If you want to know about any service affecting maintenance, technical updates or anything else of a technical nature, we recommend that you check out our new Technical Blog.
The site is hosted outside our core network (we don't even use our own nameservers just to be 100% safe!) and is part of our backup / contingency plans for emergency situations.
While our network uptime has been and hopefully will continue to be exemplary there's no reason to be lazy. We need to make sure that we have a system in place in case there is an issue NOT after the issue arises.
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When: Tonight Tue March 18th @ 21:00 hours
What: Disk replacement in shared server bors.blacknight.ie, the spare in the Raid 1 mirror failed last night so we're going to swap it out tonight. This machine does not have hot swap drives so we need to take it down for the change over.
This will take between 15 minutes and 1 hour to complete, please also note that performance will be degraded today and tonight post the swap out until the raid array returns to normal.
Summary: @ 21:00 tonight Tue March 18th the server hosting server bors will be taken offline for between 15 minutes and 1 hour while we replace a dead drive.
Update @ 21:48:
The disk has been replaced, the raid array is now rebuilding and the server is backup. It'll be a little slow for a couple of horus until the array is completely rebuilt.
If you're not an existing Blacknight client this post isn't going to be that interesting or relevant to you, so you might want to move along...
The short version of this post:
We'll be emailing you to get you to choose a new username for the new control panel and billing system. The email will be clearly identified as coming from us and we won't be asking you for any sensitive information (ie. it won't be a phish!)
And for those with more patience ...
As some of you know we are currently working on a new shiny hosting system which is going to make your lives better and cure the world's ills (marketing speak gone mad! I know!).
If you can get past the marketing blurb one important fact remains. We will be moving away from Modernbill before too long. While it has served us well over the last few years our relationship has had its ups and downs, so now it only seems fair that we part our ways.
Now we know that migrating people to new systems can be disruptive and we also know how annoying it is when you're forced to use an insanely complicated username and password pair.
So our little elves (forgive the terrible metaphors!) have devised simple solution.
If you are an existing client of ours you will be getting an email at some point in the next few weeks. Within that email will be the basic details you need to choose your new username for the new billing system. It will all be quite painless we hope (and pray!).
In any case if you have any questions do let us know.
When is this going to happen?
I can't give a fixed date just yet, as we're still ironing out some issues and I hate making promises that I can't deliver on.
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)
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.
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!
