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Hobby tier deprecation - FAQ

Frequently asked questions about the removal of the Hobby tier.

Overview

PlanetScale is removing our Hobby tier. Please read our blog post here to learn more.

All existing Hobby tier databases will need to upgrade their database to a paid plan by April 8, 2024. Databases which are not upgraded by April 8th will be put into sleep mode. If you need to retrieve your data after April 8th, you will be able to temporarily wake your database for 24 hours.

What is happening to the Hobby tier?

PlanetScale has made the decision to stop offering our Hobby tier.

On March 6th, it will no longer be possible to create new Hobby tier databases. Databases which are not upgraded by April 8th will be put into sleep mode. If you need to retrieve your data after April 8th, you will be able to temporarily wake your database for 24 hours.

How do I stop my database from going offline?

To prevent your database from going offline on April 8th, you need to upgrade to a paid plan.

Will PlanetScale delete my data?

No! PlanetScale's database sleeping makes a backup copy of your data before shutting a database down and safely archives it.

How do I migrate off of PlanetScale?

First, export the data from your branch using the PlanetScale CLI:

Terminal
pscale db dump <DATABASE_NAME> <BRANCH_NAME>

This may take several minutes, depending on the amount of data in the branch. The dump of your data will be in a folder in your working directory. For example:

Terminal
pscale database dump test main

You'll see a message like this:

Starting to dump all tables from database test to folder /Users/nick/pscale_dump_test_main_20240305_144231

Dumping is finished! (elapsed time: 3.886106333s)

Inside of the pscale_dump_test_main_20240305_144231 folder, there are files with names ending in -schema.sql which contains the schema for the database, as well as files with names like test.test.00001.sql which contain the data. When restoring the backup files to a new MySQL server be sure to create the database first, and to load the schema files before the table data files.

mysql -e "create database test"

mysql test < pscale_dump_test_main_20240305_144231/*.sql

Database dumps created with pscale are also compatible with myloader, which is useful for loading larger backups into another instance of MySQL. Using a MySQL instance hosted on DigitalOcean as an example:

Terminal
cat db.ini

[myloader]

host = db-mysql-sfo3-5233-do-user-137498-0.b.db.ondigitalocean.com

user = doadmin

password = <REDACTED>

database = defaultdb

port = 25060

Then, we can run myloader to load data into the other MySQL instance:

Terminal
myloader --defaults-file db.ini --directory pscale_dump_test_main_20240305_144231/

If you get an error that looks like:

SQL
Unknown column 'nick2' in 'field list'

Ensure that your SQL_MODE does not contain ANSI_QUOTES.

Once this is done, your data should be loaded in your other MySQL database.

If you run into any issues, please don't hesitate to reach out to support@planetscale.com or submit a ticket at https://support.planetscale.com.

How do I get my data after April 8th?

If you do not wish to upgrade, you will be able to temporarily wake your database for 24 hours to retrieve your data.

I can't migrate in time, help!

If this causes you or your business problems, please don't hesitate to reach out to support@planetscale.com or submit a ticket at https://support.planetscale.com. We are happy to work with you to minimize the disruption that this change causes.

Where do I learn about the Scaler Pro plan?

You can find information about our paid plan, Scaler Pro, in the Scaler Pro documentation. The Scaler Pro upgrade FAQ also contains additional helpful information about migrating from a usage-based plan (in this case, Hobby) to our resource-based plan (Scaler Pro).

Can I pay for a hobby database?

At this time, PlanetScale does not offer database plans that are smaller than Scaler Pro at the PS-10 cluster size.

Need help?

Get help from the PlanetScale support team, or join our GitHub discussion board to see how others are using PlanetScale.

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