We would just like to let our customers know that we have replaced one of the hard disks on the main hosting server last night. The server in question has a number of disks that mirror their data.

One of disks was running slowly and so it has been replaced.

All sites tested and working fine.

Regards

Dave

We are upgrading again!

Yes, I know, it means about 10 minutes of downtime and a pain in the backside for you and me, but hey it will all be worth it in the end. As mentioned previously speed is getting to be a vital issue with many applications now running on-line and our clients are asking each week can we speed up the hosting servers to help with the requirements of new emerging software applications such as CCTV Streaming, on-line backups, on-line editing to name a few. Basically everything that is cloud based and needs to be live and accessed 24/7.

When: Friday 8th April @ 08.30
What: More memory being installed.
Where: Data Electronics Centre.
Why: Because I love speed!
Downtime: estimates to be 10 minutes

So the services that will be effected will be Email, Database applications, Websites.  Our Spam filters will be running as normal as they are on a separate server

Any questions, call me.

053 9430748

Wow what fun we have with sending mail via the various broadband providers in Ireland. As you might be aware receiving an email is usually no problem and people get mail via the email provider, so Eircom customers get mail from mail.eircom.net and most companies get mail from mail.companydomain.ie etc. I have spoken about this before arising in questions about which smtp server to use etc

Sending mail is different.

In order to cut down on bandwidth that they must carry and deal with spam etc many operators in Ireland have restricted the use of their Out Going Mail Server to cut down on the traffic that in theory should be travelling via the mail provider.

So if you are a Three Broadband user and are using Eircom for mail and wish to send mail using Outlook Express etc then try the following setting to send mail.

mail.relay.3ireland.ie

This must be set as your Outgoing mail server in your email program, usually in Tools ->Accounts -> Setting ->Servers – Outgoing mail

Hope this helps, as I see from doing Google search many have answered that it can not be done.

Hi folks,

Quick notice that at 13:30 today the server will be down for 15 minutes while we carry out an upgrade. It will be back on-line when the installation is complete.

Apologies for late notice, but this is a necessary upgrade for all concerned. More details once it is completed .

Just a quick note to let our hosting customers know that our main hosting server is back on-line as of last night at 1:45am. The server has a multiple hard disk system that duplicates the content called a RAID system. One of these hard disks was failing last week and we had to be replaced.

The server then needed to synchronise the data between the disks. The hard disk was trying to synchronise,while fetching and displaying websites.  The result of this dual process was causing site to run slowly, therefore I took the decision to give the priority of synchronising the disks over the viewing of websites as it could have taken another 72 hours to run the sync and display the sites. This meant that all sites were down on Saturday afternoon and evening while most people were watching the Ireland V’s Wales rugby match. As most websites are now content managed it meant that each time a customer updated a website themselves, the new content was added to the queue and thus the sync was getting longer and longer.

Because all websites get less traffic at the the weekend, meant that it was an ideal time to carry out this maintenance work and in turn would mean no down time during the working week.

Emails

With the “Apache” and “MySQL” side of the server switched off the Email facility was left running in order to keep the thousands of emails flowing through the system and allowing our customers to maintain email contact with their clients in turn.

The Sync is now fully complete and all services are functioning correctly. We appreciate everyone’s understanding and apologies for any inconvienience caused.

Dave Jordan

I would like to let our hosting customers know that at 8am on Thursday 10th March 2011, we are upgrading the main hosting server. The upgrade will take approximately 15 minutes to perform services will resume once the server is booted. If you have any questions before this takes place then give me a call on 053 9430748.

We would like to inform all our clients on our business hosting packs that we have put a limit on the number of outgoing emails to avoid them being “ear-marked” as amateur spammers!

Example:

If you are using an email program like Outlook Express, Thunder Bird you will be writing an email and then adding in multiple email address and sometimes up to 40 or 50 email addresses in one go.

Then the email sent and the internet service provider, such as eircom see’s your one small email address sending out 60 emails and marks it as a spam attempt.

With spam on the ever increase it is getting harder and harder to find a hosting business like us or an internet service provider to allow you to do this.

What are your options:

Constant Contact is a brilliant online service that allow you to create these newsletter and email them out to your subscribers.

Remember the word subscribers means that they subscribe to your email, sending out emails to a list to people to have not got the opportunity to unsubscribe is called Spamming!

Yes, you are a spammer and you didn’t know it so the next time you are talking about emailing your clients or sending out an ezine, think again about your legal obligations in sending electronic mail

You are supposed to send out emails to a list of people using a special program or facility that allows multiple emails and allows this opt in, opt out feature.

Any questions, just send me an email, just one, not 20 !!

We have been approached by a local business to revamp their website and bring it up to new modern standards as well as making it content managed by the owners, so we set about the usual investigations to find where the domain was registered and where it is hosted etc.

Eircom business have the account, so we telephoned them and after being given various numbers and talking to different people we finally get the right person on the phone. He then tells me they have no “control panel” to administer the domain name or the hosting pack the customer has bought and that all changes are to be emailed in.

I told him i would have to host it ourselves and he said ok, email in to “dnsrequest@eircom.net” so we contact the client and inform him that he must email them directly as he is the registered owner. sound advice and normal, great.

He then emails then the new name servers we need so we can host the site for him and he get this email back

***********names removed************

Dear customer,

Eircom hosting policy doesn’t allow the change of name servers to avoid
future problems and as it acts as delegation of DNS records.
If you still require to do so you will need to transfer the domain name
registration to new hosting provider by calling sales on 1800 203403
Otherwise send us exact DNS records values like www A, CNAME, mx etc and
those can be implemented no problem.

Kind Regards,
name here,

*****************************************

So if you have your domain name and are hosted with eircom and would like to choose another hosting provider, be aware that this goes against their hosting policy.

For helpful hosting call Cada Media in Wexford today on 053 9430748

Just to let everyone know that the servers upgrade went well tonight. We started it with Niall our engineer at the helm. The system was brought down at 21.04 and the data was transfered acrossed fine. They then brought it back up at 22.10 and the individual services were started one at a time, stats, webmail, spam filtering, ftp access etc etc

All work fine now, thanks for your patience and support.

Dave , Cada Media Ltd

Due to continued growth in an extraordinary year, we are happy to be in a position of having to upgrade our hosting servers to keep up with the demand for high quality web hosting in Ireland. Our new servers continue to be managed by Blacknight Internet Solutions based in Carlow. These guys are the ones we call upon in cases where we physically need to be at the server, they are our hands and eyes at the data centre.

The web hosting server is used to display your websites to the public, open 24/7 the new web hosting machine has 2 xTera byte RAID 2 drives, giving us ample space for expansion. This particular server also has 4 Gig of ram allowing more and more open sessions to run similitaniously.

The switch over to the new machines will take place on Tuesday or Wednesday night. We will let you know when it’s going to take place. There will have to be a downtime of about 1 hour while this happens, all emails will be qued while this is happening and will be delivered once this switch happens.

Any questions give me a call, Dave Jordan 053 9430748