Apr 10

COMPLETED: Emergency Maintenance: Hsphere-Win4 Hsphere-Win6 Windows/ASP Hosting Hsphere Cluster (websites)

Emergency Maintenance: Hsphere-Win4 Hsphere-Win6 Windows/ASP Hosting Hsphere Cluster (websites)

What: Security patching, hardenening and new firewall rules

Affects: Resellers/customers with websites HSPhere Cluster London1 Servers Win4 and Win6

When: 2014/04/10 06:00 – 12:00

Due to repeated attacks against the servers Win4 and Win6 we are implementing additional security measures and new firewall rules to ‘keep out’ all APNIC and LACNIC ip ranges, Open Proxies, and ‘hack friendly’ VPNs as well as millions of ‘zombie’ end user machines

During this work the server(s) wil intermittently be unavailable

If you are still having problems accessing your site(s) after midday please raise a support ticket.

Jan 24

COMPLETED: Emergency Maintenance – cPanel3

Emergency Maintenance: Disk Check
What: Following a forced reboot we are running a disk check.
Affects: All services provided by cPanel3 server.
When: Friday, 24th January 2014 15:55

All hosting (web/email) services hosted on cPanel3 server will be unavailable whilst the disk check is running.

Jan 24

COMPLETED: PHP Upgrade – DirectAdmin Hosting

Scheduled Maintenance: DirectAdmin Hosting

What: Upgrading PHP Version

Affects: All DirectAdmin Hosting services

When: Monday, January 27, 2014 from 20:00 to 22:00 GMT

During this maintenance window, email, dns, website and ftp functionality will be impacted.

For most up-to-date pre-packaged applications, this should have no effect.  However, custom sites, modules for pre-packaged software and templates may have been relying on older syntax or features that are now no longer allowed.

Jan 17

COMPLETED: Scheduled Maintenance: US Minecraft Hosting Servers

What: Migrating Minecraft Hosting Server8 to new hardware.
Affects: US Minecraft Servers 5,6,7,8 (US5-US8)
When: Wednesday, 22nd January 2014 12:00 – 18:00

As part of our ongoing commitment to providing the highest performance and reliability for the Astutium MineCraft Hosting Services, we are going to be migrating our US Minecraft Servers 5, 6, 7 and 8 to New Hardware.

This affects specific US Minecraft Hosting clients only – each will be contacted individually.

This will allow for “in-place” upgrades to larger and more powerful plans instantly and on-line through our client portal, and for you to get the fastest response and highest uptime possible for your Minecraft Server(s).

Due to the size of some worlds, number of plugins and players, we expect the actual time to copy each minecraft hosted server to a new machine to be around 30 minutes, and this will be undertaken on Wednesday 22nd January.

We already have a backup copy of the server content on our Cloud platform in London, so any migration can be “undone” as quick as possible if the copy fails for any reason (it is not expected to, but we like to be prepared)

On Wednesday afternoon we will …

  • shut down your Minecraft Server Virtual Machine
  • manually copy over all your files and settings to the new servers
  • confirm the copy has completed correctly
  • assign your new IP and update multicraft
  • email you the access details for your MineCraft Server
  • restart the MC server on the new hardware

Your IPv4 address(es) will be changing, due to the way they’re allocated by the Multicraft Control Panel.
If you are using one of our sub-domains to access your MC-Server this will be updated automatically.
If you are accessing by IP and Port, then you will need to put the new details into your minecraft launcher.

These steps are being taken to improve the performance of your service, to allow for some of the changes needed by the 1.7.x branch and for the extra ram and processing requirements of some of the updates and new features.

Additionally, we will now begin retiring all variations of the 1.5.x branch of Minecraft (1.7.x is the current version), so if you’re using the really old 1.4.x and 1.5.x versions currently, we advise you upgrade your launcher immediately and restart your minecraft server on a newer version JAR file through your control panel.

Finally, if you need a new Minecraft Server, or simply want a much bigger MC Server, we currently have available high-performance fully-dedicated MC servers and enough hardware to host around 2000 more minecraft servers in stock and ready to go – simply contact us for more details.

