Servers are amazing things and the heart of your network. They work 24/7 without any issue but they are machine they do require regular maintenance. Your server and network must also be properly maintained to work properly and smoothly and avoid system downtime or loss of computer data.

What is Server Maintenance?

Server maintenance is process of keeping a server software updated and running so that a computer network can operate smoothly and avoid downtime or loss of data. Regular maintenance will keep the server running as expected and will help avoid a total or partial network failure. It includes tasks like reviewing the server’s performance, ensuring that automated system monitoring utilities are properly installed and configured, identifying potential security risks and backing up data at regular intervals.

If you use your server doctor server management solutions, you don’t have to worry about server failure and hacks. They monitor, review and maintain server 24/7, but if you want to maintain and manage your own server, here are few tips that should be part of your server maintenance checklist.

Handy Server Maintenance Tips:

1. Verify your backups are working.
Before making any changes to your server database and system, be sure that you have to take a backup before doing any update and your backups are working fine. And keep in mind you have select the right backup and right location.

2. Check disk usage.
Keep clean your disk storage and don’t use your server system as an archival system. Time to time delete old emails, logs and s/w versions that are not in use. A smaller data footprint means faster recovery. Keep an eye on your disk usages if your partition reaches 100 percent, you server may stop working and database tables and data may be corrupt and lost.

3. Monitor RAID Alarms.
You should monitor your RAID status; all servers should use RAID. In my 5-year experience I have worked on various systems where the RAID failed. A single disk failure can have caused a complete system failure.

4. Update Your OS.
Always update your system if you are using Linux because such OS release frequently update and staying on top of these updates can be difficult. To overcome this problem, you can use automated patch management tools and have monitoring in place to alert when a system is out of date. If you are updating your server manually (or not at all), you may miss important security updates. If you cannot automate your updates, then create a schedule to update your system. This will prevent your system from hacks.

Hyper-V-Support

5. Update your Control Panel.
If you are using a hosting cpanel be sure to update it as well. This will make your system up to date and fixed known issue related to hosting.

6. Check application updates.
Always update your web applications, if you are using CMS or any open source program for you web application especially popular programs like WordPress.

7. Check remote management tools.
Maintain your remote server via remote console, remote reboot and remote rescue mode these are essential tools for remote server management.

8. Check for hardware errors.
Hardware problems are common but create a big issue, so you may review the log for any hardware problems like disk read error, network failure. These are rare but worth a look, especially if the system has not been working within normal ranges.

9. Check server utilization.
Review your server’s disk, CPU, RAM and network utilization.

10. Review user accounts.
If you have had staff changes, client cancellations or other user changes, you will want to remove these users from your system. Storing old sites and users is both a security and legal risk.

11. Change passwords.
As a server management expert, I always recommend changing passwords every 6 to 12 months, especially if you have given out passwords to others for maintenance.

12. Check system security.
I suggest a periodic review of your server’s security using a remote auditing tool such as Nessus.