Tips for reducing the size of VMs

If you find that the plan you have chosen for a ccloud³ VM exceeds your requirements and downscaling is appropriate, there are a few steps you should bear in mind. Direct downgrades of a ccloud³ VM are not offered via Control Panel for data integrity reasons, but you can still switch to a smaller ccloud³ VM by using standard migration strategies.

Here are a few tips if you are considering downsizing your ccloud³ VM.

Back up the original ccloud³ VM

We strongly recommend that you back up your ccloud³ VM by first creating a snapshot. Without a backup, you risk losing data if something goes wrong.

Warning

Unlike snapshots, backup images created by automatic backups are deleted when the corresponding ccloud³ VM is deleted. If you have enabled automatic backups for the original ccloud³ VM and wish to retain one or more of these backup images as a safety copy, convert the backups to snapshots before deleting the ccloud³ VM.

Migrating files

There are a wide variety of tools available to simplify the process of migrating files from one server to another. If you have set up SSH keys between the original and the new ccloud³ VM, you can use tools such as scp or rsync. You can also follow a more comprehensive migration process.

Updating DNS records

If you are currently using centron for DNS management, please update your DNS records to point to the new ccloud³ VM.

Please wait and confirm that the DNS changes have propagated before deleting the original ccloud³ VM.

Replacing IP addresses or considering reserved IPs

centron does not reserve any IP addresses, so you must update all references to the IP address of the original ccloud³ VM to that of the new ccloud³ VM. You can simplify this process in future by using a reserved IP – a publicly accessible static IP address that you can assign to a ccloud³ VM.

If you are already using a reserved IP address for the original ccloud³ VM, you can change the existing reserved IP so that it points to the new ccloud³ VM.