I was checking my updates on my wordpress page and saw that fail2ban was not running. A quick look took me to the solution of enabling fail2ban correctly with the following commands:
root@example:~# systemctl enable fail2ban
Synchronizing state of fail2ban.service with SysV service script with /lib/systemd/systemd-sysv-install.
Executing: /lib/systemd/systemd-sysv-install enable fail2ban
Created symlink /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/fail2ban.service → /lib/systemd/system/fail2ban.service.
root@example:~# fail2ban-client --test
OK: configuration test is successful
root@example:~# systemctl start fail2ban
root@example:~# systemctl status fail2ban
● fail2ban.service - Fail2Ban Service
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/fail2ban.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Tue 2023-05-30 17:04:59 UTC; 18s ago
Docs: man:fail2ban(1)
Main PID: 5471 (fail2ban-server)
Tasks: 9 (limit: 1115)
Memory: 12.0M
CPU: 257ms
CGroup: /system.slice/fail2ban.service
└─5471 /usr/bin/python3 /usr/bin/fail2ban-server -xf start
May 30 17:04:59 example systemd[1]: Started Fail2Ban Service.
May 30 17:04:59 example fail2ban-server[5471]: Server ready