Server and System Status

Email maintenance: Update 1

29 September 2013 01:15:51 +0000

This maintenance has started. However, we will not shut down the mail on the primary server until it is necessary to do so. We’ll post an update here when we do.

Tags: connection issues, down time, email delivery, migration, smtp
Categories: Email, Maintenance, NC018, NC027
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Email maintenance this weekend

27 September 2013 22:07:13 +0000

On Sunday, 29 September at 01:00 UTC, we will be performing some extensive maintenance of our email systems. This will necessitate shutting down the primary mail server for a period of time, probably for around two to three hours. Within 24 hours of the start of the maintenance, we will conduct a test that should give us a better idea of the amount of time needed.

During the shut-down the following services will be affected:

No new email will arrive in your email account, and
You will not be able to send email.

The following services will not be affected:

Websites will remain online,
You will still be able to log into your email account, and
If you host your email on a self-hosted server (i.e., you only have a web hosting associated with your account), your email will function as normal, as it’s not involved in this maintenance.

During the maintenance, any email sent to addresses on your domain will be queued on the senders’ mail servers. Once the maintenance is over, this email will be delivered to your account. No email will be lost.

This maintenance is necessary to improve your email service, and we thank you for your patience. Updates will be posted here leading up to, during and following the maintenance. Please inform colleagues, employees and anybody else using email on your domain.

If you have any questions, please contact support and we’ll be happy to assist. During the maintenance, email on the niner.net domain will also be affected, so we ask that if you need to contact us during that time, please either use the contact form on our website, or send email to:

support-september-2013@ninernet.com

To convert the time of this maintenance to your time zone, please use the World Time Server.

Thank-you.

Tags: connection issues, down time, email delivery, migration, smtp
Categories: Email, Maintenance, NC018, NC027
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NC018 web server stopped

24 August 2013 07:24:12 +0000

We have temporarily stopped the NC018 web server in an attempt to fight this attack.

Tags: connection issues, dos attack, down time, performance
Categories: Incidents, NC018
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Server NC018 under attack again

24 August 2013 07:08:51 +0000

As the title says, it appears that server NC018 is again the target of an attack. We are working to address the issue as quickly as possible.

Tags: connection issues, dos attack, down time, email delivery, performance
Categories: Incidents, NC018
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Server NC018 denial of service attack

23 August 2013 20:55:10 +0000

Server NC018 suffered a denial of service attack beginning at approximately 07:40 on 23 August, UTC. This continued until the server succumbed under the load at about 12:40. This affected all functions of the server: websites, sending and receiving emails, databases, etc.

Unfortunately we did not respond to this situation in a timely manner. This was partially because automated monitoring of server functions had been turned off due to an increasing number of false alarms from the system.

Once the server was rebooted at 13:47 and the attack mitigated, the server then still had a backlog of several thousand emails to process. This took several hours, with the queue being cleared by about 18:35. While emails were “missing” for several hours, no emails should have been lost; they were just delivered several hours late.

We sincerely apologise for the disruption caused by this event. We will reinstate monitoring and the associated actions that are taken when monitoring alarms go off.

We will shortly be responding to all emails and phone messages regarding this incident. If you have any further questions about this event, please contact us.

Tags: connection issues, dos attack, down time, email delivery, performance, reboot
Categories: Incidents, NC018
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Server NC023 maintenance complete

4 May 2013 19:38:02 +0000

Server NC023 went down for maintenance at 19:22 UTC and was back online at 19:32 after successful completion of its maintenance.

Thanks for your patience.

Tags: down time, email delivery, mail relay, reboot
Categories: Email, Maintenance, NC023
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Server NC023 maintenance

3 May 2013 06:37:17 +0000

We will be performing maintenance on server NC023 (commonly known as the relay server) on Saturday, 4 May at 19:00 UTC. This maintenance will take approximately 10-15 minutes, during which time the server will not be accessible.

Tags: down time, email delivery, mail relay, reboot
Categories: Email, Maintenance, NC023
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Server NC023 maintenance completed

14 April 2013 08:11:59 +0000

The maintenance on server NC023 took place between 07:08 and 07:14 UTC, and was completed successfully.

Tags: down time, mail relay, reboot
Categories: Maintenance, NC023, Upgrades
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Server NC023 down for maintenance

14 April 2013 07:13:41 +0000

Server NC023 (more commonly known as the relay server) is currently undergoing an upgrade, and will be back up again by approximately 07:25 UTC.

Tags: down time, mail relay, reboot
Categories: Maintenance, NC023, Upgrades
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Update on server NC018

19 March 2013 12:58:28 +0000

As we informed you on 6 March, we had intended to increase the memory (RAM) on server NC018 on 9 March. (Server NC018 hosts the majority of websites, and all email except specialised email services.) This maintenance would have solved performance issues that were happening with more regularity. However, the maintenance failed due to hardware compatibility issues.

When the maintenance failed, we immediately began preparing to acquire new hardware to replace this server. During the week of 11-15 March we obtained a number of proposals and advice on a plan we had begun developing some months ago.

However, on 18 March the mail server was overwhelmed. The most obvious result of this was that email delivery was delayed during peak periods by as many as several hours. While it was not clear exactly why the mail server was overwhelmed, there was an obvious way to deal with the problem. We implemented this, and the mail queue was cleared in a short amount of time. We believed that this approach should have worked to prevent the mail server from being overwhelmed if the mail server again experienced heavy volume, but it did not when the same thing happened on 19 March.

We are therefore urgently preparing to set up new hardware. I don’t have an exact time line for you at the moment, but it is our goal to have the hardware in place and online by the weekend, and we will endeavour to transfer everything as quickly as we can over the weekend.

We will update you on major events by email, but please check our status page once or twice a day at status.niner.net or status.ninernet.net for progress reports.

We apologise for the inconvenience that this transition is causing, and ask for your patience as we go through this upgrade.

Tags: down time, email delivery, hardware, performance, web server
Categories: Email, Incidents, Maintenance, NC018
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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?