If you are on shared hosting then the server is managed by your web hosting provider. But if you upgrade to VPS, VDS or a dedicate server then managing it will be your responsibility. You can either hire a server management company to manage your server or manage the server your self. Complete server management is a vast topic and it’s not possible to cover it all in an single article. But below is the overview of the main tasks that you should perform after you order a new dedicated server.
Control Panel
Installation, Setup and configuration of server softwares and services is a complicated task. So you should always consider installing a control panel on it unless your are an expert of Linux. You can either go for enterprise level control panels like cPanel or Plesk or use free control panels like Webmin with Virtualmin.
Server Security
Afer control panel installation there comes another important part and that is server security. And if you don’t do it there is extremely high probablity that you server will get hacked. You should install firewall( e.g CSF, APF), rkhunter, chkrootkit, virus scanner(e.g clamav) and malware scanner( e.g. maldet). Other security tasks include hiding apache, php and named version. Changing SSH port and making your server secure as per PCI DSS compliance if your website is an eCommerce website.
Backup Configuration
Configuring backups are very important. Unfortunately if something goes wrong with your server then you can always restore it fast from your daily backup. Also it’s always recommended to setup backup on remote server.
Server Management
Now your server is setup and everything is running fine. But it doesn’t mean that everything is over. You will have to manage it regularly by updating all the installed software to latest version and applying all the security patches released by the vendors etc.
If you expert in all this then it’s great. But if you need help then you can always hire a server management company like ServerManagementPlus to do all the tasks for you. Please Click here to see the details.
