From jonathan at jabwebsolutions.co.uk Thu Oct 5 11:59:31 2006 From: jonathan at jabwebsolutions.co.uk (Jonathan Wright) Date: Mon Nov 19 03:49:12 2007 Subject: Connection Issues at IFL2 Message-ID: <4524E593.8000003@jabwebsolutions.co.uk> ** Connection Issues at IFL2 We are currently experiencing connection issues with our servers at IFL2. We are still investigating the cause of this latest downtime, however it may be related to the installation of our new provider. (More details about which will follow shortly.) As soon as we have more information we will let you know. -- Jonathan Wright -- Maintenance and Technical Director -- Keep up to date with all our latest news and information: Mailing Lists (http://www.jabwebsolutions.co.uk/lists) News RSS Feed (http://www.jabwebsolutions.co.uk/rss) -- Freephone: 0800 043 0 153 Fax: 0870 622 0 158 Direct: 02920 00 64 94 -- JAB Web Solutions Limited Suite 145 61 Wellfield Road Roath, Cardiff Mid-Glamorgan CF24 3DG -- This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the above addressee. If you are not the named addressee you should not disseminate, distribute, copy or alter this email in any way or any form. Any views or opinions presented in this email are solely those of the author and might not represent those of JAB Web Solutions. Should any issue arise from this correspondence, contact the author for further details. Although JAB Web Solutions has taken reasonable precautions to ensure no viruses are present in this email, the company cannot accept responsibility for any loss or damage arising from the use of this email or attachments. -- Company Number: 5191094 VAT Number: 840666814 -- http://www.jabwebsolutions.co.uk/ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: smime.p7s Type: application/x-pkcs7-signature Size: 3289 bytes Desc: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature Url : http://lists.jabwebsolutions.co.uk/pipermail/announce-list/attachments/20061005/b07ddad1/smime.bin From jonathan at jabwebsolutions.co.uk Fri Oct 6 14:55:23 2006 From: jonathan at jabwebsolutions.co.uk (Jonathan Wright) Date: Mon Nov 19 03:49:12 2007 Subject: Change to IP Service Provider Message-ID: <4526604B.5040008@jabwebsolutions.co.uk> ** Change to IP Service Provider Many people who have been following recent announcements via our mailing-lists and on our website (of talking to us personally) know we have been working hard to change our IP transit service provider. Recently the quality of the connection and the support we have received from C4L has fallen well below the standards that we expect, and therefore we have make the decision to change. To this end, and after much research and communication, we have signed an agreement with Avensys Networks Limited to provide our bandwidth. Having signed the agreement, we have worked with both Internet Facilitators (our data-center) and Avensys Networks over the last two weeks to connect our systems to their network. We are pleased to announce that this was completed yesterday and we are ready to begin the final transition to the new connection. However, given the substantive nature of this change, and it's possible effects (including a small period of downtime), this notice is being sent to all active customers of JAB Web Solutions as well as through our normal channels (our mailing lists and website). If you are no longer a customer of JAB Web Solutions, or believe you have received this e-mail in error, we sincerely apologize. Please reply to this e-mail, or send one to support@jabwebsolutions.co.uk and we will investigate further. Also, if you are on our server alpha.jabservers.co.uk (also known as one.jabwebservers.co.uk), this announcement doesn't apply to you. We have done our best to make this announcement as easy to understand as possible. However, if at any point you would like further clarification, please contact us. Details of the various methods you can contact us can be found at the following link: - How do I contact you? http://www.jabwebsolutions.co.uk/knowledgebase/26 ** Avensys Networks Registered in 2001, Avensys Networks has been providing reliable, high-quality connections ever since, with over 3 years of unbroken uptime to date. Together with POP's (Points of Presence, or direct external connections into data-centers) across the country (including London and Bristol), Avensys Networks have a dedicated POP in each of the three data-centers in Manchester (IFL1, IFL2 and Telecity). All three sites are directly connected by a gigabit (1Gbps) connection from a primary provider and a 100Mbps connection from a second provider, providing a total of 6 connections into Manchester. Their regional network (which connects all three data-centers together in a ring) is a clear channel DS3 (45Mbps) line. This arrangement of connections traversing between data-centers and redundant external transit