Cloud Servers
Resizing Your Cloud Server
Resizing moves your server up or down the ladder of tiers within its own processor family, changing CPU, memory and disk without moving your data or changing your IP addresses.
You do not have to guess your capacity when you order. Start where your workload sits today and move when the numbers tell you to. This guide covers the resize screen, what an upgrade and a downgrade each do to your bill, the one thing that cannot be reversed, and what to do when the tier you want has no stock.
What a Resize Can and Cannot Change
| Changes | Stays the same |
|---|---|
| vCPU count | Your IPv4 and IPv6 addresses |
| Memory | Your region |
| Disk, on an upgrade | Your operating system and everything installed |
| Your monthly price | Your data |
A resize keeps you inside the same processor family and the same management mode. You can move from Comet to Atlas, or from Quasar to Orion, but you cannot resize from an ARM tier to a Standard x86 one, and you cannot resize an unmanaged Cloud VPS into a Managed Cloud Server. Those are different products with different underlying hardware. To change family, order a new server and migrate; see Choosing Between ARM, Standard and Dedicated vCPU Servers. To move between unmanaged and managed, contact our team.
Bare-metal servers, storage servers and GPU servers cannot be resized in place. The resize screen says so directly: "Live resize is available for cloud tiers (ARM, x86 and dedicated-vCPU). Bare-metal, storage and GPU servers are changed by ordering a new server."
Opening the Resize Screen
- Sign in to KPanel.
- Click Cloud Servers in the left sidebar, then click your server.
- Find the Resize Server card and click Region-aware resize.
The direct address is /cloud-servers/<server-id>/resize.
The screen has three parts:
- Current tier, showing your existing tier, its specifications, its monthly price and its region.
- Choose a new tier, listing every other tier in your family with an up or down arrow, its specifications, its price, and a live stock badge.
- Summary, on the right, which fills in once you pick a target.
The stock badges are read live at the moment you open the page: In stock, Reserve, Limited stock, or Unavailable here.
Choosing a Target Tier
Click a tier in the list. The summary panel then shows:
| Row | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| New tier | The tier you selected |
| Direction | Upgrade or Downgrade |
| Region | Your server's region, which does not change |
| New monthly | The new monthly price in your billing currency |
Below the price you get the difference as plain language, either "{amount} more per month" or "{amount} less per month", and a caption confirming the price is shown excluding GST, with GST added at checkout if your account currency is NZD. See Cloud Server Pricing and GST.
The Regional availability panel underneath shows where the selected tier has capacity right now. It is informational: your server stays in its current region either way. A resize never moves your data between regions.
Upgrading
Click Resize to followed by the tier name.
An upgrade is applied straight away:
- You are charged for the upgrade immediately. If you are part way through a billing period, the charge is prorated for the remainder of it, and your renewal amount updates to the new tier's price from then on.
- Once payment succeeds, the server is physically resized.
- The server restarts briefly during the resize. Expect a short interruption, not a long outage.
- When it comes back, the new CPU, memory and disk are available immediately.
The order matters: the charge happens first, so a declined card fails before anything is done to the server. If the charge fails, nothing changes and you can fix the payment method and try again. See Updating Your Payment Method.
A resize changes what you are charged, so if you are signing in from a device the account has not seen before, KPanel may ask you to re-authenticate first. That is the same step-up check that guards any plan change.
Downgrading
A downgrade is scheduled rather than applied on the spot.
- You are not charged anything now.
- You keep the larger server, at the price you already paid, until the end of the billing period you have paid for.
- At renewal, the plan swaps to the smaller tier, the renewal price drops to the new tier's price, and the server is physically resized at the same time.
This is deliberate: you paid for a period at the larger size, so you get the whole period at the larger size.
Disk can grow but it can never shrink. When you downgrade, your current disk size is kept and only CPU and memory are reduced. That is good for your data, but it means a downgrade will not reduce the disk you are using, and a later upgrade starts from the disk you already have.
Before a downgrade takes effect, make sure the smaller tier can actually carry your workload. Check the Live metrics card on the server page for CPU and memory over the last 24 hours, and compare the peaks, not the averages, against the target tier.
When the Tier You Want Has No Stock
Some tiers, ARM in particular, sell out. If the tier you selected has no capacity in your region, the summary panel switches from a resize button to a reserve one and explains why: "This tier is out of stock right now. Reserve it and we will provision it automatically when stock returns. You are not charged until it is provisioned."
Click Reserve followed by the tier name and you get a reservation reference. A reservation is free, you are not billed while you wait, and you can cancel at any time. Regions, Availability and the Reserve Queue explains the queue in full.
Occasionally a tier is in stock when the page loads and gone by the time you confirm. KPanel handles that rather than failing: it tells you the tier is out of stock and offers the reserve path instead.
Before You Resize
Take a snapshot first. A resize is a well-trodden operation and rarely goes wrong, but a snapshot costs you two minutes and covers the case where your application does not come back cleanly after the restart.
Also worth doing:
- Pick a quiet window. The restart is short but it is real downtime.
- Check whether your application pins itself to a CPU count or memory size at startup. Some runtimes and databases need their configuration adjusted after the resources change.
- Note your current tier name, so you know what to go back to.
Troubleshooting
"There are no other tiers in this family to move to." You are on the only tier in that family, or the others are not currently sellable. Ordering a new server in a different family is the way forward.
"This server cannot be resized in-place." The server is bare metal, storage or GPU, or it is on a legacy plan that is not part of the current ladder. Contact us and we will talk through the options.
"This server is not linked to a billing subscription yet." The panel will not change the machine without also changing the bill. Contact support and we will link it.
The resize was refused for payment. The charge is taken before the server is touched, so a declined card stops the whole operation safely. Update your payment method and try again.
"Managed accounts change plans through their hosting provider." Your account is managed by a reseller. They control plan changes for you.
The server did not come back after the restart. Give it a couple of minutes and reload. If it is still down, use the browser console described in Connecting to Your Cloud Server With SSH, or roll back to the snapshot you took beforehand.
If a resize leaves your server in a state you did not expect, email support@kapsulehost.com with the server name, the tier you moved from, and the tier you moved to.