People sign up all the time anyway. Doubtless the hosts are powerful enough to handle that kind of activity without affecting existing linodes…

By the way, I just added a couple of 360's to test something, and I noticed that the two of them went onto different hosts. So apparently there's some sort of load-balancing going on, in order to prevent any particular host from being bombarded with new signups within a short period of time.

@jeffml:

@tasaro:

Yes, this is possible.

What is the effect this has on others who have accounts on the box where the temp users are located? Is there a large disk IO? Network activity on the host to host copies? Unless you know ahead of time they are temp accounts how do you minimize impact to your long term customers?

– Jeff

I did it a while ago - swapping linodes in and out while I was experimenting with setups etc - and I had an email from Linode support asking me what I was doing, so you may want to exercise caution….

@jeffml:

What is the effect this has on others who have accounts on the box where the temp users are located? Is there a large disk IO? Network activity on the host to host copies? Unless you know ahead of time they are temp accounts how do you minimize impact to your long term customers?

– Jeff

The process really is no different than a new customer signing up and deploying linux on your host. The impact is minimal.

-Tom

@MrNod:

I did it a while ago - swapping linodes in and out while I was experimenting with setups etc - and I had an email from Linode support asking me what I was doing, so you may want to exercise caution….

We've only opened tickets in the past to suggest deleting your images and redeploying as opposed to removing your Linode and adding another several times over. This was a courtesy, as there is a one day penalty when removing/adding a Linode (to prevent abuse).

-Tom

This is one example of why Linode is so great. Customer-friendly policies like this are one big reason why I left the dedicated environment and moved to Linode.

Does the same policy apply to temporary plan upgrades, or are they more difficult to manage? I'm hoping for a big (but temporary) spike in traffic in a few weeks, and it would be great to be able to upgrade one of my Linodes for a week or so just to make sure I can handle the traffic.

@JohnT:

Does the same policy apply to temporary plan upgrades, or are they more difficult to manage? I'm hoping for a big (but temporary) spike in traffic in a few weeks, and it would be great to be able to upgrade one of my Linodes for a week or so just to make sure I can handle the traffic.

If it's just a temporary boost of memory, you can do this under the Extras tab of your Linode's dashboard. You are issued a prorated credit when you remove the additional memory.

To answer your question, yes you can upgrade for a small period of time. Feel free to open a support ticket to discuss your options.

-Tom