[SudoAlex]

Upgrades/downgrades requires transferring all your data from one server to another - so that means downtime. The bigger the server, the more downtime in transferring.

As for backups, Linode backups seem to get a bad reputation. They do take a snapshot of a running instance - but reports from the forums indicate that they regularly fail, leaving you with a missing backup at some points. The only way of restoring a backup is to deploy that backup as a new server.

I'd recommend avoiding Linode backups and doing your own.

[mnordhoff]

"The only way of restoring a backup is to deploy that backup as a new server."

Not true. You can restore a backup to a node as long as it has enough unallocated disk space. The simplest ways to create enough unallocated disk space are to create a new node or to delete or resize all your disk images.

[jaequery]

upgrades for ram and storage does not have to have any downtime. same for snapshots, through LVM/ZFS, they can be nearly instant in most cases. it just seems like DO have not been able to figure this out for whatever reasons.

[grey-area]

Linode does not offer pain-free upgrades - your files are physically copied to another size of box, not just allocated more resources on the existing box. The bigger your files, the longer it'll take (around 30 mins usually).

I agree it would be nice to do upgrades in place but presumably they have very good reasons for not doing so. Are you aware of any provider which does this in a seamless way? I'm not really sure how they'd do it, particularly for RAM.

[giulianob]

Linode says they only host the same plan types on the same physical hardware. For example, if you have an 8gb plan then all your neighbors are on the same plan. This might be why they have to physically move your image.