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What steps must be taken for perodic maintaince of a web server?

My company will be moving from a shared hosted server to a dedicated server (Unix). I understand that on a dedicated server, we will be responsible to do everything which includes maintaince. Can you please tell me what must I do on a regular and perodic interval to keep the server running smoothly. I am aware that it depends to a large extent on the applications running, but other than that (application independant) what do I need to do? Like for example (just from the top of my head) reboot it on a regular interval (whats a good time frame) or should I never reboot it unless it give a problem? How do I monitor that the server is always up and running, are there any tools which will monitor the server status and send a message to my cell phone when the server goes down? I am sure there may be many such things, everyone, PLEASE tell me everything you know in this issue, I want to be prepared as much as I can. Thanks a TON everyone.

Public Comments

1. You should definitely have some Unix/Linux experience if you are going to take on this project. If not, I would recommend that you take some time to learn basic Unix/Linux fundamentals. If not, you will just aggravate yourself and possibly put your website and server in an insecure environment. Basic web server maintenance includes making sure that all of your software (the operating system, the httpd (Apache), Apache's modules, etc) are up to date and do not have any exploits or security holes. However, even if these daemons and modules are secure, they are only as secure as the web application it's self. You will need to test security on the web applications that you will be hosting to make sure they don't contain any holes that will allow a remote user to exploit your server. You should not have to reboot the server unless you are upgrading its kernel. One good thing about Unix/Linux based operating systems is they don't require reboots for every change (unlike our friend Microsoft). You will need to rely on third party applications to make sure that your site/server is always online. If I were you, I would check with your datacenter/hosting facility to see if they can provide this service for you.. many do. Setting up additional servers/services to do this is well beyond the scope of this answer. I can not stress security enough -- if you are not prepared, chances are, you will get hacked. Do yourself and your company a favor, and read up on basic Unix/Linux security and fundamentals and it will save you a ton of stress in the future! Good luck!