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News, tips and reviews from one of Ireland's leading hosting companies |
As of a few minutes ago we have dropped the price of IE domains across the board.
No special links or coupons required.
ALL IE domains are now 21 euro ex-vat for both new registrations and renewals.
We've also got a list of the latest dropped IE domains, so you can grab a previously owned domain - nothing wrong with secondhand domains!
Well it isn't quite Web 2.0. But it's now new and improved and shiny.
And before I get any complaints, we know Safari doesn't look perfect yet :-).
We've removed .net and Linux VPS plans, you now have a simplified version of the site that has VPS plans that are OS agnostic. When you click buy now you'll be able to use our fancy vps-shop web application to choose your OS and the package you want and whether or not you want to add Plesk!
So where is this fancy application I hear you cry. Any buy now link on Blacknightvps.com will now take you to it.
All pricing for each period and for plesk etc is all contained within the web app.
There's a few small issues outstanding that we'll be fixing in time.
1) Safari doesn't work well right now (if at all :/)
2) The initial page load is a little slow, we're aware of this, it's because of the volume of information being retrieved from our backend that causes this, we're working on it.
3) Changing OS doesn't appear to keep your selected options in all browsers. However if you change plan from basic to standard it keeps all your choices!
4) Non javascript users we'll have a more accessible version soon (within a week or two) that'll work particularly well for the visually impaired.
Please let us know what you think of the new simplified version of the site.
All feedback and comments are welcome.
Ok so the one question we've been asked over and over again was:
"How many IPs can I have with my VPS?"
When we launched initially we said 1 IP address.
Then we gave a second free and now we're going to give you up to 10 IPs but the downside is there'll be a small charge for additional IPs.
On our shared hosting you can only get 1 dedicated IP address, so our VPS plans give you more IPs for free for a start and also the ability to add more.
The magical upper limit that we've set is 10 IPs.
Each additional IP (after the 2 we give free!) costs 2 Euro per month.
This fee is an administrative fee and doesn't give you ownership of the IP but rather the ability to make use of it.
It is added to your account for your exclusive use. After you buy them you can click IP addresses in VPS management and click Add new.
The upper limit we'll look at later once the product matures more and people start giving out to me looking for more IPs. :-)
I'm delighted to announce that the IE zone rebuilds are now more frequent.
The new zone rebuild times are:
10:00, 12:00, 17:00 and 22:00
AND it is set to rebuild 7 days a week, 365 days a year!
This is a major improvement for IE domain holders, as now updates, changes and new registrations will be processed much more efficiently.
As we mentioned previously, we are one of the sponsors of the Irish Internet Association's Congress, which takes place this year in Dublin's Croke Park.
Full details of the event may be found here
If you would like to avail of a 20% discount on booking simply use the coupon code: Congress2008
As we're sponsors of the event some of our staff should be around during the day, so keep an eye out for them!
Here at Blacknight we take our coffee very seriously.
I recently decided that we needed to get a slightly beefier coffee machine. The one we had been using for the last few months was fine, but it was time to upgrade.
Since I'm half Italian and have always had a certain fixation with good quality coffee it was only natural that I'd look at Gaggia and similar marques.
The machine I opted for in the end is a Gaggia Syncrony which takes beans or ground coffee.
Since we recently imported about 20 kg of fairtrade coffee beans our small little coffee grinder was under a lot of pressure, so a machine that did its own grinding solved two problems:
- ease of use
- dosage
One of the things that's really nice about the new machine is that you can re-program it so that the dosage of coffee and water is exactly the way you want it.
So expect to have very hyper Blacknight people answering phones over the next few days!
It's amazing what designers come up with at times!
Mouse over it to see what it's all about ....
For the last few months we have been regular advertisers in a number of UK magazines including Linux Format.
Print advertising is an interesting "game". You can spend a fortune and reap no return or spend very little and see your sales jump over night.
For the first few months of our advertising "run" in Linux format we didn't do anything really "special" with our ads. The ads we ran were the same as any of the ads we'd run in other publications. While I thought this was a good thing on one level I also thought it would be nice to do something a little bit different for the specific demographic of Linux Format (click to enlarge):
I've no idea where Alan, who does our print ads, found the penguin, but it brought a smile to my face.
