You can start it with bitcoind --daemon .

To check if you have connections run bitcoind getconnectioncount .

If you have limited memory on your VPS, you could also add a cron job to restart bitcoind every time it crashes (this happens frequently on my VPS). I use this script for restarting (bitcoin runs through user bitcoin so you need to change the ps -u bitcoin...):

#!/bin/bash  

test=`ps -u bitcoin | grep -e bitcoind`

if [ "$test" = "" ];
then
~/bitcoin-0.7.1-linux/bin/64/bitcoind -daemon
fi