Rebooting your server is equivalent to restarting your machine such as restarting your Windows Desktop OS. However, rebooting a server is uncommon and usually not something you should do either. There are 2 kinds of reboot, which are soft reboot and hard reboot, where one closes down all processes and initiates a reboot itself, while the other stops the entire server and restarts it again respectively.
While rebooting a VPS is uncommon there are situations where rebooting them is needed. Here are the 4 situations where you need to reboot your Linux VPS server.
1. Reboot function test
As weird as one might find, one will never know if the reboot function ever exists on their web server or not or if it ever works or not. You will never know when you will need to reboot your VPS, so it’s always best to test it, similar to making a backup and testing it. If possible, test it the moment the server is set up before adding more data.
2. Updating and patching
Every once in a while, there will be new patches or updates for your software, firewalls, or even operating system for your VPS. It is unavoidable since it is usually recommended to get the latest patch for any software and plugins. There are always those that require your VPS to restart, so it’s best for VPS owners to schedule those updates and patches at a time where it wouldn’t disrupt your business.
3. Hardware upgrades
It is pretty common for VPS, or dedicated servers in general, to have some upgrade options, such as adding more RAM, storage, and more. Especially for the case of a rising business enterprise, whenever their VPS couldn’t handle the number of resources used by the server, more processing power or storage upgrades will be required, and a server reboot is needed after the upgrade.
4. Server maintenance
Server maintenance is a really crucial strategy to manage a server and also provides or maintains a smooth operation of the server. A list of tasks will be taken into consideration that requires a server reboot will be scheduled to reboot at the appropriate moment. It can also be done by notifying the server clients ahead of time for them to be prepared for it and to prevent conflicts.
