Unmanaged Ubuntu Server - What would I be getting myself into?

Question

I'm considering purchasing an unmanaged VPS with a Ubuntu 12.04 server to host smaller sites that aren't very important yet. My plan would be to install webadmin and basically administrate the hosting end that way.

My question is: What am I getting myself into? I'm fairly comfortable with Ubuntu. I know enough to 'sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade.'

What else would I have to worry about aside from the usual keeping my scripts (mainly WordPress) up to date?

Answer 1

What else would I have to worry about

Everything short of pretty much the data center being on fire. That's the "unmanaged" part:

• OS/software update? You need to install it.
• Bad performance? They installed Ubuntu; that doesn't mean they did any optimizing at all.
• Apache/MySQL/etc. crashed and your site's unreachable? You need to restart it.
• Security problem? You figure it out and fix it.
• Data center burned down? They'll probably replace the server, but you better have your own backups of the data.

In reality, you need to read the host's terms for a final answer on this, but generally speaking, it's going to be as above. They give you a server with maybe completely default installations of a few things like Apache, but then you manage it from there.