SSD VPS in Australia

Create /etc/systemd/system/myapp.service:

[Unit]
Description=My application
After=network.target

[Service]
User=deploy
WorkingDirectory=/srv/myapp
ExecStart=/usr/bin/node server.js
Restart=on-failure

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Then run sudo systemctl daemon-reload, sudo systemctl enable myapp and sudo systemctl start myapp. If the process dies, systemd brings it back, and journalctl -u myapp shows what it said before it went.

Create /etc/logrotate.d/myapp:

/var/log/myapp/*.log {
    weekly
    rotate 8
    compress
    missingok
    notifempty
}

A snapshot lives with the server it was taken from, so it will not save you from losing the machine. Keep a copy somewhere else, such as a server in another city or your office. Save this as /usr/local/bin/nightly-backup.sh:

#!/bin/sh
STAMP=$(date +%F)
mysqldump --single-transaction myapp | gzip > /var/backups/myapp-$STAMP.sql.gz
rsync -az -e ssh /var/backups/ [email protected]:/srv/backups/sydney/
rsync -az -e ssh /srv/myapp/uploads/ [email protected]:/srv/backups/uploads/
find /var/backups -name 'myapp-*.sql.gz' -mtime +14 -delete

Schedule it with a crontab line such as 30 2 * * * /usr/local/bin/nightly-backup.sh, give mysqldump its credentials through a protected options file, and restore one backup into a spare database to prove it works. If you would rather not run this yourself, daily backups are an option at checkout.