Introduction
Why this documentation exists
This documentation exists to track, explain, and preserve knowledge about the deployment and operation of our VPS.
VPS setups tend to evolve organically:
- quick fixes during incidents
- commands executed directly on the server
- configuration changes made under time pressure
Over time, this leads to tribal knowledge, partial memories, and risky assumptions. This documentation is meant to counter that.
Goals
The primary goals of this documentation are:
- Clarity: Provide a clear picture of how the VPS is set up and why it is configured this way.
- Continuity: Ensure that knowledge survives team changes, vacations, and “I’ll remember this later” moments.
- Operational safety: Reduce the risk of accidental misconfiguration, downtime, or data loss.
- Traceability: Make it possible to understand when and why decisions were made.
Team usage
This documentation is written with team use in mind, even if the current team at chalvien.eu is small.
It should allow a team member to:
- understand the architecture without reverse-engineering the server
- safely perform routine operations (deployments, updates, backups)
- respond to incidents using documented procedures instead of guesswork
The tone favors practical instructions over theory.
Living documentation
This is not static documentation.
It is expected to evolve alongside the VPS:
- new services
- configuration changes
- lessons learned from incidents
- improvements discovered over time
If something changes on the server, the documentation should change too — ideally in the same session.
Notes and decision tracking
This documentation also serves as a place for:
- operational notes
- rationale behind technical decisions
- trade-offs that were considered and rejected
Short-term convenience decisions are explicitly documented so they don’t become long-term mysteries.
What this documentation is not
To set expectations, this documentation is not:
- a generic VPS tutorial
- a marketing document
- a full security audit
It is a working, internal reference focused on this specific VPS.