The company I work for has a rack at a verio colocation facility. What we have is really overpowered for what we do, and verio is doubling the prices on us. I think a couple of big linodes would work for us.

But I don't know that for sure -- I don't know how to compare a physical server with a linode.

One server has 1G of ram, and it's a 2.4 Ghz xeon. The physical server dips into the swap file, so we'd want a bigger one. But would a linode 2880 work?

I think (and I am looking to confirm this is well) is that you can just get a smaller 1440, and if that isn't working so well then upgrade to a 2880.

I just wonder how easy / how long it takes to go from a 1440 to 2880, or back the other way.

It will be a host <-> host migration, since each host only has one kind of plan on it. If both hosts are in the same data center, the time should be measurable in minutes. If you are going between data centers, the times will be much longer

Ah ok interesting.
So would that result in any downtime?

Yes, your linode needs to be shut down to do a migration. Another option would be to provision a 2880 as well, migrate the data and services across in whatever way you see fit, then remove the old one for a prorated refund.

Once the migration/upgrade is configured on our end, you'll get a link in your Linode Manager which allows you to choose the best time to perform the transfer.

Avg time within the same facility is 1-2 minutes per GB. Moving to a different data center is about 10 minutes per GB and requires a new IP.

-Tom