System and security

With root access, you administer your system: you install the software of your choice and you decide the schedule of its updates. Simafri operates the platform that carries it: the hardware, the network, anti-DDoS protection, backups and monitoring.

Your system

Your VPS Pro is delivered with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, or with Debian 13 depending on your choice when ordering, up to date at the time it goes into service. To find out the installed version:

cat /etc/os-release

Updates

Apply updates regularly:

apt update && apt upgrade

To have security fixes install themselves every day, enable unattended-upgrades:

apt install unattended-upgrades
dpkg-reconfigure -plow unattended-upgrades

Our monitoring flags the security updates that deserve your attention; you decide whether to apply them and when. Before a major update (a new version of the system, of your database or of your language), request a snapshot from support: it lets you roll back in a few minutes (see Backups and snapshots).

Good practice

• One SSH key per person, added in your client area or in each person's account (see Connecting over SSH).
• A firewall that opens only your public services (see Network and sending email).
• One user per application, without administrative rights, to run each service (User= in its systemd unit).
• Your secrets outside the code: passwords and API keys in a .env file readable only by the application (chmod 600).
• Logs read from time to time: journalctl -p warning -b shows the warnings since boot.

The time zone

Your server is set to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), the convention for servers. To display it in your time zone:

timedatectl set-timezone Europe/London

Your applications preferably keep their dates in UTC and convert them for display.

Monitoring your server

A few commands to read the state of your server:

Command	What it shows
htop	the processes, the processor and the memory, live
free -h	used and available memory
df -h	used and available disk space
ncdu /	what takes up your disk, folder by folder
systemctl --failed	the services stopped on an error

Our monitoring continuously tracks your server's availability, its load and its disk space, and alerts you when one of these indicators calls for it.

What Simafri does

Simafri operates	You administer
the hardware and its mirrored disks	the system, its software and their updates
the network, the addresses and anti-DDoS protection	your firewall and your services
the nightly backup	your data and your database exports
continuous monitoring	your applications and their configuration

And between the two, Full-Stack Assistance: for a question about the system, the database or your code, we diagnose it and tell you what to do (see Full-Stack Assistance and hands-on intervention).