Linux Server: Security, Databases, Web Servers, Docker, Monitoring

This section covers the part after the server boots. You’ve got a fresh Linux box, a login and an IP address. Now it needs to be safe, useful and something you can trust to keep running while you sleep.

What will you find in the Linux Server guides?

Practical, command-first walkthroughs, added over time, for the jobs every self-managed server ends up needing.

Security comes first: SSH keys instead of passwords, a firewall that denies by default, fail2ban for brute-force noise, and an update routine you’ll stick with. From there, the guides move to the services that make the server worth having. That means databases like PostgreSQL, MariaDB and Redis, sized for the memory you have and kept off the public internet. It also means web servers like Nginx, Caddy and Apache, with TLS and sensible tuning.

Containers get their own space: Docker and Docker Compose, persistent volumes, and updating images without losing data. Monitoring closes the loop, with Prometheus and Grafana for metrics and Uptime Kuma for “is it up?” checks that alert you before your users notice.

Examples use Debian and Ubuntu by default, with example.com and documentation IP ranges as placeholders you swap for your own.

What kind of server do these guides assume?

Any Linux machine you control with sudo access: a VPS, a spare box at home or a lab VM. Nothing here depends on one provider.

If you want somewhere to run what you learn, our NVMe VPS plans are $5/GB RAM, from $10/mo. Dial it in to the memory your databases and containers need. Backups are $0.02/GB with a $1 minimum. For disk-heavy workloads like databases, a YABS benchmark tested July 2023 on a 2 vCPU / 2 GB NVMe VPS measured 213 MB/s and 53,300 4K IOPS.