If you'd like to be in with a chance of getting a year's VPS hosting for free, check out the Web 2.0 Ireland blog.
They've recently redone their site's design, so they're running a logo competition.
Today is a historical day for the IE namespace, as it has finally breached the one hundred thousand domain barrier.
The graph below shows growth over time
It will be interesting to see how long it takes for the namespace to double again in size.
Compared to some of our EU neighbours 100 thousand domains is a very small number. The UK registry, Nominet, handles in excess of 100 thousand new registrations every month!
Of course it's a bit unfair to draw parallels between the UK and Ireland.
While there have been considerable improvements in the registration process many registrants still feel that the process is quite arduous compared to that of .com.
In many ways the biggest improvement was the introduction of an API, which allows companies such as ourselves to send registration requests, updates and deletions directly to the registry.
In real terms that means that as soon as you place an order for an IE domain on our site (and pay us) it gets sent into the registry's queue.
So, if you do a WHOIS lookup you'd see:
% Application Pending - There is currently an application being processed for % the domain name you have requested. If unsuccessful, the application would % expire on the date above.
While the technology has improved some of the policies haven't, which leads to many of us having a certain love/hate relationship with the namespace.
Personally I have mixed feelings about it.
On the one hand I've been more than happy to support the growth of the IE namespace over the last few years.
The relaxation of some of the rules has made it significantly easier to register domains, but there is always room for improvement.
On the other hand I can appreciate the frustration felt by many registrants.
Being forced to provide the infamous "supporting documentation" for each and every new domain name could be seen as having a very negative impact on the growth of ecommerce in Ireland.
Whether that perception is valid or not is debatable.
If you have a valid reason to register a domain name providing the documentation shouldn't be that arduous a task.
Unlike .com there are still literally thousands of excellent names available. If you have a look at some of the recently deleted domains you might find inspiration.
Want to setup a photography business? Album.ie is currently available to register
Or maybe you are an ET fan? Alien.ie is up for grabs, or at least it was when I looked a minute ago!
One of the strong points of the IE namespace is also its perceived weakness.
Being a "managed" registry end users should have some comfort and security when they interact with a website using the .ie extension. Security, however, is not without its price.
In the .com world it is arguably "too easy" to register a domain, provide false details and setup a scam. If you want to do the same thing in IE namespace you'd have to be willing to put in a lot more work!
At times I feel like I'm a broken record. I keep finding myself saying the same thing to people, possibly using different words or turns of phrase, but the message is essentially the same.
If you register a domain name and pay for it you have certain rights. Of course you also have certain obligations, but most of them aren't particularly cumbersome.
What I wrote last year still hold true.
Basics:
You are entitled to access to your EPP key for your .com without paying a fee. Registrars should provide that to you in a timely fashion.
If you want to transfer the billing of a .ie domain you DO NOT need to deal with the original IEDR reseller. If you only want to move the hosting you DO NOT need to move the actual billing.
If you want to move your hosting you should be able to do so.
Unfortunately there are no clear guidelines from ICANN mandating how resellers should handle things, so you may need to refer back to the actual registrar that the reseller is using if you run into issues.
We recently had yet another issue with a particular UK company that refuses to handover clients' domains without levying a wholly unreasonable fee. If that happens to you you should try reporting them to their upstream registrar who may be in a position to take action against them.
Another "old chestnut" is the unreasonable locking of domains by some registrars after a domain has changed hands. While the argument that it is to prevent "hijacking" holds some water it's also rather "convenient" for them, as they often get another year's registration fees from clients as a result of the restriction.
ICANN recently clarified a very important policy point - inter-registrar transfers. Hopefully this will be on the agenda at the next ICANN meeting, which is scheduled for June in Paris.
The key point raised is worth repeating here:
A registrant change to Whois information is not a valid basis for denying a transfer request.
One very large US based registrar has been denying transfers for a long time based on this. I won't name them, but it doesn't take a lot of work to find out who they are.
