Easter will soon be upon us, so today we decided to splash out on some "goodies" for the staff in our offices - organic Easter eggs from Green and Black's.

Green and Black's eggs come in recycled cardboard boxes and while the ingredients in the eggs may not be FairTrade the company has a good track record in that area.

If you're wondering why we've "suddenly" gone "green" the answer is very simple - we haven't!

We just haven't been telling people about any of the stuff we've been doing quietly behind closed doors.

Posted by Michele Neylon at 2:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Summary: Kay.blacknight.ie (one of the windows shared hosting servers) is going to be moved to new hardware. The highlights are:

a) More memory
b) 64bit Windows 2003 server
c) Faster disks
d) Newer version of Smartermail

Time lines:

@22:00 on the 27th of Feb 2008 we'll be shutting down the smartermail service.

Once we're sure the service is stopped and all end users disconnected we'll be syncing the config, mailboxes and spools to the new server. Once we've moved everything we'll do some extensive testing to make sure all is well.

We estimate around 3 hours or so for the change over to take place, if it's looking like it'll take longer, we'll abort the move but keep syncing the data.

I'll post more info tomorrow when I know more. Mark one of our Windows engineers will be on-site for the duration of the change over.

Please address any queries regarding this to the support desk http://support.blacknight.ie, support@blacknight.ie

Update @ 7:30am Thursday 28th:

Mark aborted the transfer during the night as it was taking far too long. We're re-scheduling this for this weekend coming and we'll try an alternative means of syncing the data. Can I urge people to download all their e-mail and not leave it on the server for the next few days as this will help us migrate the data faster.

Update @ 14:30 Friday Feb 29th:

We've been investigating this further over the last few days and we've found a faster method to complete the transfer and replicate the data. The tests we've run indicate between 1 and 2 hours to sync the changes since the major file copy on Wednesday last. So starting at 22:00 tonight the mail server kay.blacknight.ie will be unavailable for 2-3 hours to complete this migration. I'll update the blog on Saturday morning with more information.

Update @ 23:49 Friday Feb 29th:

We have completed this move. There is a noticeable performance increase which can be attributed to new software, 64 bit OS and Mail services and better hardware.

Changes:

* New Webmail interface with a built in RSS reader
* New Antispam measures in the back end
* ClamAV now installed by default
* Better attack mitigation features
* Improved accessibility built into the webmail interface itself (Daragh please comment on how good/bad Smartermail got it this time)

Posted by Paul Kelly at 8:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

We are currently experiencing issues with the server known as "Balin".

Our technical team are working on a fix and we will update you as soon as possible

Update: the server has been rebooted. Mail and most other services have been restored. Web traffic is currently disabled

Update 2 - Web traffic is now enabled.

Posted by Michele Neylon at 1:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Tomorrow marks the beginning of Fair Trade Fortnight which promotes the use of fairtrade products.

According to FairTrade's press office consumers are switching over more and more with global sales up by 40% and Irish sales up by a massive 75%.

Here at Blacknight we've been using FairTrade coffee for the last couple of months. It costs a small bit more than the "normal" brand, but not so much that we'd really notice.

If you're interested in finding shops or cafes in your area that support Fair Trade check out the locator map on their site (there's also an option to add listings).

I don't believe in mixing business and politics, but if choosing which brand of coffee to buy for the office will help producers then I don't see why we shouldn't make that small little change in our buying habits.

Posted by Michele Neylon at 3:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This is most of the equipment that was damaged or destroyed the other day.

It might not look like much, but the plantronics headsets are far from cheap and 8 of them were burnt out!

We're currently waiting for some guy from an insurance company to come out and tell us what we already know - the smell of burning was a give away!

(click to get a bigger version)

(Photo courtesy of Mark Brislane)

Posted by Michele Neylon at 4:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I'd like to think that we don't take ourselves too seriously. Sure - hosting is a serious business, but there's nothing wrong with having a bit of a laugh from time to time - even if its from a competitor!

