web server

How to Setup a Ubuntu 16.04 Production Server

This post is part 8 of 11 in the series: Simple Guide To Planning & Developing A Website Project

Production server environment setup, part 1.

This tutorial will install Ubuntu 16.04 on a DigitalOcean droplet.

If you don’t have an account already, sign up to DigitalOcean using this link which will give you a $10 credit (2 months FREE using a $5/mo droplet!) which also helps support this site.

1. Once logged in to your account, click the ‘Create Droplet’ link in the top right corner:

DigitalOcean create droplet
DigitalOcean create droplet

 

2. Choose an image. In our case, we will choose Ubuntu 16.04.1 x64. You can click the arrow key ‘v’ for more choices:

DigitalOcean choose image
DigitalOcean choose image

 

3. Choose a server size. In our case we will choose $5/mo (or $0.007/hour), 512 MB – 20 GB – 1000 GB transfer:

DigitalOcean choose size
DigitalOcean choose size

 

4. Choose a datacenter region (Choose a region where you expect most of your users will come from). For now, we will not be adding block storage so we can skip it:

DigitalOcean choose region
DigitalOcean choose region

 

5. Finalize and create. Give your new droplet a name that is easily identifiable to you (or your client). Selecting ‘Backups’ in ‘Select additional options’ enables weekly backups and only adds 20% to the monthly droplet cost (in our case, $5 * 0.20 = $1) but I will be using the WordPress plugin UpdraftPlus to create backups on a daily basis. Reference to this tool can be found in the Solution Tools Table we completed in our Analysis stage of this project. We will also be using Snapshots as a backup which will be explained later. For now, we will also skip the other options although later we can add an SSH key which is a recommended security feature (Amazon Web Services automatically sets you up with one but we will walk through AWS in later tutorials):

DigitalOcean finalize and create
DigitalOcean finalize and create

 

That’s it. You will now see on your ‘Droplets’ page your new server and IP Address. Note your IP Address, this will be used to log in and configure to your server via SSH.

DigitalOcean droplets
DigitalOcean droplets

 

Also, once we have completed our application setup later, we can take a Snapshot of the server which is just a manually generated backup and only cost $0.05 per gigabyte (GB). More info can be found here.

DONE

In the next part of this series, we will continue to Part 2 of the Ubuntu 16.04 production server setup.

REFERENCES

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/digitalocean-backups-and-snapshots-explained
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-connect-to-your-droplet-with-ssh
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-create-your-first-digitalocean-droplet-virtual-server
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorial_series/new-ubuntu-14-04-server-checklist

If you don’t have an account already, sign up to DigitalOcean using this link which will give you a $10 credit (2 months FREE using a $5/mo droplet!) which also helps support this site.

Series Navigation<< How to Install WordPress on Ubuntu 14.04Initial Ubuntu 16.04 Server Setup >>

Ken Favors is an engineering and technology professional with interests in investment research, history, music, arts and design. Ken has professional experience that spans from working within large and small organizations to entrepreneurial ventures and the founding of small business enterprises. Ken's roles have spanned sales, business development, operations, IT consultancy and trading in global financial markets, among others. Ken holds a BSc from the University of South Carolina as well as a MSc in Information Systems and Technology from City University of London. Ken currently lives in London.

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