Though you sign up for a fully managed server that comes with Pre-installed necessary software and services and there is 24*7 support service to look after your server, you may not always get intended performance, security protection and guaranteed uptime unless and until you know and follow up a few things with coordination to your hosting support team.
Any host by default will install and configure all the necessary software and services as advertised on their product page, but in order to optimize the environment setting as per your application requirements and to better meet your server resources need, you should plan and request support team to audit and build your servers configuration accordingly.
Here are 6 important points that I believe every customer should be aware and consider after purchasing a VPS or Dedicated Server. These are the prime areas where most of the VPS and dedicated server issues are found. By following these points you should be able to achieve best performance, avoid common security hacks and get maximum uptime by avoiding possible service interruptions.
1) Security Policies.
As you own the server and hold full root/admin access to the server settings, it’s your responsibility to make a decision as to what level the user access and security restriction need to be implemented.
By default you will just get basic security tools and services installed on your server which wont provide protection against some advanced threats and vulnerabilities. You should request and authorize hosting support to tighten your server security so that they will do the necessary for you . You can ask support team to apply the following settings on your server as a part of strict security policy.
Set host and IP based restriction for the SSH, WHM and Plesk panel logins.
Configure Password strength and expiration policy.
Disable unused services and ports.
Disable vulnerable PHP and System functions.
Firewall, Malware and Antivirus tweaking as per your application requirement.
Prevent users from overriding PHP config values in the php.ini and .htaccess files.
2) CPU and Memory Resources Management and optimization.
The CPU and Memory [RAM] resource determines overall performance of the system and application software. You might not get desired load speed for your sites even having high configuration server if that's not well optimized to work with yours sites.
There will be default PHP, MySQL and Apache directives and parameters settings as provided in the control panel for a newly installed server. Its important to adjust the LAMP [ Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP/Perl] settings as per your application requirement and available server resources. If you are going to host proprietary or free open source app then you will find requirement and environment settings information in the README and manual page of that software suite it self.
If you are customizing any open source CMS or third party script from developer then ask him to co-ordinate with the support team to make the required environment available on your server. Your hosting support should be able to do the job if you provide appropriate information for the same.
By optimizing the LAMP settings you will not only gain performance, but also avoid server overloading and out of memory [memory shortage] issues.
3) Backup and Recovery.
If your hosting plan includes free/paid backup service then make sure that you get it configured as per your requirement. Very often hosting support will just configure the backup as per your backup specs and default accounts/files selection or sometimes will be waiting for your confirmation. You should plan and request support team to configure the Backup with periodic intervals for the users data and system config files as well. The best and recommended option is to retain Daily, Weekly and Monthly replications with full system image. To be on the safe side,configure both local and remote backup options so that you can restore data in case anything goes wrong with the server.
For more information about Backup solutions, you can refer to our R1soft Backup addon page as its most unfriendly and convenient backup service.
R1Soft Remote Backup Plans by eUKhost
4) E-Mail server and IP Address Reputation.
You should provide necessary information to support team to get your Email Server configured as per the sender's best practices and also keep follow up in case of IP Address Reputation issues arise.
You will find more information at below thread where I have posted some recommendations for sending emails and mail server settings which will prevent server from getting blacklisted.
http://forums.eukhost.com/f15/how-pr...klisted-17713/
5) Periodic Software updates, upgrades and patches.
The software updates/upgrades provide performance increase, new features and security/bug fixes to the installed release. You should turn ON the automatic updates/upgrades wherever possible and request support team to run manual upgrade if needed. The support Team and Software Vendor often sends notification if there is any serious security issue or bug in the current/stable release. Make sure that you do not ignore such emails and contact the support right away to get your server patched as soon as possible.
Most of the common security issues can be fixed by upgrading the software or applying the vulnerability patch.
You can also subscribe to the mailing list of the software vendors like, cPanel, Parallels, R1soft and PHP and CentOS/RHEL OS as well to get notified about new release and vulnerability information.
We always recommend and install the latest and stable PHP, MySQL and Apache versions on newly setup servers. So if your server is running any old software release then just contact your developer to check scripts compatibility and schedule upgrade on your server with the help of support team accordingly.
6) Maintenance and service status updates to customers.
If you find need to reboot the server due software upgrade or have some maintenance task to carry on which need complete server shutdown then schedule such events to weekend or midnight as there will be less visitors at that time. Also make sure that you host a separate portal on another remote server where you can post schedule maintenance and downtime updates about the server and services interruption. Keep your customers informed with the threads/comments and also send emails to your staff and customers so that they can be prepared.
For example the most common issues faced on the Linux server that causes reboot and downtime are, root password reset, kernel patch, File system corruptions, kernel panic, Drive failures . You should be aware of these terms and notify end users about possible downtime.
We at eUKhost do not charge extra for any security and performance audit/review or suggestion regards to the servers which are hosted with us. All of our managed servers include free technical support and we argue clients to implement best practices and policies with the help of our support team to get optimal performance on your private servers.
If you have any concern or query for any of the above points then just initiate a live chat session with our support team or open a helpdesk ticket and post your comment with the server login details. We will help you to configure your server settings accordingly. :)