connections into each data-center allows for high-levels of failure across multiple connections without downtime. For example, even if both connections into IFL2 fail, data will be re-routed to either of the two data-centers and out on those connections transparently. Beyond that, all devices (switches, routers, etc.) have full out-of-band management (allowing remote access even if all incoming connections fail) as well as multiple, independent, UPS units at each POP guaranteeing against a single UPS failure). Finally, they have two monitoring systems (one in Sheffield and one in London) that can notify them of anything affecting their services by a combination of email, SMS, and being directly rung. ** Transferring providers The date for transfer of providers has been scheduled for Sunday 15th October 2006, between 10am and 12pm. This will not be done remotely, but completed on-site to protect against communication issues as a result of these changes. Unfortunately, there will be some downtime for all sites on the affected servers. However, we are taking a number of steps to reduce this downtime to as small a time as possible. If your DNS is managed by our services (i.e. your domain's name-servers are pointing to those provided by JAB Web Solutions), this change-over will be automated and you should not need to do anything. If you manage DNS yourself (i.e. you have control over the A, CNAME and MX records at your registrar/server), you will need to manually update these changes. Again, if at any point you would like further clarification on any part of this announcement, or would like assistance with the change-over, please contact us. ** Change of Addresses The biggest change as part of this transfer will be the assignment of new IP addresses for all servers, devices and customers. A list of the current addresses and their new values is given below. However, if you have your own dedicated IP address, you will be contacted separately regarding this change. Normally, a change of address will result in around 24 hours of downtime (where a site is straight moved and doesn't exist at the old address) or disparity (where the site exists at two different addressed until the new address has propagated). In the case of Plesk servers, this is the first of the two situations, as a website can only normally exist on a single address. However, to prevent 24 hours of downtime, we will prepare the servers for change over by dropping the life on all DNS records we serve from 84,600 seconds (24 hours) to 300 (5 minutes), and will be done tomorrow. This means that after 24 hours, all DNS records should only have a life of 5 minutes, therefore it should only take around 5 minutes for all sites to begin using the new addresses, reducing propagation time to almost nothing. Also, as part of the change over, there will be a short downtime on each server while the addresses are re-mapped and all the web server and DNS configuration files are re-written. This shouldn't take more than a few minutes, during which all services on the server will be disabled (including mail and FTP). Once re-connected, our DNS servers will provide the new IP addresses for all the sites and customers will begin to use the new connection. However, despite our best efforts, all services on all affected servers should be considered 'at risk' throughout Sunday. ** IP Address Map The following is a list of current IP addresses together with their new values. As noted previously, if you have your own dedicated IP address, you will be notified separately of the change. 82.45.52.3 to 85.159.63.144 - gamma.jabservers.co.uk 82.45.52.4 to 85.159.63.145 - gamma.jabservers.co.uk 82.45.52.7 to 85.159.63.141 - beta.jabservers.co.uk 82.45.52.8 to 85.159.63.142 - beta.jabservers.co.uk 82.45.51.50 to 85.159.63.186 - mxlinux.com (or ns1.mxlinux.com) 82.45.52.51 to 85.159.63.187 - mxlinux.com (or ns2.mxlinux.com) 82.45.52.54 to 85.159.63.188 - mxserver.org (or ns1.mxserver.org) 82.45.52.55 to 85.159.63.189 - mxserver.org (or ns2.mxserver.org) ** Recap Just to recap, these are the steps that we will be undertaking in out change of service providers - Reduce TTL (Time to Live) of all DNS records to 5 minutes (will be done tomorrow, Saturday 7th October); - Shutdown all services on the server and re-map all IP addresses from the old addresses to the new ones (will be completed on Sunday 15th October). - Update server records (such as gamma.jabservers.co.uk and ns05.jabservers.co.uk) to use new IP addresses; - Reboot the server to use all the new configuration. ** Thank You We thank you all for your patience and understanding through both recent events and now this (hopefully final) change/downtime. As always, we are here to answer any questions you may have, so if you would like to contract us, please do so. -- Jonathan Wright -- Maintenance and Technical Director -- Keep