Your Managed VPS: What We Handle and What's Yours Print

Why this article exists

"Fully managed" is a phrase hosts throw around loosely, and a vague version helps nobody, you end up unsure who is responsible for what, which is exactly when things fall through the cracks. So here is the honest, specific division of labour on a Linuxweb managed VPS: what we look after, what stays yours, and where the line sits. Knowing it upfront means you always know who to call, and for what.

What we handle

The server itself, the infrastructure your sites run on, is our responsibility:

• Initial hardening and setup. When your server is provisioned, we secure and configure it before handing it over, so you start on a locked-down, properly set-up machine rather than a raw one.
• The firewall. We configure and maintain the CSF firewall that protects your server.
• Security updates. Operating system and control panel security patches are applied by us, so the server stays current against known threats without you tracking them.
• Server-level security. The SSH access port is moved off its default, brute-force protection is in place, and the server is configured to resist the common attacks, as part of the hardening.
• Monitoring. We watch the server and act on problems, often before you would notice them, which is the practical value of managed hosting, someone is paying attention to the machine even when you are not.
• The underlying infrastructure. The hardware, the network, the power redundancy, the DDoS protection, all handled at the datacentre level, nothing for you to think about.

In short: everything about keeping the server running, secure, and current is ours.

What's yours

What lives on the server is your domain:

• Your websites. Building them, updating them, and keeping their software current, your WordPress core and plugins, your applications, is yours to manage, exactly as it would be on shared hosting. Our WordPress articles and our WordPress update and security services exist precisely for this, if you would like help.
• Your content and data. Your files, your databases, your email, all yours.
• Your accounts and configuration within the control panel. Creating sites, mailboxes, and databases through cPanel or DirectAdmin is your day-to-day, the same tasks our cPanel articles cover for shared clients.
• Your own backups. This is the important one, and it has its own section below.
• Anything you change with root access. If you use your root access to install or alter software yourself, that configuration becomes yours to look after, which the next section explains.

Backups: your responsibility, and don't assume otherwise

This is the single most important thing to be clear about, because assuming backups are handled when they are not is how people lose data they cannot recover.

Managing the server does not mean we keep restorable copies of your websites and data for you. Server-level backups exist for disaster recovery of the infrastructure, not as a personal restore service for your content. Keeping your own backups, so that you can recover a deleted file, a broken update, or a compromised site, is yours to arrange. Our article on backups covers your options, from cPanel's own backup tools to automated services, and the discipline of taking one before any significant change applies just as much on a VPS as anywhere else. Do not skip it because the word "managed" made you assume it was covered.

The line: full root access, and what it means for support

Your VPS comes with full root access, complete control to install and configure whatever you like. It is genuinely yours to use. But it comes with a fair and simple principle worth understanding:

We manage and support the server as we set it up and maintain it. If you use root access to make your own changes, install custom software, alter the configuration, change how services run, and something you changed causes a problem, sorting out your own changes is not part of standard management. We will always help, we are not going to leave you stranded, but there is a difference between us maintaining the server we hardened and us untangling a configuration you altered. Our Statement of Support sets out where that line sits.

The practical takeaway: if you are not sure what a change will do, ask us first, or leave it to us. Most clients never touch root access and never need to, the managed setup does everything they require, and that is exactly how it should be.

When in doubt, ask

The honest rule for any managed VPS is simple: if it concerns the server staying up, secure, and current, assume it is ours and tell us if something looks wrong. If it concerns your websites, your content, or a change you made yourself, assume it is yours, and ask us if you would like help. And when you genuinely cannot tell which side something falls on, open a support ticket and ask, guessing wrong in either direction is how things get missed, and a quick question settles it.

Good to know

The whole point of a managed VPS is that you get the power and dedicated resources of your own server without needing to become a system administrator to run it. We take the technical burden of the server itself, you focus on your websites and your business. The division in this article is not us limiting what we do, it is us being clear about it, so that nothing important is left assumed. Clarity about who does what is what makes managed hosting actually work.