Server and System Status

NC031: Emergency server maintenance

26 April 2019 11:02:07 +0000

We will be upgrading server NC031 (the primary web server) with more memory to address memory shortage issues that have been affecting some websites recently. This maintenance is scheduled to start at 19:00 UTC on Saturday 27 April and is expected to take up to five hours, concluding before approximately 23:59 the same day. (Please use the World Time Server to convert this time to your time zone.) It is possible that the maintenance will take less time. During this time all websites (including the main NinerNet website) will be unavailable, for both browsing and editing.

This maintenance will not affect email.

We will post a notice here when the maintenance starts, progress updates on the hour every hour, and when the maintenance completes. We thank you for your patience as we work to improve our network’s reliability. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact NinerNet support.

Tags: down time, reboot, web server
Categories: Maintenance, NC031, Upgrades
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NC031: Web server downtime

14 March 2019 21:34:49 +0000

The database on our primary web server (NC031) went down at 20:20 UTC, and was not brought back up until 21:00 UTC. This means that all database-driven websites were down during this 40-minute period, and would have displayed the message, “Error establishing a database connection”. We are still trying to determine why this happened and why the service was not automatically restarted, as should have been the case. Coincidentally — or perhaps not — at the same time the server was under a heavy load from hundred of thousands of requests on a single website, and we have now blocked the source of that traffic.

We sincerely apologise for this inconvenience. If you have any questions, please do contact support.

Tags: connection issues, database, dos attack, down time, reboot, web server
Categories: Incidents, NC031
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NC023: Secondary issue resolved

12 March 2019 20:26:33 +0000

The secondary issues referred to previously were not issues at all. A single test out of several failed, but the failure was unrelated to this server.

This issue is now closed. We apologise for any inconvenience this emergency maintenance may have caused while the server was offline between approximately 13:26 and 14:03 UTC.

If you have any questions, please contact support. Thank-you for your patience.

Tags: down time, email delivery, mail relay, reboot, smtp
Categories: Email, Incidents, Maintenance, NC023
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NC023: Emergency maintenance

12 March 2019 15:01:42 +0000

Due to issues affecting this server (NC023, the relay server), it has just undergone emergency maintenance. However, on boot there are new issues affecting it.

We are working to resolve the issue, and will post updates here. We apologise for this inconvenience.

Tags: down time, email delivery, mail relay, reboot, smtp
Categories: Email, Incidents, Maintenance, NC023
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Major WordPress upgrade

19 January 2019 08:35:33 +0000

You may have received automated emails from the web server (NC031) control panel recently advising of the availability of an upgrade for WordPress to version 5.0.3. Normally your installation of WordPress (or NinerNet) would upgrade WordPress for you, but because this is a “major upgrade” — from version 4.x to version 5.x — the automated upgrade process is not activated by WordPress and we also will not automatically upgrade WordPress installations installed through the control panel.

However, as you are no doubt aware, WordPress advises that you should always be running the latest version, and this is standard advice for any software, especially Internet-facing software. In fact, most websites run by web applications (such as WordPress) that are hacked at some point are hacked because they’re running an out-of-date version.

As such we strongly recommend that you upgrade your installation of WordPress to the latest version as soon as possible.

The most straightforward way to do this is to log into your installation of WordPress and follow the instructions there to run the upgrade. Or you can do so through the web server control panel at Install Scripts -> Installed Scripts.

You may take one of the following three courses of action at this time:

Upgrade your installation of WordPress yourself using one of the two methods stated immediately above.
Allow us to run an automated upgrade for you.
Choose not to upgrade. If you choose this course of action, please advise us so that we can exclude your website from an automated upgrade, and confirm that you accept the risk of running out-of-date software.

Please note that if your installation of WordPress was not installed through the control panel, then we cannot upgrade it for you. You can confirm whether or not WordPress was installed through the control panel by logging into the web server control panel, and navigating to Install Scripts -> Installed Scripts. If WordPress is listed there you can run the upgrade from there; if it is not listed, then you or your website manager or designer installed WordPress manually, and will need to upgrade it by logging into WordPress.