Paul, our overworked and under appreciated CTO (who also happens to be my business partner) has been beavering away on enabling more cool stuff for the VPS hosting solutions.
One of the most requested features over the past few days has been support for more linux distributions.
Since there are a LOT of linux distributions we had to focus on the more important and popular ones, so Debian was pretty much top of the list.
You can now order Debian VPS (without plesk) via the online shop.
Rest assured that we do plan on adding more linux distributions, but as the old adage goes - Rome wasn 't built in a day, so we'd have to humbly ask you to bear with us.
Of course you don't have to wait if you don't want to, but hopping up and down won't speed things up...
Speaking of linux distros ...
We probably won't be adding support for Gentoo for some time if ever - sorry!
And now to distract you with a pretty image:
Of course it's more than just pretty.
With the virtual server solution powered by Parallels you can easily manage your virtual server (with full root access) from within the control panel. Want to reboot it or even stop it? How about a simple mouse click?
And if you break your VPS beyond recognition you can easily reinstall it from scratch and start all over. (I think I've broken mine about 4 times in the last 48 hours !!)
I'll probably post some screenshots or a screencast of the system when I get a chance.
But if there's any topic you'd like to see covered do let us know via the comments
We have finally launched the first set of new products and services that we've been working on for months.
As of last night Blacknight VPS hosting is open for business.
The new VPS hosting is the perfect solution for people who want to run custom setups without incurring the costs of dedicated hardware.
For example if you want to experiment with JSP, Ruby on Rails, Light HTTPD or want to install custom DLLs on Windows.
With a VPS you have full control. The only limits are your imagination and your credit card limit!
What's a VPS?
VPS stands for virtual private server.
It's hard to put it into really simple terms, but it's a way to give you the control and flexibility of a dedicated server at a fraction of the price.
What are Blacknight offering?
We're offering a full range of Windows Server 2003 64 bit and Centos 5 (Linux) based virtual servers.
Can I get a control panel for this?
Yes. All VPS servers come with the Virtuozzo Power Panel which gives you control over the basic operations of your VPS.
If you're not comfortable managing your server over SSH / RDP then you can opt to get Plesk as well.
What about other linux distros?
We'll be adding other popular Linux distributions in the coming weeks. For the moment we're offering the most popular alternative to RedHat Enterprise
Will you be offering Windows Server 2008?
We intend to offer it as soon as it is viable ie. fully supported and tested
The entire system is securely hosted in one of Ireland's leading data centres, Interxion in Dublin, Ireland.
In the last few months we've mentioned a lot of upgrades and improvements to our network. Part of the reason for doing all this was to make way for the rollout of our Parallels network.
If anyone has any feedback we'd really love to hear it.
Let us know in the comments or if you'd prefer discretion email management@blacknight.com
We informed you some time ago of an upcoming upgrade to our billing / control panel system.
You will probably receive an email from us later today regarding our billing system.
The text of the email is below:
Dear XXX
As you may know we are currently deploying a new billing and control panel system.
In order to facilitate the migration we would appreciate your help.
Please follow the link below to create your new control panel login.
NB: We will not ask you for any personal information at any time.
To create your new control panel login, please visit
Should you encounter difficulties please contact support@blacknight.com
--
Regards
Team Blacknight
http://www.blacknight.com
Once you get this email you will be able to setup your new login for our new billing system which will be going live very soon.
If you have any queries or issues please let us know.
NB: This change affects ALL Blacknight clients
This article was originally published in April 2008's edition of Computers in Business. Since I wrote it and retain the copyright I am republishing it here:
People are always publishing articles on how to make the most out of your website or how to turn your website into “the solution” for your business.
I can’t see the point in even trying if you can’t get the basics right.
What are the basics?
The obvious things.
What does your company sell or provide?
Communicate this to me clearly in language I can understand. If I need a dictionary to read your website then you’re being too obtuse. Spell it out
for me so I can see.
How can I contact you?
Put your contact details where they can be seen without forcing me to search for them or squint.
Instil a sense of trust.
Mobile phone numbers, throwaway email addresses and PO Box numbers may suit you, but they do not give potential clients a sense of security.
