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Community ▶ Questions ▶ Best way to clone a Linode with no downtime? Backup vs Clone
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Best way to clone a Linode with no downtime? Backup vs Clone

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Hi

I need to Clone a Linode to a new one. So I went to Clone and it said I need to shut the other one down and it will take about 30 minites. I was quite surprised by this! The live one obviously has live sites on it, my customers would not be very happy for this downtime so I can create a new server for someone else.

Sooo… I can see I can restore a Backup snapshot to a new Linode, and taking backups does not need downtime.

Therefore I just wondered if this is the best way to not have downtime on the source linode? I have read there is a possibility of database corruption, but the new Linode will have new sites, the old copied ones will delete, so no need to even keep the databases (although the main MySQL database is needed of course).

Sorry if this has been discussed but could not find a specific question about Clone vs Backup.

Thanks

4 Replies

I have just created a new Linode from a Backup of another. Had to update a couple of settings only (hostname, IP assigned to a server I wanted to keep, root passwords) but that was about it. And it seems to be working well.

So therefore would the only reason to use a Clone that requires downtime is to guarantee no database corruption? But if no downtime is wanted then take a backup and restire that to a new Linode?

Long term I will create a "master" version to use somewhere, but for now I will be using this process.

Thanks

The difference is that clone copies at the block level, backup is file level, so clone will work regardless of what weirdness you do to your linode, backup will only work if you use ext3 and don't repartition your drives.

In your case backup > restore to a new node is perfectly fine.

Great thanks

I think the plan outlined in this thread is what I'm going to end up doing when needed. Only one of my sites regularly uses a database, so it'd be easy to use backup to roll out a new Linode –> export database --> import database.

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