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What server maintenance includes

Setting up a server is only the beginning. What decides whether it lasts and runs well is maintenance: the ongoing work almost nobody sees until something breaks. Here's what serious maintenance should cover.

Backups with a copy off the server

A server without backups is a problem waiting to happen. But a backup that lives on the same machine as the server doesn't save you either: if that machine dies, everything is lost at once. Good maintenance makes automatic copies, keeps one off the server, and tests that those copies actually restore.

Controlled updates

Software is updated for security and fixes, but updating recklessly breaks things. Maintenance applies updates one at a time and tested, with the option to roll back. Better a point behind and stable than up to date and broken.

Ongoing security

Security isn't set once and forgotten. It means watching access, keeping the firewall current, protecting against brute force, and checking that nobody gets in where they shouldn't. An exposed server left unwatched is only a matter of time before trouble.

Monitoring and incident response

Finding out about an outage from a user is no good. Good maintenance watches that the server is alive and warns before it's noticed. And when something breaks, what matters is how fast it comes back: that depends on having backups that work and a documented procedure.

Got a server with no maintenance, or not sure the one you have is well looked after? Tell us through the form and we'll take a look, scoped to measure.