Netstat can provide you with useful information about the ports that system services are using. For example, to display information about the services using port 80, type the following command:

netstat -ant | grep 80

The command by itself will show all of the instances running on every port, but you can limit the output to port 80 with grep. This is a quick way to see how many instances of port 80 (your web server) are actually running. If you want to count them, type this command:

netstat -ant | grep 80 | wc -l

Netstat has many other features that you can use to learn about your network ports and how they are being used. For complete documentation on netstat, type “man netstat” from the command line.

Don’t worry. Despite how it sounds, this is a good thing. It means those who use Ubuntu at the server level are not up a creek if something goes wrong. Most server-ready Linux distributions are backed by companies that will offer support for them. Ubuntu offers a service called Landscape that helps you monitor and manage your server.

Landscape has two versions: Hosted Edition, which is hosted remotely and accessed over the web and Dedicated Server Edition, which you install directly on your dedicated server. Canonical currently offers a free 60 day trial, and a subscription to Landscape is $150 per node per year.

Source: Canonical

Answer:

Generally speaking, you do not have much to worry about. You most likely did your homework before selecting your web host. There is not a huge risk of you losing your data completely, but you should always keep backups just in case.

The bigger risk is downtime. You want to minimize the disruption of service, especially if you have a business and clients who depend on your website(s). Here are a few steps you can take to minimize downtime.

Monitoring software: I posted some information about monitoring software back in May. With it you can know precisely the moment when your server goes down so that you can act quickly.

Maintenance windows: Rather than getting hit with security threats and then doing emergency patches, plan your security updates. If your primary audience is in one region of the world, it should be easy to schedule maintenance when most of your clients are sleeping. With Linux and Unix servers, you will only need to reboot when you update the kernel.

Reset switch: If it comes to this, it is certainly handy. Some web hosts offer remote access to a hardware switch that will reboot your computer without their physical intervention. Short of that, most have quick response to reboot requests.

KVM switch: If all else fails, and you cannot even reboot your server properly, your web hosting company may have a solution that allows you to use a virtual keyboard and monitor to access your server. If it still comes on but will not connect to the network, this is a good solution. If it will not come on at all, you will be thankful you have backups.

Photo: Flickr

There are many good software programs and services available that could remedy this problem. One such solution is called Nagios, a free and open source network monitoring solution. Nagios monitors Windows and Linux/Unix servers, routers, switches, firewalls, printers, services, and applications. You can set it to notify you via email, pager, or mobile phone, and it has escalation capabilities if you would like to have different support personnel notified depending on the severity.

Nagios is available for download from their website. With it, you will be able to rest a little easier knowing that you will at least know when something is wrong before you get that dreaded phone call or support ticket. Nagios was the winner of the InfoWorld Best Open Source Software award of 2008 and the Linux Journal Reader’s Choice award of 2009. A list of other network management and monitoring software is available at Wikipedia.