Upgrades, backups and firewalls on a virtual server

Moving to a larger plan

If you have outgrown the server, use Change plan on the server's page to ask us to move it to a larger plan.

You can only choose a plan that is at least as large in every resource (CPU, memory, disk) as the current one.
The request becomes a support ticket, and we reply on it, including the price difference.
Resizing requires the server to be stopped, so it means a short outage.
Growing the disk cannot be undone. Moving to a smaller plan is not possible.

Backups

We do not back up virtual servers. Backing up the data on them is entirely your responsibility; pay particular attention to it if the server holds live data.

Proven approaches:

regular, encrypted backups to external storage, with restic or borg for example,
for databases, a regular dump (mysqldump, pg_dump) that is itself backed up,
test the restore: a backup that has never been restored may not work.

Always back up before reinstalling, because a reinstall erases everything on the disk.

Firewall

The portal has no firewall service, so the firewall is set up on the server. On Debian and Ubuntu ufw is the simplest; on RHEL-based systems, firewalld.

An ufw example that lets in only SSH and web traffic:

sudo ufw allow OpenSSH
sudo ufw allow 80,443/tcp
sudo ufw enable

Always allow SSH before enabling the firewall. If you do lock yourself out, the browser console lets you in without the network, so you can fix the rule.

Basic security

Keep the system up to date. On Debian and Ubuntu, the unattended-upgrades package can install security updates automatically.
Log in over SSH with a key, not a password.
Run, and expose to the outside, only the services you need.