Can I transfer a snapshot to a lower spec droplet?

Posted on June 18, 2017

Is it possible to spin up a new droplet from a snapshot where the new droplet is lower spec than the droplet that generated the snapshot (assuming that file sizes are within the storage limits of the new droplet)

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Jonathan Tittle

June 18, 2017

@alexanderc2f4b5b058f8ab2c8

As long as the disk size of the snapshot is equal to or less than the size of the Droplet you’re trying to restore it to, you can definitely restore it.

If, for example, your snapshot is 40GB, you’d have to choose a Droplet with at least 40GB of storage available. So you wouldn’t be able to restore to a 20GB Droplet, but could restore to a 60GB, 80GB, etc.

CPU and RAM doesn’t matter when restoring as those are not hard limits and they are more flexible.

josephleeesl44d3f61ff0c551

March 14, 2020

If anyone comes across this question and needs a quick / intuitive solution: You can attach a network volume to the droplet before you create it and essentially use it as a home directory and/or move your postgresql / mysql data directories to the network volume. Then you can create a separate droplet on a small powered server with the configuration you want. Then, when you deploy the server snapshot, you can choose any size you want, are not restricted by the original droplet size. You can then attach a snapshot of the network storage volume that contains the data.

This works for me. I have elastic CPU, storage and RAM requirements.