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this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2023
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I'm sorry for the non-answsers in advance but here goes:
If you won't have easy access, consider server motherboards with KVM over IP capabilities. They really can get you far.
IP is generally Managed DHCP but I have seen DCs that just tell you your IP and good luck and it's on the honor system. Some of them even let you publish your own BGP blocks.
Basically best practices boil down to:
Data centers are businesses and as a costumer they should be answering your questions about their operating policies. If they aren't consider a different DC.
Don't be a dick to them, and don't be a dick to your network neighbors.
You're no longer behind a home router with a firewall that has sensible rules, so it is now up to you to avoid getting pwned and footing the power bill. It is also up to you to avoid spamming out stray traffic.
Never colocated, but did rent baremetal from OVH back when they didn't have any KVM and all you could do is wipe/reinstall, reboot and boot into a 2-3 releases old Debian recovery.
Definitely seconding the KVM remote access part: you really, really want that, or at least some way to hard reset your server if it crashes. I can't stress this enough. Even if you think you'll never need it, you never know when you'll have a kernel panic or need to do some boot troubleshooting, even just to run fsck. It's absolutely nerve-wracking to reboot a server you don't have any way to access other than SSH and looking at that ping window for 2-5 minutes while the thing boots back up and wondering it it will come back online or not.
If you don't have IPMI and can't have some sort of KVM for your server, I highly recommend having at least a PiKVM or something in there to be able to do remote troubleshooting. Ideally I also recommend (if no IPMI) setting up some sort of preboot environment you know will reliably boot (maybe something entirely in initramfs) that will boot up, get network and listen for SSH for a couple minutes before chainloading back into the main OS so that you can at least turn off firewall/reset network to known good. Anything that will give you remote access independently of your main OS.
At least I had access to the recovery environment from OVH, but even then, that thing took a full boot cycle to boot up + some more time for them to deliver the credentials by email (that better not be hosted on that box itself), change a config file, reboot again. Legit 10-15 minutes between each attempt and little to no way of knowing what happens until you boot the recovery again. It was horrifying, can't recommend.
IPMI saved my ass a few times and I'm never getting another box without it.
Does the IPMI or KVM go on a private network of some sort? Surely you wouldn't want to expose that to the internet.
Usually yes. That's something you might want to discuss with the datacenter what they have to offer that way, some will give you a VPN to be able to reach it. But I don't have experience with that, my current servers came with IPMI and I can download a Java thing from OVH to connect to it.
Usually you define a VLAN dedicated to your IPMI devices, only accessible through an access-controlled way (usually, VPN served by the firewall but don't do that if you're virtualizing the firewall for obvious reasons). The DC might offer a VPN of their own specifically for this purpose, or you can pay them for more space to install a physical firewall but that's a more significant investment.
Ultimately best practices say not to expose the IPMI to the internet, but if you really have no choice and your thing is up to date then you only need to fear 0-days and brute force attacks, the login pages are usually pretty secure since access is equivalent to physical access. You will attract a lot of parasite traffic probing for flaws though.