What This Is
Infrastructure support is managing the servers, deployment pipelines, hosting configuration, and operational environment that your web application runs on. This covers everything between your codebase and your users: server provisioning, PHP and database configuration, SSL certificates, deployment automation, backup systems, monitoring, and the ongoing maintenance that keeps a production application running reliably.
This is not application development. It is the operational layer underneath. The reason your application loads when someone visits the URL, the reason deployments happen without downtime, and the reason your database does not run out of disk space at 3 AM on a Saturday.
We manage our own production infrastructure through CloudWays, with automated deployment pipelines (Bitbucket Pipelines), rsync-based deployment, queue workers, scheduled tasks, and monitoring across multiple applications. That is the same operational discipline we apply to client infrastructure: not theoretical DevOps knowledge, but practical experience keeping production systems alive.
When You Need This
Infrastructure support becomes necessary when you have a production application without a dedicated operations person or team. Specific triggers:
- You have a web application in production and no one on your team manages the server: updates happen ad-hoc or not at all
- Deployments are manual: someone SSHs into the server, runs commands, and hopes nothing breaks
- You are not sure about your backup strategy, or whether your backups actually work when you need them
- Your hosting setup was configured once and never revisited: PHP versions are outdated, database settings are defaults, and security patches are months behind
- You need to migrate from one hosting provider to another without downtime
- Your application has outgrown its current server and you need guidance on scaling: bigger server, load balancing, or caching layer
This is not the right service if you need enterprise-scale cloud architecture (multi-region, Kubernetes, microservices orchestration). We manage infrastructure for small to medium applications on cloud hosting. If you need AWS Solutions Architect-level work, we will refer you to a specialist.
How We Work
Establish what exists and what is exposed first, because that usually finds something. Then monitoring, patching on a cadence, verified restores, and access reviewed twice a year.
Where the systems themselves need ongoing attention rather than only the infrastructure beneath them, that sits in a support retainer alongside this.
Get in touch and we will start with what is currently reachable from the internet.
What You Get
- Server provisioning and configuration: PHP, database, web server, and caching configured for your application’s requirements
- CI/CD pipeline setup: automated testing, building, and deployment on every push to the production branch
- SSL certificate management: installation, renewal, and monitoring
- Backup configuration: automated database and file backups with verified restore procedures
- Monitoring and alerting: server health, application availability, and resource utilisation alerts
- Security updates: operating system patches, PHP version updates, and dependency management
- Migration support: moving your application between hosting providers with minimal downtime
- Documentation of the infrastructure setup, configuration decisions, and operational procedures
Technologies We Use
- CloudWays for managed cloud hosting (DigitalOcean, AWS, or Vultr underneath)
- Nginx for web server configuration
- PHP-FPM for PHP process management
- PostgreSQL / MySQL for database management
- Redis for caching and queue management
- Bitbucket Pipelines (or GitHub Actions) for CI/CD automation
- rsync for deployment file synchronisation
- Let’s Encrypt for SSL certificate automation
- Supervisor for queue worker and daemon management
Related Systems
Infrastructure is the foundation for every system we build. A client portal needs reliable uptime. A reporting dashboard needs a server that can handle data aggregation without timeout. An uptime monitoring system is only as trustworthy as the infrastructure it runs on. For applications with specific security requirements, security hardening works alongside infrastructure support to close the gaps. Infrastructure support ensures the systems we build stay operational after delivery.
Talk to Us About Your Infrastructure
If your application is in production and no one is managing the infrastructure properly, get in touch and we will assess the current setup and put the right operational foundation in place. You can also see how infrastructure support fits within all our services.
The Work Nobody Sees
Operating system updates, security patches, expiring certificates, disk space, log rotation, backup verification, monitoring. Continuous, invisible, and the reason most small-business compromises happen when it is not done.
The distinction between managed and unmanaged hosting is exactly this work, and it is frequently discovered rather than chosen. Buying unmanaged hosting on price, having a developer configure it once, and nobody touching it for three years produces a server accruing unpatched vulnerabilities indefinitely. Its real cost is not the monthly fee.
The Four Things That Actually Cause Outages
Rarely hardware. In practice:
The disk fills with logs and everything stops. Unglamorous and common.
A certificate expires and browsers refuse the site. Always at a weekend.
An unattended update breaks something, or a deferred one leaves a hole open.
A manual change made months ago is silently undone by a deployment, or survives and means no environment matches production any more.
All four are prevented by monitoring and discipline rather than by better hardware, which is why operational practice matters more than specification.
What Should Be Watched
The honest test is whether you find out about problems before your customers tell you.
Uptime from outside, so you know it is reachable. Error rates, with an alert when they rise. Disk space. Certificate expiry. Whether backups actually completed, since silent failure is normal.
None of that is expensive and most is free at the scale most businesses run. Its absence means your monitoring is your customers.
What Moves The Price
Managed or unmanaged, which is really the question of who does the work above.
Number of environments. Production alone, or staging and development too.
Response expectations, particularly out of hours.
How reproducible the setup is. A server configured by hand years ago is more expensive to support than one defined in code, because every change carries risk.
Compliance requirements, which add evidence and retention obligations.
Where This Goes Wrong
Nobody owns it. The most common state. The developer who set it up has moved on, the hosting company assumes you are managing it, and you assume they are.
Access never reviewed. Former contractors and old keys accumulate. Nobody removes them because nobody is looking.
Backups that have never been restored from. The most common false sense of security in small business IT.
Staging exposed to the internet with a copy of production data, protected less carefully than production. Attackers look for this specifically.
Questions To Ask Whoever Supports It
- Is this managed or unmanaged, and who patches it? If the answer is nobody, that is the finding.
- What is reachable from the internet?
- When did we last verify a restore? Not whether backups run.
- Who has access, and when was that last reviewed?
- Could we rebuild this if the server was lost? And how long would it take.
A Brief You Can Send Anyone
What we run, and where: [systems and hosting provider]
Who set it up: [and whether they are still involved]
What is monitored now: [including “nothing”]
What downtime costs: [per hour, honestly]
Hours we need cover: [business, extended, or genuinely 24/7]
Compliance obligations: [if any]
Anything we know is wrong:
