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We are performing some updates across all servers on our network over
the coming weekend. This will involve a reboot of each server, and
also there may be a short period where each service (Web, Mail, FTP)
is offline/unresponsive.

These updates are to bring all software up to date and also add
additional security. Updates will take place between 10pm and 4am
Friday and Saturday night. Any service affecting updates will take
place after midnight.

If you have any questions please don't hesitate to get in touch.

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Our network providers have made us aware of some routine software
updates scheduled to be carried out on various routers on Friday night
(16/10/09).

As we have redundant connections this should not affect our
connectivity, however should a fault arise during the maintenance then
an outage will occur.

We will be monitoring our network throughout this period as usual.
Please don't hesitate to contact us should you have any problems.

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Since the hard drive errors a month ago we have been starting to
experience more frequent SATA errors in the server logs. We believe
the motherboard is most likely responsible for this problem (we have
already replaced PSU and SATA cables).
 
We are therefore taking the decision to replace the motherboard this
coming Friday (10th July). We shall be working in the data center from
around 11pm, and will start the motherboard replacement after midnight
to minimise disruption.
 
We expect a downtime of around 20 minutes.

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Having spent the last two days monitoring the server we are now
confident that the early morning sickness has been resolved. We
updated the Linux kernel/libraries last night and ran the evening
backups manually. The backups completed without issue and the server
did not re-mount the hard drive as "read-only". This issue is now
closed.
 
Please get in touch if you have any questions.

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We replaced the PSU and SATA cables on our main server last night and
as a result web services were down for a very brief period between
10:00 and 10:20. Upon further investigation we now believe these not
to be the cause of the problem.
 
We have narrowed the problem down to either load related issue, or
something that occurs during early morning backups. The backups that
we are running tonight are in debug mode, so we should have a large
amount of info should the problem happen again before the backups
complete.
 
If you have any troubles with your sites today then please get in
touch. It is likely that this problem will be solved during the course
of today and while we locate the cause of the error, the server
continues to operate as expected.

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We will be taking our main server off-line within the next hour to
replace both the power supply and the hard drive cables. This
emergency maintenance is being carried out in response to an issue
that occurred on Monday morning and again today. We expect the
downtime this evening to be brief. If you have any questions please
contact us via email.

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