Problem: the site went down
Something changed on the server and the website stopped working
It worked yesterday. Today there is a 500 error, a certificate warning, or "FastCGI process exited unexpectedly", and nobody remembers touching anything. A Windows update, a permissions change, a stopped service or a full disk is usually behind it, and finding which one by hand means an hour in Event Viewer. ServerMaid's health score names the fault in a sentence, and Repair compares the server with what it should look like and puts it right.
Part of the Server setup module, £99 £49.50 per server for twelve months. 30-day money-back promise.
The usual suspects
- A Windows update restarted the server and a service did not come back, or a handler mapping was reset.
- A permissions change made while fixing something else, and now the application pool cannot read the site or write its logs.
- An expired certificate that was renewed by hand last year and forgotten this year.
- A stopped application pool after too many failures in a row, so IIS returns a 503 until someone starts it.
- A full disk, usually logs, so PHP sessions and uploads fail in odd ways before anything says "disk".
- The database is not running, or is listening on the wrong address after a configuration change.
- A missing runtime after a PHP update, and every page is an error code instead of a sentence.
Each of these is quick to fix once you know which one it is. Knowing is the hard part.
What ServerMaid does
Name the fault, fix it, prove it
A health score with reasons
ServerMaid keeps checking after the build: bindings, PHP, the database, disk, backups, certificates, firewall, drift from the security baseline. Every deduction is a sentence you can act on, with a fix that is previewed before it runs.
Repair, not reinstall
Repair compares the live server with what it should look like: role services, handlers, bindings, rewrite rules, permissions, firewall rules, scheduled tasks and services. Anything that has drifted is listed with what it should be and fixed in one click if it is safe to.
Rollback step by step
Every change is journaled. A deployment that went wrong can be rolled back one step at a time from the app, with a snapshot from before it started.
Plain English errors
"PHP cannot start because a required Microsoft Visual C++ runtime appears to be missing", with a button to install it. The Windows error code is one click away for anyone who wants it.
Renew now
A certificate near expiry is a deduction with a Renew action next to it, and renewal is tested on every deployment so a broken renewal is caught while you are looking.
Validation after every change
A validation suite probes services, ports, DNS, outbound HTTPS and the database, and tests PHP through a temporary diagnostic website. A change that leaves something broken fails loudly rather than quietly.
Questions about repairing a server
Can ServerMaid fix a server it did not build?
It inspects any Windows Server and reports what it finds. Repair puts right the parts ServerMaid manages. Existing IIS, PHP or database installations that ServerMaid did not install are reported and left alone, never silently replaced; the safest route for an old hand-built server is to let ServerMaid build the parts it can and adopt the rest deliberately.
Does Repair change my application's files?
No. Repair works on configuration: bindings, rewrite rules, permissions, handlers, services, firewall rules and scheduled tasks. Restoring files or a database is a separate, confirmed step from a backup, and a safety backup of whatever will be replaced is taken first.
What if something is out of ServerMaid's hands?
It says so. A deduction it cannot fix on its own, such as pending Windows updates or a disk filling with something that is not logs, is still a sentence with the reason, so you know what to do next.
Does this work when my licence has lapsed?
Inspecting, the health score, status, validation and reports keep working whatever the licence state, so you always know what is wrong. Repair, which makes changes, needs a licence that covers the server.
Will it lock me out while repairing the firewall?
No. Any change that could affect remote access runs with an auto-revert timer, and ServerMaid refuses an allow list that leaves out the address you are connected from.
Know what broke before your visitors do
A server built by ServerMaid comes with the checks, the plain-English diagnosis and the one-click Repair built in. Preview every change before it runs.