After careful consideration we have determined it is time for a hardware upgrade on our shared server refuge.dcnsafe.com.
If you are not sure whether this upgrade will affect you, please login to your account’s control panel at http://www.yourdomain.com/cpanel/ (using your FTP username & password) and scroll to the bottom of the main page. On the right, you will see the header “General server Information”. The first item is Server Name.
If your cPanel reads refuge as in the example provided above, then you are on the refuge.dcnsafe.com server and will have your server upgraded.
Why are we upgrading? Our reasons for the upgrade are numerous and include the following:
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• We have exhausted the available physical upgrade options for the current server. We are changing our systems over to AMD models which can be upgraded to 4 GB of RAM. Currently, clients are running on Pentium 4s with a maximum of 2 GB of RAM. We have already maxed out the P4 systems and would like to offer our clients faster, larger CPUs, faster L2 cache, as well as additional RAM.
• We experienced a network-wide power loss at The Planet’s data center last month which lasted “only” 81 minutes for us, but was several hours in length for others at the same data center. Although our server remained powered-up, the network at the data center went offline during this time. The two redundant UPS systems in place (battery backup and diesel-powered generator) failed to fire up and keep the connections live. Unfortunately we have no way of verifying that this has been remedied, as obviously routine testing, if done, did not pick up on such a state of failure being present. We simply cannot risk another such outage for our clients.
• Hands-on support at the data center — the people who are our “eyes and hands” at the facility — has declined in quality and speed over the past year. We have given what we feel is ample time to work through “growing pains” and bringing new staff online to accomodate a larger customer base, but unfortunately the response times to our work requests (including simple reboots) has gotten longer and longer. The last reboot took nearly an hour to be tended to. This is another example of service not up to our high standards, and our experience has shown that there is no indication these trends will reverse.
• Spam blocks on the server’s IP space — which do not result from any spam sent from our server — remain in place after 6 months’ time. Simply put, this is extraordinary. A data center should be able to get a spam block cleaned out within 2 weeks. The history provided at OpenRBL shows that the Network and Abuse Teams do not respond promptly nor reliably to complaints and hence spam blocks are not removed. Although spam blacklists are an irresponsible to filter mail for spam (because as in our case, nobody on our server has sent spam), the fact is some ISPs erroneously insist on subscribing to them. This results in mail that might be refused and bounced back to you. Although it is the ISPs choice to use the blacklist, we simply don’t want our clients to have their mail bounced, nor do we want our reputation as a quality provider tarnished by others’ misbehavior.
The New Data Center
We are pleased to announce we are setting our shared clients up (as each server is upgraded) at the SAVVIS data center in Dallas, Texas. We will provide detailed network information shortly, but in the meantime, can offer you the following details about the change in service:
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• Most of our clients find that SAVVIS is faster, with less latency and a shorter trip (fewer “hops”), than servers at The Planet’s data centers. The SAVVIS network has tested to be superior in uptime and reliability than The Planet’s infrastructure and peers, over the past year.
• Your server will be upgraded to a system with specs much more powerful than your current system. We are now configuring our shared servers on a minimum of AMD Opterons with 1 MB L2 cache and 2 GB physical RAM (upgradeable to 4 GB). This means more power and speed for your website!
• Your websites will see no changes in functionality. Your pages and databases will work exactly the same. Your e-mail accounts and passwords will also stay the same. No work or changes are required of you whatsoever. We will continue to use the cPanel control panel system, the same operating system, the same OS patching system, the same upgrade schedule. Everything will feel and look the same.
• Your IP address will change. Unfortunately this is unavoidable. However, very few people actually reference or access their site by IP address anyway, so we do not anticipate this to be any sort of issue for most clients. For those who do use their IP address, in most instances you will only need to change your IP address one time in your FTP program or e-mail program. After that, it is saved and remembered automatically by your PC.
• There will be no downtime as a result of the move. Period. We do site moves between servers everyday, and have the “no downtime move” down to a science.
• There will be no lost e-mail as a result of the move. Period. See #5. :)
• The move will be completed in the late-night/overnight hours so that your website traffic will be at its very lowest. This means that any risk of worst-case scenarios and errors are limited to the least-traffic times.
• We will provide you with plenty of notice prior to the actual move. We have not yet set a date/time for the move but we will provide you with 5-7 days’ notice so you are fully aware of it and can plan accordingly. This is a planned equipment upgrade, the sort of which we perform routinely. We believe in keeping our customers “in the loop” so you don’t get hit with any unfortunate surprises.
This is the first of a series of planned upgrades. As our remaining shared servers at The Planet are scheduled for upgrade, we will contact clients on those servers directly and point them to this post for further information (as the basics remain the same, only the server name will be different).
If you have any questions about the upgrade, please contact our Support Team directly by opening a helpdesk ticket at https://www.dcnsafe.com/supportdesk/
Thank you!
DCN & Agile Hosting Support Team