Server Management

Server management principles for production operations. Learn to THINK, not memorize commands.

1. Process Management Principles

Tool Selection

Process Management Goals

2. Monitoring Principles

What to Monitor

Alert Severity Strategy

Monitoring Tool Selection

3. Log Management Principles

Log Strategy

Log Principles

1. Rotate logs to prevent disk fill
2. Structured logging (JSON) for parsing
3. Appropriate levels (error/warn/info/debug)
4. No sensitive data in logs

4. Scaling Decisions

When to Scale

Scaling Strategy

5. Health Check Principles

What Constitutes Healthy

Health Check Implementation

• Simple: Just return 200
• Deep: Check all dependencies
• Choose based on load balancer needs

6. Security Principles

7. Troubleshooting Priority

1. Check if running (process status)
2. Check logs (error messages)
3. Check resources (disk, memory, CPU)
4. Check network (ports, DNS)
5. Check dependencies (database, APIs)

8. Anti-Patterns

Remember: A well-managed server is boring. That's the goal.