Linux Consulting and Support
Linux support is patching, hardening, monitoring and on-call with a written escalation path. The value is in boring discipline consistently applied: patch windows kept, backups verified, access reviewed, and someone identifiable answering at three in the morning.
Boring discipline, consistently applied
Linux estates rarely fail dramatically. They drift. A patch window skipped because a release was in flight, then skipped again, then a server two versions behind that nobody wants to touch. Access granted for a project three years ago and never reviewed. A monitoring alert nobody owns, firing into an inbox nobody reads.
Support that works is therefore mostly about cadence and ownership rather than expertise in a crisis. Patch windows agreed and kept, hardening measured against a named benchmark with exceptions written down, access reviewed on a schedule, and every alert routed to a person rather than a queue.
Where expertise does matter is the escalation path, and it should be written before it is needed rather than discovered during an incident.
What Linux support covers
Six workstreams. None is technically difficult; all are routinely neglected.
Baseline hardening
Configuration measured against a named benchmark, with every exception documented and justified rather than silently accepted — because an undocumented exception is indistinguishable from a mistake.
Patch management
Agreed windows, a staged approach through non-production first, and a rollback position for anything that touches the kernel or a running service.
Monitoring and log aggregation
Metrics and logs centralised, with alerts tuned so that they mean something — an estate that alerts constantly has effectively no monitoring at all.
Access and credential review
Accounts, sudo rights, SSH keys and service credentials reviewed on a schedule, because access accumulates and nobody removes it spontaneously.
Backup verification
Confirming that backups completed and can be restored from, rather than confirming that the backup job reported success.
On-call and escalation
A written escalation path with named people and response expectations per severity, agreed before an incident rather than assembled during one.
How an engagement starts
Assess
Estate inventory, patch levels, hardening position, access rights and monitoring coverage established, with drift quantified.
Agree severities
Priority definitions in business terms with response and resolution targets, and the escalation path written down.
Remediate the baseline
Hardening applied, patch backlog cleared in staged windows, monitoring gaps closed and alert noise reduced.
Operate
Patch windows kept, access reviewed on schedule, backups verified by restore, alerts owned by named people.
Review
Monthly reporting on patch compliance, incident volume and repeat causes, with recurring issues fixed rather than reprocessed.
Cover levels compared
Choosing cover on consequence rather than on preference.
| Dimension | Business hours | Extended hours | 24×7 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Suits | Internal systems | Customer-facing, single region | Revenue-critical or global |
| Response, high severity | Same business day | Within hours | Within the hour |
| Cost profile | Lowest | Moderate | Highest |
| Realistic overnight position | Fails until morning | Degraded until morning | Attended |
| Wrong when | Overnight failure costs money | Business is genuinely 24-hour | Nobody would act on the alert |
What we will be honest about
We will say plainly when your estate includes something we should not be the ones to support. An unusual distribution, a heavily customised kernel, or an appliance with a vendor support requirement is better handled by whoever knows it, and accepting it to keep a contract whole serves nobody.
Twenty-four-hour cover is also not automatically the right answer. It is worth buying where an overnight failure costs money or reputation. Where the honest position is that nobody would act on a three-a.m. alert until morning anyway, extended-hours cover at lower cost is the better arrangement, and we will suggest it.
- Estates drift rather than fail; cadence and ownership matter more than crisis expertise.
- Hardening exceptions must be documented, or they are indistinguishable from mistakes.
- Verify backups by restoring, not by reading the job status.
- Buy the cover level your consequences justify, not the highest one available.
Questions buyers ask about this
Which distributions do you support?
RHEL and its derivatives, Ubuntu, Debian and SUSE. If your estate includes something outside that — an unusual distribution, a heavily customised kernel, or a vendor appliance — we will say plainly that someone else should support it rather than accepting it to keep the contract whole.
Is 24×7 available?
Yes, priced per severity with response and resolution targets stated separately. We will also tell you when you do not need it. If nobody would act on an overnight alert before morning, extended-hours cover costs less and delivers the same practical outcome.
How do you handle patching without breaking things?
Agreed windows, staged through non-production first, with a rollback position for anything touching the kernel or a running service. The harder problem is usually organisational rather than technical: windows get skipped under release pressure, and the estate drifts. Keeping the cadence is the discipline that matters.
What does hardening mean in practice?
Configuration measured against a named benchmark rather than against opinion, with every exception documented and justified. The documentation is the part that matters — an undocumented exception cannot be distinguished from an oversight during an audit or an incident.
Do you manage cloud-hosted Linux as well as on-premise?
Yes, and the disciplines are the same. What changes is that cloud estates add cost governance and instance lifecycle to the picture, which we cover alongside rather than treating as a separate engagement.
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Still not sure this is the right service?
Answer four questions and we will tell you which one fits — or that none of them do.
Tell us what you are trying to fix.
A short conversation about the objective, the constraints and the timing. If we are not the right fit, we will say so.