Installation guide

Chapter 15.
129
Server best practices
The following tasks and tips can assist you with securing and ensuring reliability of your Red Hat
Enterprise Linux host.
• Run SELinux in enforcing mode. Set SELinux to run in enforcing mode with the setenforce
command.
# setenforce 1
• Remove or disable any unnecessary services such as AutoFS, NFS, FTP, HTTP, NIS, telnetd,
sendmail and so on.
• Only add the minimum number of user accounts needed for platform management on the server
and remove unnecessary user accounts.
• Avoid running any unessential applications on your host. Running applications on the host may
impact virtual machine performance and can affect server stability. Any application which may crash
the server will also cause all virtual machines on the server to go down.
• Use a central location for virtual machine installations and images. Virtual machine images should
be stored under /var/lib/libvirt/images/. If you are using a different directory for your
virtual machine images make sure you add the directory to your SELinux policy and relabel it before
starting the installation.
• Installation sources, trees, and images should be stored in a central location, usually the location of
your vsftpd server.