Where are you based?
There is nothing more annoying than a website promoting a really cool and useful service WITHOUT telling me if it’s available in my area. (Sorry for yelling, but it’s really frustrating!!) If your service is only available in Co. Cork that’s fine, but don’t tell me it’s a “national service” on one page and restricted to Cork only on another.
Another basic thing to do is check if your website displays correctly in the most commonly used browsers. Of course if your site is “standards compliant” and can pass the W3C’s validator test then you won’t have to worry too much, so maybe investing a little bit more now will pay dividends later?
I hate acronyms.
Of course they're impossible to avoid if you work in IT, but that doesn't mean I have to like them.
RAID is one of those acronyms that really wrecks my head.
Not RAID itself which means simply Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks, but the different types of RAID array that can exist.
RAID, in case you didn't know, is a way of improving redundancy and performance in servers by using multiple disks. Of course you don't have to use multiple disks, but if you don't you will run the risk of losing data.
A few months ago someone posted a very nice simple graphic that explained the differences between the various types of RAID arrays.
Taken from: http://www.epidauros.be/raid.jpg
One of our technical staff sent me a link earlier today to a bash.org quote which sums up the potential issues with single disk servers very nicely:
sterano: Whats the difference between Raid_0 and Raid_1? Steve: In Raid_0 the zero stands for how many files you are going to get back if something goes wrong.
Moral of the story - use more than one physical disk :)
I am currently very very frustrated and annoyed.
I've always tried to be honest and upfront with clients, so it really annoys me when I have to backtrack on any kind of promise.
We are about to launch a range of new hosting plans.
We can't launch the new hosting plans just yet, since there are a couple of minor glitches with the system. They're small issues. They will be fixed, but we can't launch until they are.
This is really really annoying, as I actually told several people last week that we would be launching (there are two or three clients already using the system!)
So what can I say?
Sorry?
Verisign, the company that manages the .com registry, will be increasing the price of .com domains by 7% again this year.
The price increase affects all registrars.
We'll be keeping an eye on how pricing develops and if this involves any change to our own pricing we will let you know.
If data centres and secure hosting environments make you yawn then this post might be best avoided.
We all know that you want your hosting to "just work", so you really don't need to know about the "inner works". I don't blame you.
Personally I find data centres to be incredibly boring places.
They're not "exciting" or "cool". Sure they can look pretty funky from the outside, depending on which data centre you're looking at, but that's just aesthetics.
Aesthetics don't provide security.
Fancy brochures don't guarantee uptime.
Slick sales pitchs don't provide a track record.
Investment in infrastructure and staff may not be "sexy", but it is a necessity.
I don't have to get excited about data centres and I'm not going to be distracted by glossy photos. The kind of stuff that does impress me is the physical infrastructure and the reputation which is why we use Interxion and Data Electronics.
Over the past year we've been hiring staff on a constant basis while also spending silly amounts of cash on building out the network. At times I wish we'd held onto the cash so that I could get myself a really nice car or a down payment on a nice big country pile, but instead we've invested it all back into the company.
The photos below show one of our private suites in Dublin. As you can see there's plenty of space available for expansion. We've put aside quite a bit of space for our "big" plans.
In the photo below Mark, one of our technical staff, is working on a server.
The monitor is rackmounted into the cabinet and connected up via a fancy KVM which allows technicians to work on any server within the cabinet easily. It probably saves on space too!
While here you can see Niall working on his laptop in one side of the suite.
A lot of the servers pictured above were first seen several months ago when we shared our Dell delivery photos.
The guys were moving stuff around last night in readiness for our new product launch (watch this space!)
The guys in Enum 353 are running a session this Friday on VOIP security which might be of interest to some people:
Venue: Morrison Hotel, Ormond Quay, Dublin 1
Date: Friday 28th March 2008
Time: 9.30 a.m. to 5.00 p.m. (lunch included)
There will be no charge to attend the session.
