You run your server two ways: the client portal (point and click) or the customer API (scriptable, for developers and AI agents). Both drive the same machine. Everything below works from either one — see The customer API and MCP for the API.
Start, stop, restart, gracefully shut down, or hard-reset your server. A graceful shutdown asks the OS to power down cleanly; a hard reset is the equivalent of pulling the plug — use it only when the machine is wedged.
Lay down a fresh OS — the same distribution or a different one. The server must be stopped first. A reinstall wipes the disk and gives you a clean image, so export anything you need first. See Choosing your operating system and desktop for the available images.
Change your plan when your needs change. Upgrades give you more CPU, RAM, and storage; downgrades move you to a smaller plan. You can preview the exact price change before you commit. A plan change is queued and applied after its prorated invoice is paid — your server isn't resized in place until then. On a downgrade, the prorated difference is credited back to your balance. One limit to know: a resize can't shrink your disk — pick a plan whose storage is the same or larger, and move down on CPU and RAM instead.
Take a snapshot to capture your server's exact state at a point in time, then roll back if an upgrade or change goes wrong. Backups are stored copies you can restore from. You can create, list, restore, and delete both, and mark important ones as protected so they aren't rotated away.
Set a default policy and add your own allow/deny rules in front of your server. Our network itself is unfiltered — no port blocks, no protocol restrictions — so this firewall is yours to shape however you like.
Attach an installer or rescue ISO to your server and boot from it — handy for a custom install or recovering a broken system. Unmount it when you're done.
Open a keyboard-and-screen session to your server right in your browser. The console doesn't need a working network connection on the server, so it's your way back in if you ever lock yourself out over SSH.
Check your server's resource use — CPU, memory, and bandwidth — to see how hard it's working and whether it's time to resize.
Add, rotate, and inject SSH keys, including pushing a key into a running server without a reboot. See SSH keys and access for the details.
Want to automate all of this? Every action here is also an API call. See The customer API and MCP.