My big thing is making sure 1) the machine comes back up cleanly after a reboot and 2) is current on all patches 3) is running as little as possible.
Also a big fan of externally verifying what ports are open, and making sure the system is in monitoring, backup, config management systems. Config management is kind of optional if you have a small number of servers which don't duplicate configurations, though, and there's often no need to back up the OS, but any data should be backed up automatically.
Also a big fan of externally verifying what ports are open, and making sure the system is in monitoring, backup, config management systems. Config management is kind of optional if you have a small number of servers which don't duplicate configurations, though, and there's often no need to back up the OS, but any data should be backed up automatically.