One of our competitors posted a link to a YouTube video today that was quite amusing. Remember Monty Python?

NB: Contains some language that people *may* find offensive

Posted by Michele Neylon at 9:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

When: Thursday 14:30 in the afternoon.

Summary: There is a software upgrade due for a while for the vendor we use. So we're going to do it during the day when the system is at its quietest.

We estimate between 30 minutes and 2 hours for the complete upgrade and testing phase. The backup system won't be available during this upgrade.

If you have any questions please address them to our support team. There may be client upgrades and new features available after this upgrade so we'll post about these once we've tested them all fully.

Posted by Paul Kelly at 9:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

There's a "lovely" aroma of burning in our offices in Carlow this lunchtime.

I say "lovely" as I'm trying really hard to find a silver lining to this morning's electrical "mishap".

I am not an electrician and I would never pretend to be one. Neither it seems was the person or persons responsible for this morning's problems!

They may advertise themselves as electricians, but I'd love to know how someone competent could have unbalanced a 3 phase so easily.

It seems that while doing some work on the other half of the building ie. outside Blacknight territory, they managed to disconnect one of the phases which caused an imbalance and a rather nasty power spike.

The surge took out several of the lights in our offices, three desktop PCs (the power supplies are literally burntout - you can actually see black smoke marks), the phone system blew and more than half of the headset base stations melted.

On a positive note the UPS worked fine and kept the office servers up and running and protected them from the nasty spike.

The guys down in PC Pro in Cork will be happy, as we've had to replace a load of office equipment..
I'm still compiling a list of stuff that got damaged, but the bill will run to several thousand euro.

There isn't a whole lot you can do in a normal office building when crazy people with screwdrivers get involved, so I'm thankful that we don't have any customer equipment onsite at present. The data centres we use in Dublin are incredibly redundant!

Posted by Michele Neylon at 12:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Our Carlow offices are without electricity or phones this morning.

Servers and all services are normal as they are based in Dublin.

Our sales team, support team and accounts team are currently "offline".

We will update you as soon as we have more information.

From what I have been able to gather several devices may have blown during a power surge a few minutes ago. Hopefully the phone system was not damaged!

Update 1 - We have sent most of our technical support staff to work offsite. They will be able to respond to support queries submitted to our helpdesk.

Update 2 - Power has been restored in our offices. Unfortunately it looks like our phone system's power supply may have been blown, so our phones are still down

Update 3 - The following mobile numbers maybe used to contact our offices.

Update 4 - Telephone system is back online with a new power supply!

Posted by Michele Neylon at 9:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

At the moment we're hiring staff for a variety of roles. One of the things we are planning on doing is extending our general operating hours for customer service and sales.

For the past few months we've gradually extended our work shifts so that our technical support and sales teams are fully operational and answering the phones between 8am and 6pm Monday to Friday (GMT).

Outside office hours all clients who have dedicated servers or use us for colocation have access to our oncall staff (If you fall into this category and have misplaced the contact details let us know!).

In terms of maintenance notifications we will be offering more options in the coming weeks, so watch this space.

In the meantime we recommend that people keep an eye on this site for updates. You can subscribe to the RSS feed or to email notifications.

But what about telephone support at the weekend?

Do people actually want that?

If we made it available would people use it?

What about "live chat"?

Are our ticket response times outside office hours fast enough?

Are they too slow?

Based on the responses we got from our recent survey I gather that people are happy with our customer service overall, but that we could improve it.

So what would you like to see?

Posted by Michele Neylon at 1:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

We're currently experiencing an issue connecting us to Realex payments. As a result we're unable to process credit, debit card payments.

Realex are aware of their issue and are working to resolve it. We'll get a call back once it has been resolved and I'll post an update here.

Update: 12:14pm

It seems realex have sorted their connectivity issue and we're able to process payments again.

Posted by Paul Kelly at 12:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We're hiring staff at the moment ... I've already mentioned some of the roles we need to fill and today I've got yet another one...

