Hardware refresh, 2025-2026
From mid 2025 into 2026 BitFolk is performing a hardware refresh which means you'll be contacted at some point about having your VPS moved and upgraded at no increased cost.
Progress
| Upgrade progress as of 2025-07-16 07:52 UTC |
|---|
| 2.67% complete |
As of 2025-07-14 BitFolk has run out of volunteers to be migrated from server "elephant", so progress is stalled until there are more volunteers or the initial week of notice runs out on 2025-07-20.
Upgraded specifications
Memory
- The base memory allocation will go up from 1½ GiB to 2 GiB.
- The incremental upgrade of 512 MiB will halve in cost, so you will get twice as much.
Examples:
- If you had a base spec VPS with 1½ GiB memory it will increase to 2 GiB memory at the same cost.
- If you had one unit of memory upgrade you will go from 2 GiB to 3 GiB at the same cost, because that will be the new base 2 GiB plus two units of 512 MiB.
32-bit VPSes will be capped at 3½ GiB memory
BitFolk switched to offering only 64-bit VPSes more than ten years ago, but some customers still exist who have never reinstalled their VPS. 32-bit VPSes cannot boot with more than about 3.8 GiB of memory assigned to them.
 Warning: | Customers with 32-bit VPSes who currently have more than 2½ GiB of memory will be capped at 3½ GiB. Their plan will be reduced to the new maximum and a pro rata refund will be added to their accounts as service credit. |
This will affect 11 customers.
Storage
Initially storage allocation is going to remain the same.
After the upgrades are all complete there will definitely be an upgrade of the base storage allocation. The new servers have enough storage to support this and any existing servers that remain will have their storage upgraded. It is relatively simple to enlarge a running VPS's storage without any reboot being required.
Networking
All of the new hosts have 25Gbit/s networking whereas a few of the old ones are still stuck at 1Gbit/s.
No immediate increase is planned for the monthly data transfer quota but that is something BitFolk will look at afterwards.
The price list
The process of upgrading all existing customers is going to take many months. Existing customers need to be moved off of the servers they are on, onto new hardware, and there isn't enough new hardware available all at once to do this in one go.
BitFolk can't afford to remain uncompetitive by only advertising the old specification to new customers. Therefore the price list is going to reflect the new specification right away. This does mean that during the upgrade existing customers will be having a worse deal than new ones.
Most customers value stability and the lack of a need to take any action versus getting a bump in specification. It has been BitFolk's experience when doing this in the past that even when customers have been told that simply rebooting their VPS will instantly get them more memory, they often choose not to.
The progress of the upgrades will go server-by-server and this has to be pretty strictly adhered to because a specific server each time needs to be emptied. There is a small amount of flexibility and that flexibility will increase as the process continues, so it may be possible to accommodate some existing customers who want to "jump the queue" and be upgraded earlier.
You can ask but it may not be possible to prioritise your upgrade.
The migration procedure
Every customer will have a support ticket opened with them to plan the upgrade (can be as simple as you just saying "yes, do it any time" or as complicated as agreeing a specific date/time for the work).
| Warning: | If you do not respond to this ticket within one week, the work will be done by BitFolk at a time of BitFolk's choosing, with as little as 5 minutes of email notification to you. |
If you do not care when it happens it will help if you say so, so that the work can proceed as soon as possible.
So, either:
- You will have agreed a time with BitFolk for the work or;
- you'll have indicated that any time is fine, or;
- you'll have not responded at all and it will happen when it happens.
When the time comes BitFolk will:
- Shut your VPS down.
- Do a final sync of its storage to the new host.
- Boot it up on the new host with an increased amount of RAM.
| Warning: | You should let BitFolk handle the timing of shutting your service down and booting it again. BitFolk will be reducing the length of your downtime by syncing your storage ahead of time. This will result in only a few seconds between the end of shut down and the time of boot. If you shut your own service down then you'll have to wait for the entirety of your storage to sync. This can take several hours for low performing archive storage. |
You do not need to be around for the migration to take place.
You should ensure that all your services start correctly on boot.
None of your IP addresses will change.
After your VPS has booted again BitFolk will do simple checks to give confidence that it's working. These include:
- Pinging it. So please make sure it at least responds to ping from our monitoring hosts.
- Checking there is nothing marked down on BitFolk's monitoring that was not showing as down before.
Monitoring checks are available for free for most of your services so if you would like those added, please contact support with a list of services you'd like monitored.
| Warning: | If you don't have any form of monitoring set up then it can be difficult for BitFolk to tell if things are working correctly. |
Frequently Asked Questions
I don't need the new amount of memory. Can I downgrade?
Not until your contract renews. Your contract is either monthly, quarterly or yearly. The Panel shows your renewal date and you just need to ask any time before that date. Your price will go down from the next renewal date.
I have the base amount of memory (1½ GiB) and don't need more. Can I downgrade?
No. The base VPS that BitFolk will be selling (2 GiB) is the smallest thing BitFolk wants to sell for now. You will be getting more for the same price.
When will I be contacted to arrange my upgrade?
It's difficult to predict. It will be as soon as possible. The following hosts are most likely to be emptied first:
- elephant
- limoncello
- talisker
I don't care about upgrades. Can you just not do this?
Unfortunately not. Separately from the issue of whether your service gets a free upgrade the servers all need to have their operating system upgraded.
While it can be the case that your service is left alone for several weeks from the time when you are notified, you will want your service moved to another server while the operating system upgrade takes place.
| Warning: | Ignoring the support ticket will mean that BitFolk does the work at a time convenient to BitFolk. If your preference is "I need a lot of notice before this can happen" then you do need to reply and ask for that. |
Can my VPS be live migrated so it doesn't have to be rebooted?
Sadly not in this case. The new hosts are running a version of the hypervisor that is many major releases ahead and there is not a reliable live migration path between them. There is too much risk of failure and data loss.
Hopefully no customer has put themselves in the position where their VPS is a single point of failure that cannot tolerate a few seconds between shut down and boot. If any customer does however want to take the opportunity to rebuild their VPS instead of having it migrated across to new hardware, then BitFolk's migration VPS offer is available as usual. The new account would be on the new hardware, with the new spec/price, and the old account will get shut down.
How do I tell which server my VPS is on?
You don't really need to as you'll be contacted when BitFolk is ready to move and upgrade your VPS, but if you are curious this is listed on BitFolk's Panel and also in DNS. For example, if your account name were ruminant:
$ host ruminant.console.bitfolk.com
ruminant.console.bitfolk.com is an alias for console.leffe.bitfolk.com.
console.leffe.bitfolk.com is an alias for leffe.bitfolk.com.
leffe.bitfolk.com has address 85.119.80.22
leffe.bitfolk.com has IPv6 address 2001:ba8:0:1f1::d
I have sponsored hosting. Will I be getting an upgrade?
No, sorry. The free upgrade is for paying customers. BitFolk will re-evaluate its sponsored hosting once all paying customers are upgraded.
I have a question that's not answered here. Where do I send it?
Sorry about that! Ideally please send it to our users mailing list. It will be answered and the answer written up here. Thanks! If you don't want to send an email you can try our other Community spaces.