Legacy Email Server Problems (A Server)
MINOR Closed DNS, Email and Web Hosting
STATUS
Closed
CREATED
Mar 10, 09:16 AM (14¼ years ago)
AFFECTED
DNS, Email and Web Hosting
STARTED
Mar 10, 09:00 AM (14¼ years ago)
CLOSED
Mar 11, 09:00 AM (14¼ years ago)
REFERENCE
874 / AA874
INFORMATION
  • INITIAL
    14¼ years ago by Andrew

    Our legacy, A, email server has a file system problem. Access to email on the server won't be possible for the time being.

    We hope to have this back up as soon as  possible, but no eta at the moment.

    We strongly encourage customers on this server ask support to move them on the the 'C' email server.

  • UPDATE
    14¼ years ago

    This is just affecting POP3 collection on the A email server. Outgoing email is unaffected. 

  • UPDATE
    14¼ years ago

    Staff in the datacentre have been unable to boot the server due to file system errors.

    Our plan is to build a new server, from backup, on new hardware in the Maidenhead datacentre.

    This will take some time to do, but we are able to move customer on to the new email servers - please contact support who will be able to assist.

    We'll update this post every couple of hours with progress, we hope to have the server running by the end of the day though.

    We do appologise for this, most customers have been moved off this server in the past few years since we introduced the new email servers.

  • UPDATE
    14¼ years ago

    Are my emails lost? 

    (Short answer: probably not. Long answer follows...)

    Emails to your domain are normally in 1 of 2 places:

    a) On our server, waiting for you to collect (or to be relayed on to your server)
    b) In your email program, as you've already downloaded them from the server.

    As the server is broken, new emails sent to you will be on either:
    a) The broken server
    b) On the server of the person sending you the email (as they have been unable to send them on to our broken server)

    Emails on our server are backed up overnight, and we are restoring these at the moment.

    Looking at the logs we have, it looks like the server stopped accepting emails sometime before 11pm, 9th March. Our latest backup completed at 3am, 10th March. So emails should not be lost. Once the server has been rebuilt, emails will be accessible again.

    Emails that are on the senders server will be queued, and they will wait until the broken server is back up, or support have moved you to the new email server.

    The ideal way forward for you is to move your domain on to the new email servers.

  • UPDATE
    14¼ years ago

    Staff are still working on building the replacement server. So far the progress has been good - in respect to copying files and databases etc.

    There is still work to be done, but we hope to have the server running by the end of the day.

  • UPDATE
    14¼ years ago

    We are close to getting this working. We are sorting out problems caused by the age of the email server software and getting it to run on a new operating system.

  • UPDATE
    14¼ years ago

    The server appears to be working now. POP3 collections have resumed, queued email on the server will be retried. - it is being closly monitored.

    Please do contact support if you have any problems, and please contact support to move your domain off this legacy server.

  • RESOLUTION
    14¼ years ago by Andrew

    This has been completed.

    The old server had disk and file system faults - it was decided that it would be quicker to build a new server (new hardware, new operating system) and data from backup, and also locate the new server in our Maidenhead datacentre.

    The new server has new IP addresses as follows:

    81.187.30.15
    2001:8b0:0:30::51bb:1ef

    (However, this information shouldn't be needed as DNS names should be used)

  • Closed