What is Server Maintenance and How to Maintain Server?

Server is widely used in companies because physical server has much better performance than PC. Users don’t need to connect a monitor for every server while can still utilize the high-performance hardware resources.

There is also a kind of server called virtual server which is generated on physical server with hypervisor installed. It makes IT administrators precisely allocate hardware resources to virtual machines to better utilize the hardware resources.

Server can be used to support business systems and internal systems, and also deploy test environment. It is important in IT environment so company will maintain server from time to time.

What is server maintenance?

Server maintenance means taking care of server to make sure it always has good performance so that all kinds of applications and systems can work in good condition online. Anyway, IT administrator should make sure server’s performance or recover server from downtime in any time.

The daily job of server maintenance includes daily inspection, log check, parameter adjustment, performance optimization, configuration update, application deployment, failure response, tech support, etc.

Server maintenance tips

Server maintenance includes a lot of work. The section will give you some important tips for daily job.

1. Backup check and verification

Server backup is important and this could be a painful memory for the IT administrators who has experienced server downtime. After all, no one can promise that there will be no issues to server and when the server will get down but you can trust the backup file even when the most terrible things happen.

Backup plan should be scientific. For example, full backup and incremental backup should be used together to save backup time and storage. The backup server should also be inspected regularly.

Server backup is also an indispensable step of server migration.

2. Raid inspection

When certain disk of raid reports an error, the multi-disk drive can be used as the storage. Some RAID needs high performance so that the other drives are used for data redundancy. There is often an advanced monitor tool in RAID for fast discovering drive faults to let you replace or rebuild the drive with minimum downtime.

3. Storage utilization rate inspection

Hard disk is one of the important components of server and also an indispensable item on the checklist of daily server maintenance. In the daily work of server, there will be abundant logs generated while 90% percent of them are useless and require IT administrators to delete them manually. Some IT administrators also choose to delete useless logs with professional applications. For the important logs, IT administrators should move them to external storage.

Hard disk is not only used for data storing, but also for file interaction. It is like physical memory. When the hard disk utilization rate is more than 90%, file interaction and server performance could be influenced.

4. Hardware resource utilization inspection

Except for hard disk, the other hardware should also be paid attention to.

The status of memory and CPU can easily present the status of server. If the utilization rates of them are close to 100%, server load is too much or server is been attacked. If so, it is time to upgrade server to mitigate the situation.

5. Server cleaning

The inside of server should be also inspected. IT administrators should power off server and then clean the dust and debris inside the server.

6. Software update

IT administrators should make sure server won’t be attacked by safe leak so updating software will be very helpful. If there is a safe leak, it is suggested to disconnect unnecessary applications from the Internet to reduce the possibility of cyberattack.

Backup virtual server with Vinchin Backup & Recovery

Virtual server backup is different from physical server backup because the data of a whole virtual server is just a folder on its host so IT administrators just need to save the folder to make backup. Manual exporting and importing data have too many limitations so it’s time to select a systematical solution.

Vinchin Backup & Recovery is a professional backup and disaster recovery solution for virtual server like VMware ESXi, Hyper-V, Red Hat Virtualization, XenServer, OpenStack, etc. You can quickly add all the servers to the backup system agentlessly via a user-friendly web console.

Unlike manual backup, backup system will let you backup virtual server with more backup strategies, like scheduled backup, incremental backup, data encryption, etc.

With backup system, you can find the right backup copy and recover VM in a shorter time. Vinchin Instant Recovery technology can let you recover a failed VM from its backup in 15 seconds.

Virtual server migration will be easy with Vinchin Backup & Recovery. You can just select the VM backup to recover it on another host even on a foreign hypervisor.

Vinchin Backup & Recovery has been selected by thousands of companies and you can also start to use this powerful system with a 60-day full-featured free trial. Just click the button to get the installation package.

Sum Up

Server is used to deploy all kinds of systems in companies and contains important data. To make sure server can always work in good condition, IT administrators should regularly maintain the server and there are some tips for server maintenance in this post.

Server backup is important in server maintenance. To backup virtual server, it is recommended to use Vinchin Backup & Recovery. Don’t miss the free trial.