Selected VPS: Linode, 1GB Ram, 20 GB SSD, 1 TB transfer
OS: Ubuntu 17.04
Web Server: Ngnix
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Start with regular updates

apt-get update && apt-get upgrade

Set up fail2ban and Firewall

I’m installing fail2ban 0.10 since it supports ipv6. At the time of this post, it is not available as a regular package.

wget https://github.com/fail2ban/fail2ban/archive/0.10.0.tar.gz
tar -xvzf 0.10.0.tar.gz
python3 setup.py install

#To enable fail2ban as an automatic service, copy the script for your distro from the files directory to /etc/init.d.

cp files/debian-initd /etc/init.d/fail2ban
update-rc.d fail2ban defaults
service fail2ban start

#Add local jail
awk '{ printf "# "; print; }' /etc/fail2ban/jail.conf | sudo tee /etc/fail2ban/jail.local
vim /etc/fail2ban/jail.local

uncomment sshd section and add
enabled = true

sudo apt-get install sendmail iptables-persistent
sudo service fail2ban start

Firewall ( allow established connections, traffic generated by the server itself, traffic destined for our SSH and web server ports. We will drop all other traffic):

sudo service fail2ban stop
sudo iptables -A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT
sudo iptables -A INPUT -m conntrack --ctstate ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT
sudo iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 22 -j ACCEPT
sudo iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -m multiport --dports 80,443 -j ACCEPT
sudo iptables -A INPUT -j DROP

# easy way to rate-limit ssh with ufw:
# technically, we could do all of the iptables stuff with ufw
ufw enable
ufw limit ssh

If using IPv6:

ip6tables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 80 -j ACCEPT
ip6tables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 443 -j ACCEPT
ip6tables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 22 -j ACCEPT # (replace with your undisclosed port)
ip6tables -A INPUT -p icmpv6 -j ACCEPT
ip6tables -A INPUT -j REJECT
ip6tables -A FORWARD -j REJECT

View iptables rules:

sudo iptables -S

Save iptables rules:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure iptables-persistent
sudo service fail2ban start

SSH

vim /etc/ssh/sshd_config

#Add or uncomment (if using Ubuntu < 17.04)
protocol 2

#Add allowed ciphers
Ciphers aes128-ctr,aes192-ctr,aes256-ctr
KexAlgorithms ecdh-sha2-nistp256,ecdh-sha2-nistp384,ecdh-sha2-nistp521,diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha256
MACs hmac-sha2-256,hmac-sha2-512

Restart and test ssh config:

service sshd restart
#returns nothing if everything configured properly
sshd -t

NGINX

sudo apt-get install software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nginx/stable
sudo apt-get install nginx
service nginx status

Update /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

root /var/www/html/your_site;

location / {
# Some comments...
try_files $uri /index.html;   # ADD THIS
}

sudo service nginx restart

Installing React Dependencies

# install yarn
curl -sS https://dl.yarnpkg.com/debian/pubkey.gpg | sudo apt-key add -
echo "deb https://dl.yarnpkg.com/debian/ stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/yarn.list
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install yarn
 
#install node (apt-get repo has an older version of Node)
curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_8.x | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt-get install -y nodejs
sudo apt-get install -y build-essential

GIT Push Deploy

Let’s set up git on the server

apt-get install git-core
mkdir repos && cd repos
mkdir your_site.git
cd your_site.git
git init --bare

Set up a post-push hook
cd /repos/your_app.git/hooks
touch post-receive

#!/bin/bash -l

GIT_REPO=$HOME/repos/your_app.git
TMP_GIT_CLONE=$HOME/tmp/git/your_app
PUBLIC_WWW=/var/www/html

git clone $GIT_REPO $TMP_GIT_CLONE
cd $TMP_GIT_CLONE
yarn install
yarn build
rm -rf $PUBLIC_WWW/your_app_bup
mv $PUBLIC_WWW/your_app $PUBLIC_WWW/your_app_bup
cp -a build/. $PUBLIC_WWW/your_app
rm -Rf $TMP_GIT_CLONE
exit

Run on post-receiv:

chmod +x post-receive

On your local machine:

git remote add linode root@remote_server_address:repos/your_app.git
git push linode master