Overview:
This workshop will discuss several VoIP security considerations from a
service providers perspective, for example, SIP client security, SIP
proxy security and PSTN Gateway security. The workshop starts with a
short SIP introduction which highlights the SIP topics needed for SIP
hacking. Following this will be an in-depth look at specific attacks, a
live demonstration of the tools used in these attacks and a discussion
of attack countermeasures. Hacking methods displayed will include:
password hacking, account hijacking, relay attacks, identity spoofing,
billing bypass ...
This full day event will be presented by Klaus Darilion an expert in the
field of SIP communications. He studied electrical engineering at the
Vienna University of Technology, where he later wrote a Doctor thesis
about SIP based voice communication for public safety applications.
Klaus Darilion is now employed with enum.at, the Austrian ENUM registry,
where he is working on ENUM based call routing and all kinds of SIP
based communication.
NB: This event is not organised by Blacknight, so please address any queries to Enum353
Update: Sorry about this, but I've just been told that this session is not as open as I thought previously! This session is only open to members of the VoIP ENUM working group so for more information please email vewg@ienum.ie
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.
You can subscribe to the site's RSS feed OR to the email alerts.
Your choice :)
You can sign up for the email alerts by filling out the form below:
Well it's that Easter thing again.
Friday isn't a "real" holiday, so our offices are open pretty much all day today. Monday is a bank holiday in most EU countries, so we'll be operating on reduced staff numbers.
But Tuesday we're back in force.
So what's with the image?
Well I was looking for something to do with the entire Easter / Spring theme.
I did find plenty of "cute" pictures of chicks, ducklings and babies, but I didn't like them too much. What I was thinking of was something else. Something that also incorporated our new plans which we intend to launch next week!
So what's happening next week exactly?
We plan on unveiling a new range of hosting solutions that are going to change your life, cure world hunger and show you how super duper reliable and wonderful we are.
(Of course if you believe any of that you are truly gullible. Please email me directly and I'll help you buy loads of hosting that you don't really need. Thanks!)
Today and over the weekend several or our little elves will be beavering away on refining and tweaking everything so that it won't explode when we put it "live".
Of course you'd have to be insane not to expect there to be issues and problems. There always are. You can test stuff umpteen times, but someone will always find a new way to break it.
Speaking of stuff breaking ....
While we do offer excellent network uptime (see how we're curing the world's ails above) we do have issues from time to time. With that in mind we have been planning on moving our technical notifications to a separate offsite blog.
It's still a little rough around the edges, but I would encourage people to check out our new technical blog: Blacknight Status
The new site is running our favourite CMS - MovableType 4 and will be used primarily by our technical support and engineering teams to keep you up to date on any service affecting issues on our network.
What you are likely to find on there is:
What you are NOT likely to see:
I'd recommend you subscribe to the blog as soon as possible
So .. Have a good weekend and keep an eye on your inbox. You never know what might be winging its way to you
Journalists call from time to time asking me to talk about various internet related topics. Most of the time the publications or shows are "general interest", so you can only talk about very general things.
Last night, however, was quite different, as I was one of the guests on "Domain Masters" which is broadcast and streamed weekly at 7pm EST (11pm in Ireland, midnight CET)
The show's host last night was my good friend Jothan Frakes who is one of the domain name industry's gurus.
Although I was very nervous (which probably showed!) we had a nice chat about Blacknight, domains and the internet industry.
If anyone wants to hear the show there should be an mp3 version available on the WebmasterRadio site at some time over the next couple of days.
UPDATE: The Mp3 from last night is now available on the site http://www.webmasterradio.fm/Internet-Marketing/Domain-Masters/Geo-Domain-Expo-and-BlackKnight.htm
UPDATE 2: Of course if I provided proper hyperlinks people might be actually able to use them!
So here you go: Show details including podcast
Happy St. Patrick's Day!
Up until now I've been doing an obligatory "we're closed" post for the annual Patrick's day weekend.
This year things are a little different.
Although you may not be able to get through on our phone lines we managed to bribe and cajole a few members of our staff to give up their day off to work today.
So if you have any technical support, accounts or sales queries today you will probably get an answer. If you don't get an answer today you will tomorrow when all the "troops" are back on duty.
Of course there's no guarantee that they haven't got hangovers, but there isn't much that we can do about that!