This time round its for an "experienced" *nix admin position.

Basically we've got loads of servers. They need lots of TLC ...

Here are the details:

Position: Unix Engineer

The Unix Engineer has a specific area of responsibility within the systems that comprise the Blacknight core service delivery infrastructure. He/she reports to the Support Supervisor. This role may require leadership of junior engineers. Close co-operation with the core systems engineers is essential.

Responsibilities associated with this role include, but are not limited to the following:

* Ensure that all Blacknight services run optimally; continuously monitor performance against published SLA targets; consistently strive for excellence and highest system uptimes
* Assume special responsibility for Unix/Linux-based service delivery systems:
* Shared unix web servers and mail servers
* Unix/Linux-based database servers
* Support to dedicated or co-located customers on Unix/Linux systems who have bought managed services
* Advanced dedicated server development
* Unix/Linux-specific backups
* Plan and implement future developments, such as systems upgrades, using detailed plans and scheduled upgrade or implementation cycles
* Maintain/upgrade current anti-virus, backup, and other management software on Unix/Linux systems;
* Support deployment of hardware, software, service, and maintenance of all information technology assets
* Maintain full security on all systems
* Some development of in house applications may be required
* Assist in resolving systems outages out-of-hours through participation in an engineer call-out roster

Skills / Knowledge

* Deep knowledge of networking protocols (DNS/IPsec/POP3/SMTP and TCP/IP in mixed operating system environments)
* Experience managing Linux and other open-source operating systems essential, scripting ability essential, experience with commercial Unix, such as Solaris, an advantage
* Familiarity with Quagga the open-source routing suite desirable
* Software development experience in PHP and/or PERL desirable
* Working knowledge of Windows-based server operating systems
* Ability to build, run, and scale most ISP services from source
* Experience with Java, Tomcat, JSP deployments, ability to deploy and support such deployments
* Extensive knowledge of project-based software upgrade plans, ability to plan, write, communicate, and execute project and/or test plans
* Excellent understanding of firewalls and network security essential; experience with management of and planning of deployments of Cisco PIX or Fortinet firewalls essential
* Disaster recovery planning/testing
* Hands-on experience of backup software essential
* hardware diagnostic skills would be desirable, be able to trouble shoot problems with servers to determine if a fault is software of hardware based and be able to use your own initiative to contact vendors for replacements where applicable

PERSONAL ATTRIBUTES:

* Excellent communication skills
* Must be forward thinking and have good planning skills
* Excellent troubleshooting, judgment, and decision-making skills
* High level of self-motivation and proven ability for self-study and learning on the job
* Flexible and dependable, On-call work and Out of hours duties may be required from time to time (this is paid extra)
* Team player

QUALIFICATIONS/ EXPERIENCE

* 3 years experience working in a similar role

Salary

* Negotiable, between € 28,000 and €35,000 plus benefits and depending on experience

EDIT: The job is based in our offices in Carlow ...

Posted by Michele Neylon at 3:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

When I first setup Blacknight we were a very very very small operation without any staff, offices or anything else.

Nowadays we have a growing team and are constantly expanding.

Our offices are quite comfortable, though we're going to be extending them very soon.

We're currently looking for more staff to help us expand and grow and offer our clients quality service and support.

There are currently 4 positions open and it would be really nice if we could fill them.

On the technical side there are two roles.

One is technical support L1. In simple terms the L1 technical support role is the "frontline". You'd be dealing with our clients via email, phone and other methods (we're not using Livechat at present, but we may do...). It would be a junior position and in order to qualify you'd need to have a good balance of humour, patience and an interest in IT. You don't need to have a degree in IT. In fact you don't need a degree at all, though it would be helpful...

The other technical role is as "Data Centre Technician". I'll post the full job spec further down, but the basic outline is that you'd be working primarily in Dublin (Clondalkin and Park West) and liasing with clients and the rest of the team.

The other roles are on the sales team.

