I run a SaaS that makes between $1000-$2000/yr on a $5 VM. My operations are as follows:
On the VM:
- Nodejs + React SSR
- Nginx
- Certbot to manage my SSL cert
- Integrated with Grafana's cloud service (free tier)
Outside of the VM:
- Managed MongoDB cluster
- API health check's every 3 min with email alerts (I use multiple uptime services to check from different regions)
- DB backup cron jobs, backups are stored in 2 cloud providers
- Service desk for customer's to send queries/raise issues
- Alerts if CPU/RAM usage is too high (never got an alert for the past 2 years)
I also nuke the VM once a year and re-provision otherwise you have to maintain the OS, do cleanup etc.
Future work:
- Find way to backup my DNS records
- Probably need to monitor the SSL cert expiration in case certbot breaks
- CI/CD
On the VM:
- Nodejs + React SSR
- Nginx
- Certbot to manage my SSL cert
- Integrated with Grafana's cloud service (free tier)
Outside of the VM:
- Managed MongoDB cluster
- API health check's every 3 min with email alerts (I use multiple uptime services to check from different regions) - DB backup cron jobs, backups are stored in 2 cloud providers
- Service desk for customer's to send queries/raise issues
- Alerts if CPU/RAM usage is too high (never got an alert for the past 2 years)
I also nuke the VM once a year and re-provision otherwise you have to maintain the OS, do cleanup etc.
Future work:
- Find way to backup my DNS records
- Probably need to monitor the SSL cert expiration in case certbot breaks
- CI/CD