Linode makes it hard to maintain uptime (in a good way :-)

Checking my Linode dashboard this morning, I noticed a little notification tucked away in the bottom right corner of the screen:

I had no idea what was going on, so I clicked on it, and I got this:

A quick search led me to the announcement of the Linode KVM beta program:

What does this mean for Linodes?

• KVM has less overhead, and therefore Linodes will run much faster. We found that on a Linode 4G, a KVM Linode compiles a kernel 27% faster than a Xen Linode.
• Linodes can now boot direct-from-disk, using your Master Boot Record (MBR) and your bootloader, and your distribution’s/OS’s kernel.
• Linodes can be either 32 (or 64) bit, without any exceptions, tickets or special requests.
• Linodes can now run any operating system, as we now support full virtualization, in addition to para-virtualization. This means you can run all sorts of operating systems - from BSD to Plan9.

In a later update, caker assured us that they are addressing guest to host escape bugs.

What could I do?

I cannot resist a performance upgrade!

I took a quick snapshot of the important stuff (just in case), then pressed the “Upgrade to KVM now!” button.

Five minutes later, my upgraded Linode was humming along. No issues, no problems.

Linode messed up my uptime again.

In a very good way.