Resize, snapshot and reinstall a VPS safely

Three operations that worry people more than they should, done safely.

Snapshot: your undo button

A snapshot captures the whole disk at a point in time. Use it before anything risky — a big upgrade, a config change you are unsure about, a kernel swap.

From /panel/vps, select the server and choose Snapshot. Name it for the change you are about to make ("before nginx 1.27 upgrade"), not with a date alone. Restoring rolls the entire disk back, so anything written after the snapshot is lost — that is the point.

Snapshots are not a substitute for backups. They live beside the server; a real backup lives somewhere else.

Resize: more power without reinstalling

You can move a VPS to a larger plan at any time. Your disk and data are preserved; the machine restarts into its new resources.

1. Stop the machine cleanly from the panel, or with shutdown -h now over SSH.

2. Choose Resize and pick the target plan.

3. Start it and confirm the new resources:

nproc && free -h && df -h /

Notes:

• Growing is safe; shrinking may not be. Reducing a plan can require the filesystem to fit in a smaller disk, so it may not be offered, or may need a resize of the partition first.

• Check the filesystem resize actually happened. On most images it is automatic; if df still shows the old size, grow the partition and filesystem manually (growpart then resize2fs, or xfs_growfs for XFS).

• Resizing changes the invoice pro-rata — see Understanding your invoice.

Reinstall: a clean slate

Reinstall wipes the disk and lays down a fresh OS image with the SSH key you provide. Everything on the disk is destroyed.

Before you reinstall:

1. Take a snapshot (so you can go back if you change your mind).

2. Verify a recent backup restores.

3. Record your IP addresses, DNS records, firewall rules and any custom config you want to recreate.

Then: panel → Reinstall → choose the image → confirm. Provisioning takes a minute.

The safe order of operations

1. Snapshot.

2. Make the change.

3. Test.

4. If it works, keep going. If it breaks, restore the snapshot and try again.

That loop turns every frightening change into a reversible experiment.

Related reading

• Back up your data

• Create your first VPS