It's 2008. Ireland is part of the EU. It would be downright silly to not want to staff capable of communicating with our European neighbours. So we're looking for multilingual sales staff. The languages we'd be interested in would be (in no particular order): Spanish, French, German or Italian. However if you have other EU languages then do feel free to contact us.

The other sales role is "straight" sales.

Both sales roles are based in our offices in Carlow and the candidates would report directly to our sales manager.

So, without further ado, here are the details of the Data Centre Technician role:

Position: Data Centre Technician

The Data Centre Technician role would be suited to someone who has previously worked for a Data Centre/large corporate with 500+ server deployments. He/she reports to the Technical Director. This role will involve close co-operation with the deployment and sales teams regarding new/current and furture customer deployments.

Responsibilities associated with this role include, but are not limited to the following:

* Ensure that all Blacknight customer installs go smoothly and that there is ample space, power, hardware on site for each deployment; liase with hardware vendors regarding delivery of DC specific hardware; consistently strive for excellence.
* Provide hands and eyes support on-site when necessary during business hours
* Ensure that all customer subscribed services are setup within SLAs outlined in contracts.
* Plan and implement future developments, such as systems upgrades, using detailed plans and scheduled upgrade or implementation cycles
* Keep track of all deliveries to and from our two Dublin POPs.
* Support deployment of hardware, software, service, and maintenance of all information technology assets
* Assist in resolving systems outages out-of-hours through participation in an engineer call-out roster

Skills / Knowledge

* Basic knowledge of networking protocols (DNS/IPsec/POP3/SMTP and TCP/IP in mixed operating system environments)
* Experience managing Linux and other open-source operating systems ideal, scripting ability essential, experience with commercial Unix, such as Solaris, an advantage
* Cisco IOS experience, switch configuration and general Layer 2 topology awareness
* Hardware skills with Intel based servers from vendors such as Dell, HP and Intel.
* Meticulous care in deploying servers and all Blacknight, customer equipment and all network cabling.
* Attention to detail regarding keeping records up to date
* Disaster recovery planning/testing
* Hardware diagnostic skills would be desirable, be able to trouble shoot problems with servers to determine if a fault is software of hardware based and be able to use your own initiative to contact vendors for replacements where applicable

PERSONAL ATTRIBUTES:

* Excellent communication skills
* Must be forward thinking and have good planning skills
* Excellent troubleshooting, judgment, and decision-making skills
* High level of self-motivation and proven ability for self-study and learning on the job
* Flexible and dependable, On-call work and Out of hours duties may be required from time to time
* Team player

QUALIFICATIONS/ EXPERIENCE

* 1 year experience working in a similar role

Salary

* Negotiable, between € 23,000 and €27,500 plus benefits and depending on experience

If interested please send CV in RTF or PDF format with covering email to management@blacknight.com.

Recruitment agencies NOT welcome. Cold calls / emails from recruitment agencies in relation to these or any other vacancies will not be welcome and will be treated with contempt.

Posted by Michele Neylon at 12:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Much to my amazement we've made it through to the shortlist for this year's Irish blog awards!

The competition in the business blog category is particularly tough, but it was nice to have made it this far.

Best of luck to everyone!!

Posted by Michele Neylon at 12:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Summary:

We got some support queries over the weekend from various customers who were upgrading their wordpress installs saying that they were having permissions issues.

Resolution:

I've been dealing with the installatron guys for the last 4 or so hours and we've tested and re-tested and ... so on. We've got the bug nailed down now and I've successfully upgraded from 2.0.5 on a customers blog to latest stable available without breaking permissions.

I've a feeling this also sorts another issue for the upgrade that looses files that were changed during an upgrade.

Posted by Paul Kelly at 2:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We're currently working behind the scenes on a nice new shiny set of hosting services. (I've wanted to say "shiny" all day - sorry!)

One of the things that the new system should be good at delivering is pre-installed scripts alla installatron, which is our current solution.

Of course it won't be installatron, so it won't offer the current range of applications. It could offer a similar range of applications, but it would be nice to know which applications people would like to see...