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.
Most days our post is boring.
There are invoices and other stuff for our accounts team. There might be the odd payment from clients who still pay us by cheque or maybe even a copy of a magazine.
It's nice to get a "thank you" letter from time to time and it really does make us feel good.
We have helped out several groups and individuals over the last few years, so it's nice to see them thanking us.
The System Administrators Guild of Ireland is one such group who we have been providing services to for several years. Their Chairman sent me this letter which I thought I would share:
So being a hosting provider can have its rewards as well sometimes!
Last Saturday Creative Camp was held in Kilkenny Castle. I've been to some nice venues over the last couple of years (I used to live in a really nice one in a previous life!) and Kilkenny Castle definitely gives them a run for their money.
Although the castle is in the middle of Kilkenny once you step through the gates you'd be forgiven for thinking that you were in the middle of the countryside, as all you can see is grass and trees.
The facilities in the building itself are excellent and the organisers did a wonderful job in arranging to hold the event there.
Since Kilkenny is only about a 20 minute drive from the Blacknight offices we simply had to turn out "en force", so six of us headed over for the day.
One of the things about our line of business is that although we maybe in contact with clients and business partners on a regular basis via email, phone and other methods, we rarely get to meet them "face to face". Events like Creative Camp are very refreshing in this regard, as it allows us to meet people in an informal setting. It's also a wonderful opportunity to get feedback on our services. While we may be doing a good job there's always room for improvement and the only way that you can really find out about it is when someone "grabs you" in a corridor and lets you know.
Being able to bring so many members of the team to an event was a great experience as well, since normally it's just me and one or two others. This time round there was a mixture of our development team, technical team and sales team, which was good fun.
There were some very interesting discussions being held throughout the day culminating in a very interesting panel session in the main hall about "Women in Technology". It also marked the official launch of a new site Sass.ie (think of it phonetically!) which we are delighted to sponsor. (We may be capitalist swine, but we like giving back to the community as well)
After the day's events we headed off for a nice Chinese with a couple of clients and friends before making our way back to Carlow.
George, our sales manager, took some nice photos at the event which you can find here. I was going to post a couple of them, but they're rather big.
So this weekend is Creative Camp and I'm currently trying to work out who exactly will be going from our offices... I know a few people were talking about it, but I'm still not 100% sure who is definitely going. It looks like there might be two carloads ...
So we're basically invading Kilkenny!
I'll probably be buying drinks / food for people later in the day / evening, so if you want some just look for the me ...
Don't know what I look like?
Well here's a recent enough photo of me with Playboy centrefold Sara Jean Underwood:
Relevance?
Practically none, but I've been trying to work out how to get a photo of me and a Playboy model onto the company blog for weeks ...
Of course I won't have these lovely ladies on my arm this weekend, but I should still be recognisable...
When you take your car into a mechanic you expect them to do the job correctly and to meet industry standards. It's not something you ask about, as it's taken as a given.
When it comes to web design, however, standards are all too often put in the back seat. You could get into a lengthy and irrelevant discussion of how browser software evolved, but it wouldn't help you get your site to work properly for a potential buyer.
Why do standards matter?
They matter because it makes life easier for everyone.
If your website complies with W3C (http://www.w3c.org) standards then you can more or less guarantee that all visitors will have an equal experience.
Badly designed websites can cost you money in lost sales and if your business is online then this isn't a good thing. Sites carrying "useful" badges like "best viewed in Internet Explorer" are going to cost you money.
I don't use Internet Explorer. I've no reason to and neither did over 50% of visitors to one of my websites last month. Do you want to stop me from doing business with you? Telling me that my choice of browser or operating system doesn't "fit" with your site's "requirements" is a sure fire way of dissuading me from spending money with you.
Another thing that people tend to forget is "accessibility". Accessible design doesn't have to be ugly. It can help reach an audience you might otherwise miss and anyone who could be turned into a buyer is welcome, aren't they?
This article first appeared in Computers in Business with the Sunday Business Post on March 2nd 2008.
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.
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)
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)
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
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!
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!
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?
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-base