Linode have been amazing as usual, and recently increased network capacity (bandwidth increased 1000%), and doubled CPU capacity (from 4-core to 8-core), and in the last few days they’ve doubled the RAM in each plan! This is all part of their free* upgrades that happen every now and again.

(* They’ve also adjusted the pricing plans to be easier and more friendly. Thus, their (for example) $19.95 plan has been increased to $20. Technically, it’s not free, but for 5 cents?)

The migrations to the new systems take a while – but I’m planning to do it in the middle of the night. Downtime could be a couple of hours. The bonus is with this reboot, the capacity of the entire cluster will be doubled. :o

In other news, I’m planning on retiring pikachu, it’s caused me nothing but trouble with it’s disk arrays, and the lag from Roubaix compared to the Linodes in London has been less than desirable. Plus, with the new capacity that the London cluster has, there’s no real advantage to having a dedicated machine out in Roubaix (apart from the BOINC work that it’s been sat doing cos it could).

If you’re interested in trying out Linode, they do a free trial! Just please mention this referral code: c88742a23087c8758c2824221626a8c1226c1736