Which applications are you interested in using?

Which applications can you live without?

Why do you use some scripts and not others?

Any feedback you can give us would be fantastic!

And if you are a developer you can make your applications available to our customers!!! If you're interested in finding out more email management@blacknight.com

Posted by Michele Neylon at 3:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (20) | TrackBacks (0)

Overview:

On 10:04am on 4/2/2008 an ethernet card failed in a device on one of our metro-e providers Layer 2 connectivity device in DEG. Immediately (within 50ms) our kit failed over to our backup route into DEG. There was no service disruption during this window due to our resilient network design. At 12:00 the card was replaced and this link came back up and we flipped our traffic back over to our primary link. Again service was unaffected.

We received the RFO from our metro-e provider yesterday afternoon that basically said what I've described above. A card failed and it was replaced within 2 hours.

Posted by Paul Kelly at 3:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Over the past year or so we've sponsored most of the BarCamp events throughout Ireland. Whether they're in Cork or Galway, Dublin or Belfast, here at Blacknight we've done our best to get involved and offer our support where possible.

A few months ago Kilkenny played host to Podcamp, which was essentially a podcasting celebration of sorts (I really don't like the term "unconference"). This time round the organisers have opted to call their event "creative camp" as opposed to barcamp.

Since it's "only over the road" in Kilkenny, which is about twenty minutes in a "normal" car (our last trip to Kilkenny didn't work out too well!)

So what are we sponsoring?

Apart from the usual hosting and domain related stuff, we're also helping to offset the carbon footprint of the day's events!

Doesn't that sound complicated and cool?

Don't be fooled!

We're basically paying to have a number of trees planted to offset the carbon emissions that people's cars (and public transport) will generate in getting to the venue.

As it's so close to our own offices I'd expect a couple of us to make the trip over to Kilkenny for the day!

Posted by Michele Neylon at 3:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

We've been active members of the Irish Internet Association for the last number of years and have been happy to sponsor several of their events in the past.

This year's event takes place in the Croke Park Conference Centre on Friday May 15th

This year the IIA's conference will be focussing on social networking and new media.

We'll be providing more details on the speakers and the rest of the day's details as soon as they are forthcoming.

At least two or three of our team should be at the event, so please do make yourselves known. There might even be a prize draw for something really cool and useful... If nothing else we'll definitely have a few hoodies and polo shirts to give away (they're really comfy!)

If you haven't done so already I'd recommend that you subscribe to our blog's feed to be kept up to date!

Posted by Michele Neylon at 3:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(click on the image above for a really BIG version)

Today is Pancake Tuesday (Shrove Tuesday).

If we were in New Orleans we'd call it Mardi Gras.

So today Paul, our CTO and my business partner, made pancakes for all the staff in our offices.

Since we normally don't have any form of cooker in the office we acquired a simple hot plate and Paul worked his magic...

Pity there's no photo of the chef in action....

Posted by Michele Neylon at 2:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Next Saturday is a date that should be marked in every Irish web professional's calendar, as it marks the first "event" organised by the members of Irish Webmaster Forum. (You don't have to be a member to participate!)

Where?

Harbour Master, Mayor Street, IFSC, Dublin 1

When?

Saturday February the 9th. 7.30 PM til ...... I guess that's up to you!

The original thread that started it all off is here, but it's been mentioned on quite a few people's blogs and sites over the last few days.

Although I won't be able to attend due to prior engagements (translation - I have to go and see my mother before she disowns me and had arranged it beforehand) I'm hoping that some of our other staff may be able to make it, but even if they don't we'll be there in "spirit", as we're sponsoring the event.

I'll expect a full report with photos from the attendees!

Posted by Michele Neylon at 7:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The survey mentioned in our last newsletter is now closed.

I'll try to put together the results over the next few days and will followup once I've done so

We learnt quite a bit from the first survey. Not only about ourselves but also about writing surveys.

The next one will be quite a bit shorter as a result!!

Posted by Michele Neylon at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)