In this post I want to talk a about thoughts about running and maintaining servers.

security

First lets talk about the term security. Security in the context of hosting a server or service means for me, that my data can’t be accessed by others, that I can recover them when something failed and also server is operating stable (your server should not randomly crash and can reboot without problems).

There is no guarantee of being 100% secured. Services will fail, servers will crash, data will be corrupted and also there is no guarantee that talented people will access your data when your server or service is exposed to the internet.

So for me security is all about mitigating risks. Backing up data regularly to different locations will protect against data losses. Strict firewall rules are blocking bots from scanning for open ports on your servers. Updating packages on your server will prevent fix security flaws and will hopefully make your services and server a bit more stable.

maintenance

Regularly performed Maintenance will increase your stability and security.

For me the following tasks are performed by regular maintenance

• create and copy the backup to a remote location
• check if backup really was performed and stored correctly
• update all installed packages
• remove unused packages
• reboot if necessary (might be a bit scary.. but your servers should always be in a state where rebooting will not crash the system, service or any application running)
• check if service is up and running after maintenance

conclusion

Running a server will cost you money and time. Lets talk next time about how to automate the most of these things to reduce the time you have to spend on all this tasks.