Server and System Status

NC033: Data centre maintenance

22 March 2022 09:31:57 +0000

The data centre at which server NC033 (our primary nameserver, ns1.niner.net) is housed will be undergoing some maintenance tomorrow, 23 March, between 05:00 and 08:00 UTC. The work is on the data centre’s network infrastructure, and not on this server itself. The data centre released this statement:

These upgrades are designed and tested to be seamless and we do not expect any impact to customer traffic due to this maintenance. Should an unexpected issue arise, a possible outcome would be temporary loss of connectivity …. We will endeavour to keep any such impact to a minimum.

The data centre managers have had a good reputation for reliability in the six years we have been using them, so we do not anticipate any issues. However, if there are, we expect they will be very brief.

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

Tags: dns, nameservers, network
Categories: Maintenance, NC033
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NC033: Incident with primary nameserver resolved

15 November 2019 03:10:35 +0000

Following an operating system update that was applied at 00:37 UTC on 15 November the primary nameserver failed to restart. This was noticed immediately upon completion of the update, and we started troubleshooting.

After extensive research on the likely cause and resolution of the problem we determined that the quickest way to get the nameserver back online was to roll back the update and restore from a back-up. There were some issues with this, however, that necessitated implementing a back-up plan for company email in order for us to gain access to our account at the data centre where the nameserver is hosted. Once this was accomplished the restore was initiated.

The nameserver was back online at 02:28 UTC.

During the time the server was down domain information would have been cached by DNS resolvers that already had a cached copy of the DNS information for your domain. However, it is possible that some incoming email may have been delayed or possibly bounced, or people trying to browse your website would not have been able to see it. For this we apologise.

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

Tags: connection issues, dns, down time, nameservers
Categories: Incidents, Maintenance, NC033
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Decommissioning of old nameserver

19 October 2019 01:41:05 +0000

We are in the process of decommissioning server NC020. Among other functions, this server is also the machine on which nameserver ns3.niner.net is hosted. Not many clients’ domains are using ns3.niner.net, and of those that are most are registered with and therefore under the control of NinerNet. For this reason we can implement this change without bothering most clients.

However, if you have chosen to register your domain with another domain registrar and we don’t have access to your domain registration, we need to ask you to remove ns3.niner.net from the list of nameservers that are authoritative for your domain. If that is the case we will contact you via email, and point you to this notice to confirm the legitimacy of our request.

This change will not have any effect on your domain and how it, its website and email work. In fact, leaving ns3.niner.net in the list of nameservers authoritative for your domain will cause a slight decrease in performance, which is why we are asking you to remove it.

If you have any questions about this please reply to the email you will receive, or contact NinerNet support. Thank-you.

Tags: dns, nameservers
Categories: Domains, Maintenance, NC020
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NC033: Maintenance complete

11 June 2018 00:45:06 +0000

Server NC033 is back online. It was down between 00:37 and 00:43 UTC.

Tags: dns, down time, nameservers, reboot
Categories: Maintenance, NC033
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NC033: Maintenance

11 June 2018 00:35:57 +0000

Server NC033 (the primary nameserver) is going down for maintenance in a few minutes for maintenance related to solving the mail server migration issue.

Tags: dns, down time, nameservers, reboot
Categories: Maintenance, NC033
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NC033: Maintenance complete

28 February 2018 05:51:11 +0000

Server NC033 was down for maintenance between 19:08 and 19:15 on 27 February, and has been successfully updated with current patches. This phase of the maintenance protects against Meltdown; further maintenance for protection against Spectre will take place when patches for it have been developed.

Updates will be posted here.

Tags: down time, hardware, nameservers, reboot
Categories: Maintenance, NC033
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NC033: Emergency server maintenance

26 February 2018 10:17:51 +0000

Per our previous blog post, the next of our servers to undergo updating is NC033, on which the vast majority of our clients’ (and our own) nameservers (DNS) are hosted. The maintenance window is one hour long, but we expect that the server will be down for much less than that.

The maintenance window starts at:

19:00 UTC on Tuesday 27 February 2018

Please click the link above to determine when this will be in your time zone.

The DNS (domain name system) has redundancy built into it, and we have multiple nameservers distributed in Canada, the US and the UK. This means that while this one server is down the others will take up the slack and this maintenance won’t affect the rest of your services in any way.

If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact us. Thank-you for your patience.

Tags: down time, hardware, nameservers, reboot
Categories: Maintenance, NC033
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NC018: Move of nameserver complete

11 September 2017 16:26:25 +0000

The move of NinerNet‘s primary nameserver to a new machine (NC033) has been completed, and our testing over the weekend shows that the new DNS information has propagated to the rest of the Internet.

The new nameserver has its own control panel, but we have not set up all client accounts on it yet. When that task is complete we will be sending you an email with your log-in information, and instructions for using the new control panel. If you have a need to manage your domain’s DNS and have not received that email yet, please contact support and we will assist you.

Thank-you for your patience during our recent migrations.

Tags: dns, hardware, migration, nameservers
Categories: Maintenance, NC018, NC033
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NC018: Server to shut down

8 September 2017 01:19:46 +0000

We will be shutting down server NC018 within the next 24-72 hours. Normally the closure of a server would not be an event we’d dwell on, but server NC018 has been around for a long time and the migrations off of it have been dragged out for longer than they should have been.

We want to assure all hosting clients that the email that used to be hosted on this server has long since been moved to server NC027, and all websites that used to be hosted on NC018 have been moved to servers NC020 and NC031. No email or websites remain on server NC018.

What does remain on this server at the moment is the DNS (domain name system) service. A new server (NC033) has been commissioned and configured to take over this service, and the DNS information for all domains has been transferred to the new server.

All that said, completely removing NC018 from the NinerNet ecosystem at the flick of a switch will probably reveal one function or another still connected to and relying on a server that has been around for as long as it has. While this is possible, any such function will be of minor significance — it won’t be anything vital to the operation of your email or website — and we’re doing this at the start of a weekend so that we can quickly address any issues that may arise outside of your business hours. We will, of course, post any necessary updates here on our status page (status.niner.net), to which you can subscribe.

One long-standing item that we will address after NC018 has been removed is the matter of control panels. The reason we have multiple control panels will be the subject of a future blog post, but there is a reason we don’t have one grand, unifying control panel … besides the fact that we’ve been there and done that and don’t want to do it again. We have three main servers (with control panels) providing our three main hosting services:

NC027: Mail server (email hosting)
NC031: Web server (website hosting)
NC033: Name server (DNS hosting)

Once server NC018 has been shut down we’ll redirect cp.niner.net to a page that explains the above. (You’re reading it now.) In the future we’ll implement a more elegant way of unifying (to a certain extent) the way you access the three control panels.

We thank you for your patience as we work very hard to improve our infrastructure to serve you better. As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Craig

Tags: migration, nameservers
Categories: Maintenance, NC018, NC020, NC027, NC031, NC033
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Access to control panel on server NC018

28 August 2017 21:16:37 +0000

Access to the control panel on server NC018 has been temporarily blocked while we deal with an issue on there. At this point, the only service provided by server NC018 is “nameservice”, as all client websites and email have been migrated to newer servers. Therefore the only reason you might need access to this control panel it to make changes to the DNS for your domain.

If you need to make changes to your domain’s DNS, please contact us with the changes you would like to make, and we will assist you as soon as possible. Thank-you, and we apologise for the inconvenience.

Tags: connection issues, nameservers
Categories: Incidents, 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?