Most businesses only think about their server when it stops working. By then, the website is down, orders are being lost, and someone is searching for a password nobody wrote down.
A good server care plan exists so that day never comes, or if it does, it's over quickly. Here's what to look for when comparing plans.
1. Monitoring that alerts a person
Monitoring should check that the server is reachable, that websites and services respond, and that disk space, memory and CPU are healthy. More importantly, alerts should go to a person who acts on them, not to an inbox nobody reads.
2. Regular security patching
Ubuntu and other Linux distributions release security updates constantly. Your plan should state how often updates are applied, how urgent fixes are handled, and how changes are tested so an update doesn't take the site down.
3. Hardening
A new server is not secure by default. Hardening includes disabling password logins in favour of keys, closing unused ports, configuring a firewall, setting up intrusion protection such as fail2ban, and limiting who has admin access.
4. Backups that are tested
Backups that have never been restored are a hope, not a plan. Ask how often backups run, where they're stored (ideally off the server and in another location), how long they're kept, and when a test restore was last done.
5. A disaster recovery plan
If the server is lost completely, how long will it take to rebuild it, and from what? A written recovery plan answers that question before you need it.
6. Response times in writing
The plan should say how quickly someone responds to an urgent issue, a normal request and a planned change, and how to reach them outside office hours.
7. A report you can understand
Every month you should get a short report: uptime, updates applied, incidents and what was done about them, and any risks coming up. If you can't understand it, ask for a better one.
A quick test
Ask your current provider three questions: when were we last patched, when was a backup last restored, and who responds at 10 pm on a Sunday? The answers will tell you a lot.