July 2003
As we have notified you in previous newsletters, this summer Adhost is moving its offices and network operations center from Bellevue to a new, state-of-the-art facility at Fisher Plaza in Seattle. As a result we will be having maintenance windows for every server in the Adhost network. The maintenance windows for these moves will generally be between 10:00 PM and 4:00 AM on weekend nights (Friday-Saturday, Saturday-Sunday and Sunday-Monday). These windows correspond to the lowest traffic period for our network as a whole. We will make every effort to minimize downtime for any server. We will also be forwarding traffic for all affected IP addresses to a generic "down for maintenance" page while the servers are in transit. This "down for maintenance" page will include your domain name, an apology for the down time, and asks the viewer to please try again soon. Co-located and dedicated server customers have already been contacted by our system administration team with their specific schedules. Our shared server schedule for July and August is as follows:
10PM Friday July 11th - 4AM Saturday July 12th
* Our name servers will be replicated at our new facility with little
or no downtime. If your site resides on one of these servers or uses one of these
servers (such as sql.adhost.com) your site will be affected during the
above maintenance windows. We'd like to address some questions in advance: Q - Will my IP address change? A - With a small handful of exceptions, IP addresses will stay the
same. If there is a need to change an IP address, we will contact
you separately. The base IP addresses of our shared servers will
not change. Q - Will my DNS change? A - No, DNS will remain the same. Q - What should I expect for downtime? A - Expect that the server(s) will be down for the entire maintenance
window. Although all of our moves to date have been well less that
the full six hours, we cannot guarantee to beat this time (although we
will make every effort to do just that). Q - Why doesn't Adhost replicate my site to prevent any downtime? A - This is simply not practical to do for our shared servers. These
servers are, on average, hosting 50 or more clients per server, many
with specialized applications and configurations. To work through
each of these issues with each client simply won't be possible in the
time frame allotted to us to complete this move. Q - Can the schedule be changed? A - Unfortunately, we cannot accept input from customers on the
schedule for our shared servers. Again, this is because there would
be no possible way to accommodate every client's schedule on our
shared servers. We are also working with a limited time window to get
this move accomplished. Q - What happens if my site doesn't come back up? A - Although we will be planning in advance to eliminate any
potential problems and testing every server to ensure that all
systems return to normal afterwards, there remains a very slight
chance of unexpected problems. Please contact our support team at
support@adhost.com or 888-ADHOST-1 (888-234-6781) if you have any
problems that are a result of this move. Please don't report
problems until after 9AM of the day the move was completed as we will
most likely be aware of most minor issues and our system
administrators will be working on them. Q - What kind of complications should I expect? A - We expect there to be few or no complications. No IP addresses
will change, there will be no updates to DNS, etc. Essentially, the
move will simply be an extended reboot of the server(s): We will be
powering the server down at one location, taking it out of the rack,
transporting it to the new location, installing it in an already-
prepared rack and powering it back up. Q - You list your mail system as going down, will I lose any mail? A - You shouldn't, although some mail might be delayed. Mail destined
for an email address on or through our mail system should queue on the
sending mail server while our mail system is being moved. Once our
system is back up, that queued mail will get redelivered by the
sending mail server (it may take several hours for the queued messages
to be delivered). Of course, while our mail system is down, you will
not be able to check mail or send outbound mail through the system.
Again, we are moving our mail server during its lowest traffic periods
and we hope that this will minimize any impact to our customers. We appreciate your business and understanding and regret any
inconvenience. We also want to reiterate that we will do everything
we can to minimize the effect that this move will have. We strongly
believe this move will provide significant long-term benefits to
Adhost and all of its customers. If you have pressing concerns, please contact our support team at
support@adhost.com or 888-ADHOST-1 (888-234-6781). Centerpointsale.com Pacific Real Estate Partners needed to get the message out for a new investment offering. Adhost provided a stylish brochure site with aerial photos and site plans as well as printable PDF versions of all pages - allowing interested parties to get their on-line and print resource needs met in one location. From request to live - in less than two weeks! http://www.centerpointsale.com/ Adhost is proud to announce that we are now supporting Microsoft
Windows Server 2003. Windows Server 2003 is a multipurpose operating system capable of
handling a diverse set of server roles including Web server and Web
application services; terminal server; streaming media server and more.
In addition, Microsoft .NET is deeply integrated into the Windows
Server 2003, enabling a high level of software integration using XML
Web services. For additional information see Microsoft's Web site: http://microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/evaluation/overview/family.mspx
IN THIS MONTH'S ISSUE:
1) Shared Server Move
2) Adhost Spotlight
3) Windows Server 2003
4) Referral Bonus
SHARED SERVER MOVE
10PM Saturday July 12th - 4AM Sunday July 13th
10PM Friday August 1st - 4AM Saturday August 2nd
10PM Sunday August 3rd - 4AM Monday August 4th
10PM Friday August 8th - 4AM Saturday August 9th
10PM Sunday August 17th - 4AM Monday August 18th
ADHOST SPOTLIGHT
WINDOWS SERVER 2003
