About cloud servers

InfraNest brings all your cloud servers — and the firewalls, volumes, networks and load balancers around them — into one place, so you can manage and secure them without switching between your providers' own consoles. This article is for anyone getting started with servers in InfraNest.

#Overview

• See every server across your connected providers, with its status, type, IP addresses, datacenter and Tags.
• Run the full lifecycle of a server: create, power on/off, reboot, rebuild, rescue, open a console, back up, snapshot and delete.
• Keep servers secure with a per-server Security Advisor that flags risky settings and can fix some of them in one click.
• Watch server health with CPU, network and disk metrics, and get alerted on sustained problems.
• Manage Firewalls, Volumes, Networks and Load Balancers alongside your servers.

#Rename a server

1. Click the server's name at the top of its page.
2. Type the new name.
3. Press Enter.

The change is made at your provider first, so it's a real rename rather than a label that only exists in InfraNest — it shows up in your provider's own panel too, and the next sync leaves it alone instead of putting the old name back.

A few provider differences worth knowing:

• TransIP and OVHcloud keep their own fixed identifier for a machine and show a description beside it. That description is the name InfraNest displays and the one you edit, so renaming works as expected.
• On DigitalOcean, a server's name is also its hostname, so renaming changes both.
• Servers you added yourself have no provider to check with, so they simply rename.

If your provider refuses the name — each has its own rules about what a name may contain — the old name stays on screen rather than showing a change that didn't happen. Every rename is recorded in the Audit Log along with what the server was called before.

#Explore the Servers page

1. Open Servers from the sidebar. It opens on the Overview tab, which answers three questions about your servers and everything around them: is anything wrong, what does it cost, and what should I do?
2. Check the summary at the top — for example, "7 of 9 servers are fine. 2 need you." — along with this month's cost across your providers and what you could save.
3. Review Needs you — one card per problem, naming every server it affects, such as SSH or a database open to the internet, a server stopped or in error, a disk filling up, a reboot waiting, backups off, or an agent that stopped reporting. The same applies to your Volumes, Firewalls, Networks and Load Balancers. Each card shows what was found and the one thing to do. Where a fix can run from here, the button runs it directly — for example, a waiting reboot shows Reboot safely…, and an open port shows Limit who may reach it or Remove the rule. Where an automation would stop the problem coming back, the card offers Turn on. Snooze and This was expected work the same way here as on Home.
4. Look at Cost — this month's figure, the change since six months ago, and what changed in words, each linked to its list. Use See the trend for the full chart.
5. Check Protection across your servers — one line per setting (backups, delete protection, monitored with the agent, SSH limited to known addresses, up to date) showing how many servers have it. Use the matching Turn on for N or Install on N buttons to fix gaps across every server at once.
6. Scroll to What you have — one line per kind of resource with the one thing worth knowing. Click a line to open its list.

7. Click the Servers tab to see the full list of all your servers. Use Search and Filter to narrow it down, and Tags to organize them. Click a server to open and manage it, or use Add server to provision a new one.

#Save money on what does nothing

1. On the Overview tab, find the cost line such as "6 things cost €48 a month and do nothing."
2. Click Review savings to see them one by one, each with why it was found and what it costs. This can include a server nothing uses, a volume attached to nothing, an unassigned IP address, an old snapshot, a load balancer sending traffic nowhere, or a server that could be a smaller size.
3. For each item, choose Keep, it is needed, or Ask me again in 30 days — or leave it set to the default action.
4. Click Confirm (or the equivalent action) to apply your choices. Nothing is removed until you press this — only what you chose is done, and every change is recorded in the Audit Log.

WarningDeleting a server or volume here may be irreversible at your provider. InfraNest takes a final snapshot first where it can (kept for 14 days), but some providers — Hetzner, TransIP and OVHcloud — can't snapshot a volume before deleting it.

A few things worth knowing before you apply changes:

• An IP address that a DNS record still points at can't be released from here — fix the record first, or whoever gets the address next would receive that name's visitors.
• An older DigitalOcean connection made with the Connect button may not have permission to release an IP address or snapshot a volume. If so, reconnect it from Integrations by selecting the DigitalOcean account and choosing to reconnect.
• Anything InfraNest can't do at your provider, or that has delete protection on, is shown with the reason instead of a button that would fail.

Keep is remembered until you change your mind; Ask me again in 30 days brings the item back after a month. Both are listed under "set aside" in the review.

NoteSupported providers are Hetzner Cloud, DigitalOcean, TransIP and OVHcloud. What you can do differs by provider — rescue mode, a web console, ISO mounting, placement groups and provider-level delete protection aren't available everywhere. OVHcloud is a notable exception: servers there are ordered and cancelled through OVHcloud's own panel rather than through InfraNest, and changes appear here on the next sync.

#What the coloured dot means

Every server has a small dot next to its name. It means the same thing everywhere you see it — the server list, a server's own page, Monitors and Dashboard.

• Green — running. The server is on. If it has the agent installed, the agent has checked in recently.
• Red — needs a look. Either the agent has stopped checking in, or your provider reports an error.
• Amber — on its way. The server is being created, starting, shutting down, rebuilt or moved. This resolves itself.
• Grey — nothing wrong. The server is switched off, the agent is set up but hasn't checked in yet, or nothing has told InfraNest its state yet.

Hover over a dot to see what it means in words.

TipIf a server has the agent installed, the dot follows the agent's status rather than just the provider's. So a server your provider says is running, but whose agent has gone quiet, will show red — a useful early warning.