Memory upgrade, May 2017

All about how to get twice as much RAM for the same price.

Background

BitFolk is now in the position to double the memory allocation of customer VPSes. That is, the base VPS will be increased from 1,024MiB to 2,048MiB, and each additional memory upgrade purchased will be 512MiB instead of 256MiB.

However…

Although there is enough total capacity to provide for a memory doubling, this is unevenly distributed amongst servers and 3 of the servers do not have enough spare capacity to provide the upgrade to all customers on those servers. Some customers will need to have their VPSes moved to other servers.

BitFolk does not generally approve of offering new customers any perk that existing customers do not have access to, but experience shows that it will take quite some time to complete all migrations required to offer existing customers their memory upgrade. If the new specification is not offered to new customers until the migrations and upgrades are complete then this will be a potentially long period of time during which BitFolk will be less competitive.

A compromise

Therefore, BitFolk is going to immediately offer the new specs to new customers, and also to any existing (paying) customer on request.

How it will work

1. You send an email to support@bitfolk.com asking for your memory upgrade. Stating the account name of your VPS will help.
2. BitFolk will respond to let you know if your VPS needs to be migrated to another server first.
   • If you're on a server that doesn't have enough capacity then you'll definitely need to be migrated to another server.
   • If you're on a server that does have capacity then BitFolk may still insist that your VPS is first migrated.
3. On the next boot your VPS has double the memory.

Once enough VPSes have been moved around that all servers have capacity, the remaining upgrades will all happen at once.

Migrating between servers

If BitFolk has to move your VPS then you will be asked when is a good time for that to happen. In order to move your VPS, BitFolk will need to shut it down, do a final sync of its storage and then boot it again on the destination server. It will be down for less than a minute, but there will be down time so BitFolk needs to know when that is allowed to happen.

Please be as specific as you need to be about time windows and notice periods. Examples of phrases to avoid using because they are too vague:

• "Just give me a bit of notice" (don't know what "a bit" means)
• "Outside of working hours" (don't know your working hours)
• "Any time in the evenings" (don't know what you consider evenings to be)

These examples are much better:

• "Any time with at least 15 minutes of notice is fine"
• "Between 00:00Z and 03:00Z on Saturdays and Sundays"

Frequently Anticipated Questions

How do I tell which server my VPS is on?

It's listed on the home page of the Panel, it appears in a traceroute to your VPS from outside, and it is also shown when you resolve accountname.console.bitfolk.com in DNS, e.g.:

$ host ruminant.console.bitfolk.com
ruminant.console.bitfolk.com is an alias for console.macallan.bitfolk.com.
console.macallan.bitfolk.com is an alias for macallan.bitfolk.com.
macallan.bitfolk.com has address 85.119.80.25
macallan.bitfolk.com has IPv6 address 2001:ba8:0:1f1::10

If my VPS is on a server with enough capacity, why does my VPS need to be moved?

BitFolk may still need to balance the number of VPSes on each server, and available memory isn't the only constraint. Servers with available capacity still need to take on VPSes from the other servers that don't have enough capacity.

I don't need double the RAM. Can I downgrade?

You can downgrade as far as the base VPS plan, which (now) has 2GiB memory.

If you are on a yearly contract and wish to downgrade immediately then BitFolk is happy to offer service credit equal to the pro rata cost of the upgrades you are wanting to remove. Customers on a monthly or quarterly contract will need to wait until the contract ends, so you should let BitFolk know you want to downgrade and then that will happen at the right time.

I don't care about having more memory. Do I need to do anything?

No! You can just take no action, and eventually you will just get the upgrade without you having to do anything (except reboot your VPS). You only need to do something if you want the upgrade right away.

I have sponsored hosting. Can I still get the upgrade?

No, sorry; BitFolk has to look after paying customers first.

Status

Status of upgrades as of 2017-05-09 07:19:20Z

Server	Free memory (GiB)	Required for doubling (GiB)	Status
elephant	226	19	Good to go
hen	68	53	Good to go
hobgoblin	64	55	Good to go
jack	53	69	Migrations required
leffe	71	48	Good to go
macallan	80	37	Good to go
paradox	32	75	Migrations required
snaps	40	78	Migrations required