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What's Involved in Hosting an Application?

When we host an application we go through a number of steps to ensure that we are doing so in the most efficient manner possible.

Installation

There are many, many ways that an application can be installed onto a server platform. These can include:

  • Native OS install
  • Source code install
  • Snap install
  • Docker install
  • Kubernetes

We will research and select which of these is the most sensible to facilitate the other steps.

We produce installation scripting to enable customer services to be built identically on the various cloud providers we use.

Security

We have a standard setup to ensure server security. This includes:

  • Node-based firewall
  • Perimeter firewall
  • Web application firewall
  • Certificate-based access
  • DNS standards
  • HTTPS standards
  • Reverse proxy standards

We have to ensure that the application plays nicely within an appropriate security infrastructure and can be secured in an ongoing basis.

Update

We think it is vital to keep applications updated with latest releases. We review the methods available for software update and ensure that we select the most appropriate. In many cases we will be writing scripts to ensure that we can update any software quickly and efficiently.

Backup

Last but not least we develop a backup process for the application. We develop scripts that enable us to do a holistic application backup. This means that we can use the backup created to move the application between servers if we need to. This is often a mix of file backup, database backup and application settings backup.

Once we have a reliable holistic backup we ensure that this can be:

  • Run with little or no downtime
  • Efficiently encrypted
  • Automatically sent to a remote offsite location