Any installations of WordPress that have not been upgraded by their owners by 00:01 UTC on Thursday 24 January will be upgraded by NinerNet through the control panel — unless you have asked to be excluded or your installation of WordPress was installed manually — shortly thereafter. To convert this deadline to your time zone please consult the World Time Server.

Thank-you for your attention to this matter. If you have any questions, please contact support.

Tags: web server, wordpress
Categories: Maintenance, NC031, Upgrades
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NC031: Emergency maintenance complete

26 December 2018 12:18:17 +0000

We took server NC031 (the primary web server) down for eleven minutes today to correct an issue related to memory usage. The server was offline between 10:32 and 10:43 UTC.

We will be replacing this server early next month, and migrating all websites to the new server.

Our apologies for this inconvenience. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact NinerNet support. Thank-you.

Tags: down time, hardware, migration, performance, reboot, web server
Categories: Incidents, Maintenance, NC031
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NC036: Maintenance complete

15 December 2018 19:57:20 +0000

Our scheduled maintenance to increase the storage space available for email accounts on the mail server (NC036) is complete. The ability to send and receive email was not available between 19:17 and 19:44 UTC. The expanded disk space has been tested and all is running normally.

If you have any issues or questions, please contact NinerNet support. Thank-you.

Tags: down time, email delivery, mail relay, smtp, webmail
Categories: Email, Maintenance, NC036
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NC036: Scheduled maintenance underway

15 December 2018 19:14:54 +0000

The scheduled maintenance to increase hard drive space on server NC036 is underway. We will post progress reports or notice that the maintenance is complete as necessary.

Tags: down time, email delivery, mail relay, smtp, webmail
Categories: Email, Maintenance, NC036
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NC036: Scheduled mail server maintenance

14 December 2018 07:03:01 +0000

During this weekend’s maintenance window we will be adding hard drive storage to server NC036 to continue to provide more storage space for a growing number of growing email accounts. This maintenance is scheduled to start at 19:00 UTC and we anticipate it will last less than one hour.

During the maintenance the ability to send and receive email will not be available, both via standalone email programs (e.g., Outlook, Thunderbird, etc.) and the webmail. Incoming email will be queued on the sending servers until our server is back online again, after which it will then be delivered to our server and your email account. This may result in a delay longer than the planned hour of the maintenance though.

Please monitor this status page to be notified of the start and end of the maintenance. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact NinerNet support.

Thank-you for your patience as we continue to work to improve our services to you.

Tags: down time, email delivery, mail server, smtp, webmail
Categories: Email, Maintenance, NC036
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NC031: Database overload incident

14 December 2018 05:51:47 +0000

On 13 December (UTC) the database server on server NC031 (the primary web server) failed twice, the second time resulting in our deciding to reboot the server. We believe this to be the result of a marked increase in denial of service and hacking attempts against this server over the last few days.

The database server went down at 01:55. We immediately logged into the server to determine the cause, and restarted it at 02:37. Shortly after that the problem manifested itself again, we did a full reboot of the machine at 03:03, and the server was again online and fully functional at 03:06.

The database failure resulted in database-based websites — e.g., WordPress websites — generating “error connecting to database” errors.

This issue highlights an issue on this server that we intend to address very early in the New Year, that being a necessary upgrade of our firewall system to better handle such attacks in the future.

We apologise that this issue occurred. If you have any questions, please contact NinerNet support. Thank-you.

Tags: connection issues, database, dos attack, down time, reboot, web server
Categories: Incidents, NC031
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System	Status	Ping
NC023	Internal	Up?
NC028	Internal	Up?
NC031	Internal	Up?
NC033	Operational	Up?
NC034	Internal	Up?
NC035	Operational	Up?
NC036	Operational	Up?
NC040	Internal	Up?
NC041	Operational	Up?
NC042	Operational	Up?