Dec 26

COMPLETED: Scheduled Maintenance: Website and Client Portal Upgrade

Scheduled Maintenance: Astutium Client Portal

What: Upgrade of Client Portal and Main Website to new version

Affects: Astutium Website and Client Portal Only – no client services affected

When: Thursday, Decemeber 26, 2013 from 4:30 to 10:30 GMT

Planned maintenance on the Astutium Client Portal to upgrade to a new version:
* New control facilities for Virtual Private Servers
* New ccTLD Domain Names available to register
* Additional languages supported on Order Forms
* Updates and Security Patches

During this maintenance window access to our website and client portal will be unavailable.

Thank you for your understanding and patience as we continue to improve systems in order to provide you with the best possible services and greater online management facilities for your services.

Nov 19

COMPLETED: Emergency Maintenance – EnsimWin1 (Thomas)

Emergency Maintenance: Hosting EnsimWin1 (Thomas)

What: Failure of Hosting Server EnsimWin1

Affects: Resellers/customers with websites on EnsimWin1

When: 2013/11/19 13:09

Update 1: 17:00 service has been restored – if you have further problems please raise a support ticket.

Oct 25

COMPLETED: Emergency Maintenance – HSphere

Emergency Maintenance: Power
What: Migrating to alternate power feed.
Affects: HSphere hosting services.
When: Friday, 25th October 2013 17:00 – Friday, 25th October 2013 17:15

The HSphere servers will be powered down and moved to an alternate power feed.

MySQL/MSSQL and web services will be unavailable for a short period of time whilst they are moved.

Oct 09

COMPLETED: Scheduled Maintenance: HSphere Hosting

Scheduled Maintenance: HSphere Hosting

What: Migration of HPshere Servers to new Power System

Affects: UK HSphere Email and Website Hosting

When: Friday, October 11, 2013 from 14:30 to 15:30 GMT

Planned maintenance by the datacentre on the power to some racks will occur on 11/October/2013, which will have short-term impact on all HSphere Hosting Services as machines will be moved to a 2ndary powerfeed

During this maintenance window, email, dns, website and ftp functionality will be impacted for short periods.

A server downtime of approx 15 minutes is anticipated during this maintenance window as each is moved to the new power system.

No data-loss is expected, our UK Network Engineering Team will be taking all necessary precautions to mitigate any issues during the maintenance window.

Thank you for your understanding and patience as we continue to improve systems in order to provide you with the best possible services and highest possible uptime.

Sep 14

COMPLETED: Emergency Maintenance – Plesk 3

Unfortunately hosting server platform Plesk-3 has failed beyond repair.

This will be affecting any services (email, ftp, web, mysql) you had running on that server.

Technicians are working on restoring our last good backup to new hardware, however this is likely to take several days at least.

You have 2 options, and we would be grateful if you’d let us know which you’d prefer…

*1 – New Hosting Account

If you have a local copy of your website/files (or recent local backup), or only used the account for emails and did not have a website, then the quickest way to get you back online is for us to create you a new hosting account on our new platform, and then you can access the control panel to add email addresses, and copy back up your website – this may mean you updating the nameservers on your domain if not registered with us – details will be provided if this is the case

* 2 – Wait For Restore

If you do not have local copies of your website files (and databases etc if db-driven/dynamic) then we wil continue to restore the server backups and then move your hosting account onto a new server once this has completed. There is no ETA on this as yet – best ‘guess’ based on the amount of data to recover (several terrabytes) and the speed of the restore software etc, this will take at least 3 days possibly longer.

If you could let us know whether you’d prefer a new account and to upload your files rather than waiting for the restore, we can get you setup immediately on the new systems.

Pleae accept our applogies for the inconvenience, issues with our hosting services are very rare, and complete hardware failure rarer still, and we are working on resolving this as quickly as possible

Update 1 (2013/09/17 21:59): The server has been restored. If you are still having problems with the service please raise a support ticket.

Sep 04

COMPLETED: PHP Upgrade – cPanel Services

Due to major security issues with the currently deployed version of the PHP runtime, and the appearance of 0-day exploits for these issues; we have been forced to upgrade PHP to the latest 5.4 branch on all cPanel services.

For most up-to-date pre-packaged applications, this should have no effect.  However, custom sites, modules for pre-packaged software and templates may have been relying on older syntax or features that are now no longer allowed.

If you have used the Softaculous 1-click-installer, please make sure you update your installations as soon as possible.  Otherwise you may need to make adjustments or changes to the code of your site or obtain upgrades from 3rd party vendors.

We apologise that this announcement could not have been made sooner, however the nature and urgency of the issues prevented that.