Getting started
Serverside.com documentation
Guides and the API reference for running Serverside.com bare metal servers, virtual networks, firewalls and billing from your own code.
The cloud console at cloud.serverside.com runs on the same REST API these pages document. A script with an API key can create a server, install its operating system, put it on a private network, firewall its addresses and read the invoice it produces.
Getting started
X-API-KEY header, creating keys and limiting a key to your own networks.API conventionsResponse envelope, pagination, error codes and naming rules shared by every endpoint.API referenceEvery public endpoint with its fields, samples in nine languages and a request playground.Concepts
Guides
- Deploy your first server: from the plan list to a finished deployment, with the checks in between.
- Power and remote access: power commands, hardware readings, KVM sessions and virtual media.
- Configuring firewalls: groups, rules and assigning a group to an address.
- Custom iPXE scripts: boot a server from your own iPXE script.
- Managing IP addresses: reserve, assign and release addresses, and set reverse DNS.
- Setting up virtual networks: create a network and attach servers to it.
Community guides
These blog articles cover the server's side of what the API sets up:
- First hour on a new Linux server: a sudo user, key-only SSH, a firewall baseline, automatic security updates and fail2ban.
- Sensible default firewall rules: a default-deny nftables ruleset with connection tracking, plus ufw and firewalld equivalents. A firewall group is stateless, so this is the layer that tracks connections.
- RAID levels for dedicated servers: RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10 and ZFS compared on usable capacity, failure tolerance and rebuild risk.
- Netplan and NetworkManager crash courses: static addresses, VLAN interfaces and bonds written to configuration that survives a reboot, on Ubuntu and on RHEL-family systems.
- Proxmox VE networking: Linux bridges, VLAN-aware bridges, bonds, and bridged, routed or NAT layouts on a hosted server.
- Proxmox clusters with high availability: quorum, the corosync network and shared storage, for three nodes on a private network.