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M6.Net Weekly News March 30 2005 |
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Welcome | |
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It has been an incredibly busy week. We had several server issues. all
but one we were able to resolve incredibly quickly even with the
number of issues we faced. One particular issue with one of our mail
servers was incredibly troublesome for us as we were relying on a
third party in one of our secondary NOC's (Network Operations
Centers). With a disk failure in the middle of the Easter long
weekend we experienced delays dealing with them. Once we were able
to gain control of the servers in question we were able to move a
lot faster - but it wasn't just one time we had to rely on these
people on the long weekend but 3 times. This has made us seriously
consider pulling these servers from the secondary NOC back into the
NOC which we have direct control. We were using alternate NOC's to
spread servers across the internet and reduce risk by holding too
much in one place. At the same time we also found and
experience bugs in the mail server software and have documented them
and will be informing the mail server developer. My time was spent directly with the team helping, leading and managing to bring the issues under control. At the same time I have been taking extensive notes looking deeper into all areas. It's times like these that really put operations to the test. Whilst most of the procedures were successful I can see exactly where we can improve - mainly in documentation, reporting and communications. It was a painful experience and I would like to sincerely thank all the clients who were effected by these issues for your understanding, patience and consideration of our very difficult and trying situation. We are always working hard and doing our best to keep things running as smooth as possible for you. I know how important email is to everyone and how not having emails services can really upset your day. We feel this pain greatly. And it is because of this that we never stop working to resolve such issues as fast as possible - everything else is put on hold until we resolve the problems. Web hosting is a relatively new industry and like all hosts we face constant problems with failing software, clients running strange code, security attacks, problematic hardware and technology that should work together but at times in various circumstances, doesn't. We have never and will never hold our hands in the air and give up on an issue, no one on our team stops until we have beaten the issues that face us. So you can continue to build and grow on the internet. At M6.Net please rest assured we are always doing our utmost to keep the services running efficiently and effectively for you. |
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Network Administration |
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What a week. On Saturday we saw
problems begin on one of our mail servers in regards to a
hard disk failure. After a lengthy delay we finally had a
new system disk put into the server and I was able to
quickly setup the server and restore the mail
configurations. As (bad) luck would have it, this was just
before the server was due to be moved to a new data centre.
After the move when the server was brought back online, the
CPU fan failed causing the server to shutdown.
These issues were compounded by
slow response from our provider in regards to these issues,
and also issues on three other servers simultaneously. One
server was being maxed out in the bandwidth department by a
site serving large media files, and there were issue on 2
servers due to clients running bad code which bringing down
the ASP and .Net functionality. Once again we would like to
remind clients to test all code before running it on the
servers, as you will inconvenience many clients and not just
your own websites when something is wrong.
There was also an issue of one
of our new mail servers being used to spam which has been
resolved, and a large queue issue on our main mail server
that we use for m6.net emails which saw support response
times delayed, but has now been resolved. All in all it was
a hectic period for all of us, however we have managed to
learn and take positives from the experience which we will
be able to apply in future situations, if not avoid them
altogether.
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 Kunal Kochhar Support Coordinator |
Support and Customer Service | |
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This week we have experienced a high
level of support numbers due to a number of issues which occurred on
the weekend.
We have put on extra support staff to
deal with the load and reduce the flow of Support back down to a
normal level.
We have noticed that a few of our
clients are letting their email build up on the servers to be using
huge amounts of disk space. Downloading your email to your local
system & removing it off the server either with IMAP or POP3 will
help keep the server clean and running smoothly which will be better
for all of us in the long run. Also keeping a local copy of the
email will protect you in the case of data loss. Data loss is highly
unlikely but it can happen.
Another issue that arose was some of
the web servers being brought down or interrupted by bad scripts or
code If you are not sure of some code Please make sure you test it
locally if possible and not on the production server where it can
affect others.
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[ Photo Coming soon ] Patrick Lim Lead Developer |
Development and New Technology | |
| I am continuing to work on
the data reports to give us snapshots of issues so we may resolve them
before they become major problems. I am gathering a lot more data about
all the servers and compiling them into this report.
This week I have also been working closely with Javier to take a project lead on the control panel and automation to get that moving along. Javier has a wealth of knowledge on bringing the CP together and I am catching up with him. |
M6.Net Always On. Always Performing. Always Hosting.
http://www.m6.net/ : Control Panel : http://www.copanel.com/ Past Newsletters: http://www.m6.net/newsletter