up to date with all our latest news and information: Mailing Lists (http://www.jabwebsolutions.co.uk/lists) News RSS Feed (http://www.jabwebsolutions.co.uk/rss) -- Freephone: 0800 043 0 153 Fax: 0870 622 0 158 Direct: 02920 00 64 94 -- JAB Web Solutions Limited Suite 145 61 Wellfield Road Roath, Cardiff Mid-Glamorgan CF24 3DG -- This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the above addressee. If you are not the named addressee you should not disseminate, distribute, copy or alter this email in any way or any form. Any views or opinions presented in this email are solely those of the author and might not represent those of JAB Web Solutions. Should any issue arise from this correspondence, contact the author for further details. Although JAB Web Solutions has taken reasonable precautions to ensure no viruses are present in this email, the company cannot accept responsibility for any loss or damage arising from the use of this email or attachments. -- Company Number: 5191094 VAT Number: 840666814 -- http://www.jabwebsolutions.co.uk/ From jonathan at jabwebsolutions.co.uk Mon Oct 9 16:04:10 2006 From: jonathan at jabwebsolutions.co.uk (Jonathan Wright) Date: Mon Nov 19 03:49:12 2007 Subject: General Server Updates Message-ID: <452A64EA.9000208@jabwebsolutions.co.uk> ** General Server Updated Just before our IP Service Provider change-over this Sunday (15th) we will be upgrading the server software on both our servers from CentOS 4.3 to CentOS 4.4. These updates are on the whole bug fixes, however there are some general updates to packages following additions upstream. As a result, some of our services will be updated, including: - Apache (Web Server) - Bind (DNS Server) - OpenSSH (SSH Server) - Mailman (Mailing List Service) There will also be updated to Bash, Perl and Python as well as tar, and the Linux kernel. This will be done first between 09:30 and 10:30 on Sunday and will require an initial reboot of the server to install the new kernel. If you have any questions about this update, or any of our announcements, please contact us at any time. -- Jonathan Wright -- Maintenance and Technical Director -- Keep up to date with all our latest news and information: Mailing Lists (http://www.jabwebsolutions.co.uk/lists) News RSS Feed (http://www.jabwebsolutions.co.uk/rss) -- Freephone: 0800 043 0 153 Fax: 0870 622 0 158 Direct: 02920 00 64 94 -- JAB Web Solutions Limited Suite 145 61 Wellfield Road Roath, Cardiff Mid-Glamorgan CF24 3DG -- This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the above addressee. If you are not the named addressee you should not disseminate, distribute, copy or alter this email in any way or any form. Any views or opinions presented in this email are solely those of the author and might not represent those of JAB Web Solutions. Should any issue arise from this correspondence, contact the author for further details. Although JAB Web Solutions has taken reasonable precautions to ensure no viruses are present in this email, the company cannot accept responsibility for any loss or damage arising from the use of this email or attachments. -- Company Number: 5191094 VAT Number: 840666814 -- http://www.jabwebsolutions.co.uk/ From jonathan at jabwebsolutions.co.uk Mon Oct 9 16:10:46 2006 From: jonathan at jabwebsolutions.co.uk (Jonathan Wright) Date: Mon Nov 19 03:49:12 2007 Subject: General Server Updates (Correction) Message-ID: <452A6676.80200@jabwebsolutions.co.uk> ** General Server Updated Apologies - I forgot to include the servers which we will be upgrading on Sunday. They are our two CentOS servers: - beta.jabservers.co.uk - gamma.jabservers.co.uk If you have any questions about this update, or any of our announcements, please contact us at any time. -- Jonathan Wright -- Maintenance and Technical Director -- Keep up to date with all our latest news and information: Mailing Lists (http://www.jabwebsolutions.co.uk/lists) News RSS Feed (http://www.jabwebsolutions.co.uk/rss) -- Freephone: 0800 043 0 153 Fax: 0870 622 0 158 Direct: 02920 00 64 94 -- JAB Web Solutions Limited Suite 145 61 Wellfield Road Roath, Cardiff Mid-Glamorgan CF24 3DG -- This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the above addressee. If you are not the named addressee you should not disseminate, distribute, copy or alter this email in any way or any form. Any views or opinions presented in this email are solely those of the author and might not represent those of JAB Web Solutions. Should any issue arise from this correspondence, contact the author for further details. Although JAB Web Solutions has taken reasonable precautions to ensure no viruses are present in this email, the company cannot accept responsibility for any loss or damage arising from the use of this email or attachments. -- Company Number: 5191094 VAT Number: 840666814 -- http://www.jabwebsolutions.co.uk/ From