Starting with Ubuntu 15.04, Upstart will be deprecated in favor of Systemd. With Systemd to manage the services we can do the following:
systemctl start SERVICE - Use it to start a service. Does not persist after reboot
systemctl stop SERVICE - Use it to stop a service. Does not persist after reboot
systemctl restart SERVICE - Use it to restart a service
systemctl reload SERVICE - If the service supports it, it will reload the config files related to it without interrupting any process that is using the service.
systemctl status SERVICE - Shows the status of a service. Tells whether a service is currently running.
systemctl enable SERVICE - Turns the service on, on the next reboot or on the next start event. It persists after reboot.
systemctl disable SERVICE - Turns the service off on the next reboot or on the next stop event. It persists after reboot.
systemctl is-enabled SERVICE - Check if a service is currently configured to start or not on the next reboot.
systemctl is-active SERVICE - Check if a service is currently active.
systemctl show SERVICE - Show all the information about the service.