Read the server overview

Every server has one page that answers the questions you ask most often: is it healthy, what runs on it, how busy is it, what happened recently and what can I do next? This article walks through that page from top to bottom, using a ready app server, so you know what each card is for and where to go from it.

You reach the page by choosing a server in Servers in the sidebar. Everything here is also reachable from the tabs along the top, which open one section at a time (firewall, daemons, databases and so on); each tab has its own article.

Before you begin#

• A server in your organisation. If you have none yet, see Connect an existing server or Provision a server at a cloud provider.
• Access to the server. Owners, admins and the server's creator always see it; other members see it when one of their teams has been given access (see step 5).
• A role that can manage servers to use the actions and forms. Without it the page is read-only and the Actions menu and the Settings card are hidden or reduced.

1. The header: name, state and Actions#

1. Name. The server's name with its avatar. Click the name to copy it.
2. Status badge. The state of the server. The ones you will see: Awaiting access (a machine you connected that has not authorised SrvYard yet), Creating and Installing (being built; the page shows a progress card), Ready, Disconnected (SrvYard cannot log in; see Connect an existing server), Installation failed, Rebooting, Deleting and Archived. Next to it you may see tag chips, an Adopted badge (a server SrvYard took over rather than built) and an amber Reboot required badge when installed updates need a restart. Below, the IP address and hostname are copy-on-click.
3. Actions. The menu of things you can do to the whole server. What it contains depends on the state and your role; see below.
4. Tabs. Overview, Sites, Scheduler, Daemons, Runtimes, Databases, Services, Firewall, SSH keys, Monitoring, Backups, Heartbeats, Activity, Nginx, Packages and Settings. On a narrow screen the bar scrolls sideways.

The Actions menu#

• Start provisioning or Retry provisioning, for a connected machine that has not been installed, or one whose installation failed.
• Refresh status (on a ready server) or Check connection (on a disconnected one). Both ask the server again for what SrvYard shows.
• Reset trusted host key, only when a disconnect was caused by a changed SSH host key.
• Restart service, Reload service and Stop service, each with the list of services on the server (Nginx, PHP-FPM versions, databases, Redis and so on). Reload is immediate; restart and stop ask for confirmation. See Manage services and restarts.
• Reboot server. Opens a confirmation where you choose the method: through the provider (recommended, it works even when SSH does not answer), a hard reset through the provider (a power cycle, for an unresponsive machine only) or reboot run inside the server over SSH.
• Open in the provider, for cloud servers: a link to the machine in the provider's console.
• Archive server, Transfer server and Delete server, covered in Rename, resize, delete or forget a server.

2. What runs on the server#

Under the tabs, four cards give a shortcut to the things that live on the server.

1. Recent sites. The five most recently deployed sites with their repository, branch, PHP version and when they last deployed. A link at the bottom shows all of them, with the total.
2. The plus button. Starts the matching "new" flow: here a new site on this server. It is only shown on a ready server and only if your role can change it.
3. Databases. Databases on the server with their state. The plus button opens the Databases tab ready to create one.
4. Background processes. The long-running commands kept alive by Supervisor, such as queue workers, with how many copies run. See Keep long-running processes alive with daemons.
5. Scheduled jobs. Cron entries, including each site's Laravel scheduler, with the user and the frequency. See Scheduled commands on a server.

An empty card says "No sites yet.", "No databases yet." and so on.

3. Facts and live usage#

1. Overview. The server's type, the provider and account it runs at, region and size (cloud servers), the Ubuntu release, the default PHP version, the address with the SSH port, the private IP, the SSH user, the timezone, when SrvYard last connected and the Host key fingerprint SrvYard trusts. If the host key says "Not trusted yet", SrvYard has not connected since that was reset.
2. Usage. CPU, memory and disk as bars with the current percentage, and the time of the last sample (the card says "Sampled" with the age). The first sample arrives within a minute of the server becoming ready. The page refreshes the numbers by itself every 15 seconds while it is open.
3. Open monitoring. Goes to the Monitoring tab for charts and history; see Server metrics and charts.

4. Recent events, notifications, hardware and the Git key#

1. Activity. What happened to this server and its sites: failed heartbeats, deployments and changes. View all activity opens the Activity tab.
2. Notifications. The switch Mute this server and its sites silences notifications for you only. Channels set up on a site, and other people's settings, are not affected.
3. Resources. CPU cores, memory, disk, distribution, kernel, load and uptime as last reported. Before the first provisioning finishes it says "Resource details appear once the server has been provisioned."
4. Git access. The server's own public SSH key. Add it as a deploy key at your Git host (GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket or your own) so the server can pull private repositories. Press Copy to copy it. A key is generated during provisioning.

5. Settings, identity and team access#

1. Settings. Name, Timezone and Notes, saved with Save changes. For a server you connected yourself the card also has IP address and SSH port; changing them on a ready server re-verifies the connection, and they cannot be changed while the server is busy. Notes also appear in a card of their own once written.
2. Identity. An image (Upload image: PNG, JPEG or WebP up to 2 MB), the Handle (lowercase letters, digits and hyphens, unique among your servers), a Color for the avatar and Tags. Tags are labels you can filter the server list by.
3. Team access. Tick the teams whose members may see this server and press Save team access. Owners, admins and the creator always can. See Limit members to certain servers and sites.

6. The operations list#

At the bottom the Activity card lists the latest operations on the server: recipes, deployments, provisioning, reboots and connection checks.

1. A row. Shows the operation, its status (Running, Finished or Failed), who started it (or System), when and how long it took. Select a row to open its output in a side panel. Before anything has run the table says "Nothing has run yet."

Troubleshooting#

• The Actions menu is missing or short. Your role cannot manage servers, or the server is archived (then only Unarchive is offered). Ask an owner or admin.
• A card says "No sites yet." but I have sites. Sites belong to one server each. Check you opened the right server, and that you may see the sites (site access is limited by team too).
• Usage shows a dash or no bars. The first sample arrives within a minute of the server becoming ready. If it stays empty, check Monitoring and the server's connection.
• The status is Disconnected. Read the red Connection problem banner, then work through the checklist on the page.
• Reboot required keeps showing. Updates were installed that need a restart. Reboot the server from Actions when it suits you.
• I cannot change the IP address. The field is disabled while the server is busy (installing, rebooting), and cloud servers do not have an editable address because the provider assigns it.

Related#

• Manage services and restarts: the Services tab and the restart actions.
• Server metrics and charts: the full history behind the Usage card.
• Rename, resize, delete or forget a server: the destructive actions in the menu.
• Limit members to certain servers and sites: how team access works.