jonathan at jabwebsolutions.co.uk Sun Oct 15 14:05:57 2006 From: jonathan at jabwebsolutions.co.uk (Jonathan Wright) Date: Mon Nov 19 03:49:12 2007 Subject: Change to IP Service Provider (Complete) Message-ID: <45323235.8030704@jabwebsolutions.co.uk> ** Change to IP Service Provider (Complete) We are pleased to announce that the re-configuration of our servers was a success and we are now using the IP transit from Avensys Networks Limited. All servers were only down for a period of 15-30 minutes (depending on the server), as well as a few smaller periods of downtime around this window while other parts of the servers were re-configured/upgraded. Customers who have their domain's name-servers pointing to ones we have provided will automatically be using the new addresses now, and your site should be on-line. If you are not using one of our name-servers, i.e. you are managing the DNS records yourself, then if the domain is still pointing to the old address(es) your site will not work: You will only see a default holding page for the domain. Please change your records as soon as possible in order to restore the site. All other services (i.e. DNS, e-mail and FTP) will listen on all IP address for a short period to assist with the change over. This will only be for a limited period. If you have any questions about this change over, or any other aspect of your account, please feel free to contact us at any time. -- Jonathan Wright -- Maintenance and Technical Director -- Keep up to date with all our latest news and information: Mailing Lists (http://www.jabwebsolutions.co.uk/lists) News RSS Feed (http://www.jabwebsolutions.co.uk/rss) -- Freephone: 0800 043 0 153 Fax: 0870 622 0 158 Direct: 02920 00 64 94 -- JAB Web Solutions Limited Suite 145 61 Wellfield Road Roath, Cardiff Mid-Glamorgan CF24 3DG -- This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the above addressee. If you are not the named addressee you should not disseminate, distribute, copy or alter this email in any way or any form. Any views or opinions presented in this email are solely those of the author and might not represent those of JAB Web Solutions. Should any issue arise from this correspondence, contact the author for further details. Although JAB Web Solutions has taken reasonable precautions to ensure no viruses are present in this email, the company cannot accept responsibility for any loss or damage arising from the use of this email or attachments. -- Company Number: 5191094 VAT Number: 840666814 -- http://www.jabwebsolutions.co.uk/ From jonathan at jabwebsolutions.co.uk Thu Oct 26 07:10:19 2006 From: jonathan at jabwebsolutions.co.uk (Jonathan Wright) Date: Mon Nov 19 03:49:12 2007 Subject: Change of APC Switch Message-ID: <4540514B.5080803@jabwebsolutions.co.uk> ** Change of APC Switch Due to recent control issues with our current APC Power Control Switch, to which all servers are connected, we replacing it today with an updated model. While there have been no problems with providing power to our servers, we have been unable to use it for our intended purpose and all attempts to return it to a controllable state have failed. Therefore, we will be replacing it with a newer, working, model this afternoon at around 2-3pm. This will involve shutting down the servers, reconnecting their power supply and re-booting them. This should only take a few minutes per server and will be done one server at a time to minimize overall downtime. We apologise for the short notice of this update, however we need to replace this switch as soon as possible in order to be able to remotely reboot servers should any crash or malfunction and are therefore unable to manage them in the usual way. If you have any questions about this, please contact us. -- Jonathan Wright -- Maintenance and Technical Director -- Keep up to date with all our latest news and information: Mailing Lists (http://www.jabwebsolutions.co.uk/lists) News RSS Feed (http://www.jabwebsolutions.co.uk/rss) -- Freephone: 0800 043 0 153 Fax: 0870 622 0 158 Direct: 02920 00 64 94 -- JAB Web Solutions Limited Suite 145 61 Wellfield Road Roath, Cardiff Mid-Glamorgan CF24 3DG -- This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the above addressee. If you are not the named addressee you should not disseminate, distribute, copy or alter this email in any way or any form. Any views or opinions presented in this email are solely those of the author and might not represent those of JAB Web Solutions. Should any issue arise from this correspondence, contact the author for further details. Although JAB Web Solutions has taken reasonable precautions to ensure no viruses are present in this email, the company cannot accept responsibility for any loss or damage arising from the use of this email or attachments. -- Company Number: 5191094 VAT Number: 840666814 -- http://www.jabwebsolutions.co.uk/