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VPS providers who offer ability to resize up AND down and hourly billing
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VPS providers who offer ability to resize up AND down and hourly billing

GsitterlyGsitterly Member
edited April 2017 in Help

Looking to move away from DigitalOcean, but want the ability to scale up and down for temporary traffic spikes quickly and easily like DO (powering server down and upgrading or downgrading CPU/RAM via the dashboard).

The only other hourly billing provider I've found that also allows downgrades back to the original specs seems to be Linode?

Comments

  • Vultr, Lunanode

    Thanked by 1Four20
  • GsitterlyGsitterly Member
    edited April 2017

    I just asked Vultr. They only allow upgrading unless I got bad info from their support?

  • Gsitterly said: They only allow upgrading unless I got bad info from their support?

    Nah, you're right. Only upgrades. I don't think DO allows downgrades either.

  • GsitterlyGsitterly Member
    edited April 2017

    Na DO allows you to downgrade if you only chose CPU/RAM when you upgraded. However, if you resized your disk too, you can't downgrade.

  • scaleway, but I think you're down while up/downgrading.

  • HxxxHxxx Member

    Of course the one and only Digital Ocean. The market leaders.

  • GsitterlyGsitterly Member
    edited April 2017

    @Hxxx said:
    Of course the one and only Digital Ocean. The market leaders.

    Yeah honestly a little surprised to see it's only DO and Linode so far.

  • DH22DH22 Member

    Century Link Cloud (expensive but there is a $500 trial with no time limit) and Tagadab (excellent and reasonably priced, but UK only)

  • Gsitterly said: The only other hourly billing provider I've found that also allows downgrades back to the original specs seems to be Linode?

    We have this as well even if you resize the disk.

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran
    edited April 2017

    If you're just scaling up and down for traffic spikes, why are you resizing the disk? That's adding unnecessary time to the process and has your website down for a longer time during peak traffic, and if you're using the larger disk space then you wouldn't want to downsize the partition again anyway.

    Gsitterly said: The only other hourly billing provider I've found that also allows downgrades back to the original specs seems to be Linode?

    Linode doesn't resize disk on instance resize. You have to resize the instance, resize the disk, then to downgrade you resize the disk again, then resize the instance. Make sure you note the exact partition size for the smaller instance because it won't give you a recommended value for another instance size when resizing the disk, only the current size. Here's what happens if you go to downgrade after resizing the instance and then the disk, but haven't manually resized the disk downward yet:

    image

    If you're actually using increased disk and your provider is automatically downsizing partitions when you downgrade, that sounds like it could be destructive unless their automation is mounting the volume and performing actions to verify. Not to mention it would only work on supported file systems. Containers handle this kind of thing better than full virtualization.

    I would encourage you to think beyond /, the disk storing the OS, and into more modular solutions like block storage. I would also encourage using a load balancer (service or built, built is probably better for having more control) and adding instances dynamically rather than resizing a single instance, because this will build up your backend without downtime, and then you just remove members of the backend cluster to save money when the spike is over. That's how the big companies do it, and the benefit is the same regardless of size/budget. Bonus points for having less in the way of single point of failure for your data.

    This is a really good read:
    https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-automate-the-scaling-of-your-web-application-on-digitalocean

  • GsitterlyGsitterly Member
    edited April 2017

    @jarland said:
    If you're just scaling up and down for traffic spikes, why are you resizing the disk?

    Not sure if that was directed at me or Verelox, but if me, I don't intend to resize the disk. Really just looking for option to upgrade/downgrade RAM/CPU.

    @jarland said:
    I would encourage you to think beyond /, the disk storing the OS, and into more >modular solutions like block storage. I would also encourage using a load balancer >(service or built, built is probably better for having more control)

    Yeah ultimately I would like to be able to utilize those things, but I'm still pretty new to server management. I've been trying to find good guides/info on setting up load balancers, redis clusters, offloading mysql, etc. but I'm still at the point where so much of it's new that its hard to pick where to start.

    Also, I've been more focused on content so the DO dashboard resizing has been an easy answer for the time being, but I'm getting the itch to learn more and wanted to see what other options were out there.

    I'll definitely check out the DO link.

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran
    edited April 2017

    Gsitterly said: Not sure if that was directed at me or Verelox, but if me, I don't intend to resize the disk.

    I assumed you did because what you're asking for we (DO) do, but this implied (or rather, it's how I read it) that disk downsize was the reason it wouldn't meet your needs:

    Gsitterly said: Na DO allows you to downgrade if you only chose CPU/RAM when you upgraded. However, if you resized your disk too, you can't downgrade.

    For:

    Gsitterly said: Yeah ultimately I would like to be able to utilize those things, but I'm still pretty new to server management.

    If your content is fairly static try setting up two copied instances behind a load balancer first:

    https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-create-your-first-digitalocean-load-balancer

    Or create your own:

    https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-use-haproxy-to-set-up-http-load-balancing-on-an-ubuntu-vps

    Since the two servers will be close together, keep your website files in sync with glusterfs:

    https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-create-a-redundant-storage-pool-using-glusterfs-on-ubuntu-servers

    Then use master-master replication for MySQL:

    https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-mysql-master-master-replication

  • @jarland Thanks Ill definitely give those a read over the weekend!

  • IkoulaIkoula Member, Host Rep
    edited April 2017

    Hello,

    Our Public Cloud allows you to change plan (upgrade and downgrade) and is hourly billed.

    Service is available in France, Netherlands, Germany, Miami and Singapore.

  • How about togglebox? you can up and down ram, dedicated cpu core, disk, and addon IP is just $1 each.

  • OVH allows you to upgrade and downgrade on all of their public cloud plans (excluding the vps plans on the public cloud) if you check the box "enable flexible resizing". One downside is that you only get 50 gb of either ssd storage (no raid) or ha with x3 replication. While resizing it can be that your instance needs to be moved to another host in order to get dedicated resources.

  • WSSWSS Member

    It's really not in most benefits to let you downgrade. That's why it doesn't exist. Welcome to capitalism.

    Thanked by 1AuroraZ
  • The only one who allows downgrading your VPS's is UpCloud.
    You can check the details on https://upcloud.com/community/tutorials/using-simple-flexible-plans/
    Sounds incredible, Vultr doesn't offer this feature because:
    "Shrinking the hard disk is not possible without risking data loss."
    They are funny right?
    https://discuss.vultr.com/discussion/1195/vc2-scaling-down-a-vps

  • linode, vultr, lunanode, kamatera, microhost, mivocloud, virtua.cloud

  • DPDP Administrator, The Domain Guy
    edited November 2020

    @dplislta said:
    The only one who allows downgrading your VPS's is UpCloud.
    You can check the details on https://upcloud.com/community/tutorials/using-simple-flexible-plans/
    Sounds incredible, Vultr doesn't offer this feature because:
    "Shrinking the hard disk is not possible without risking data loss."
    They are funny right?
    https://discuss.vultr.com/discussion/1195/vc2-scaling-down-a-vps

    You're funnier, for replying to a 3-year old post.

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