Euro Fast Host

We are currently investigating performance problems on the Mail5 server, which we have just restarted. The queue looks bigger than normal which is affecting delivery times. As soon as we have it back under control we’ll update this post. In the meantime please be patient if your email client mentions any connection errors. We apologise for the inconvenience this causes.

Update 2010.02.04 00:44 The earlier backlog on the queue has been resolved, and the performance & delivery times have returned to normal. The problem was caused by a lot of spam messages being directed at a client’s domain, which we have manually cleared and blocked from happening again. We’ll continue to monitor the situation closely to ensure that the queue stays at normal levels. Please accept our apologies for any delays over the past few hours.

We recently experienced some technical issues with our spam server, spamblock.eurofasthost.com. This caused email delays for our customers who are using it to screen their email for spam or viruses. The issue has been resolved and the server has been restarted. We anticipate the current queue to empty within the couple of hours.

We apologise for the inconvenience caused.

Over the upcoming days we will be migrating all our our MySQL5 databases to a dedicated server. The IP address of the new server will become 79.99.64.109, but the hostname will still remain mysql51.eurofasthost.com. After the database migration, you will be unable to use localhost as the hostname, so please make sure your web pages use mysql51.eurofasthost.com as the host.

Update: 2010.02.02: The MySQL migration will take place over the next couple of days. During this time, remote connections using MySQL Administrator will be temporarily blocked.

Update: 2010.02.02 14:53: The MySQL migration has been complete, but remote access to the MySQL server is temporarily suspended.

Update 2010.02.03 9:50: Some customers are having issues with their WordPress powered website. We are investigating the issue now and will update this page once resolved. If you have problems adding new posts to your website, please contact us.

Update 2010.02.04 10:25: The Word Press issue has been resolved and remote access using MySQL Administrator has now been restored. If you experience any MySQL issues, please ensure you’re using mysql51.eurofasthost.com as your hostname, and contact us.

We don’t expect any downtime during this period, but if you do have any issues accessing your database over the upcoming days, please email support@eurofasthost.com.

2009.07.03 01:15: Our web2 server which hosts several reseller accounts and 2 customer VPSs is currently offline. Engineers in the datacenter have been informed and are investigating problems on the server and trying to restore service as soon as possible. Please accept our apologies for the problems affecting sites at this time.

2009.07.03 02:07: Engineers have reported that they suspect the problem has been caused by a PSU failure despite the server being less than 4 months old. They are currently checking their stock to see if they have a spare available, and we have contacted our SuperMicro dealer to see if we can get one from them as soon as they open in the morning.  We will update this post again as soon as any news is available, and apologise again for the downtime affecting sites on this server.

2009.07.03 09:53: We have received the replacement PSU and an engineer is en route the datacenter to install it immediately. We expect to be on site at the datacenter within 90 minutes, and the server should be back online by approximately 12:30-13:00. We will update this post again when news is available, and thank you for your patience at this time.

2009.07.03 14:35: The Web2 server was brought back online approximately 15 minutes ago and all services have come back up promptly. The issue was caused by the PSU controller and replacing that with a new one provided by our authorised SuperMicro dealer fixed the problem and allowed the server to be fired back up. We have already ordered another spare controller board and complete dual PSU assembly so that in the extremely unlikely event of another failure the replacement hardware is on site at the datacenter and can be changed over immediately.

We sincerely apologise for the problems today and the downtime & inconvenience caused. The affected server was our newest server brought online in April bought from a range that we have been exclusively using for the last 9 months without any issues at all.

The problems affecting clients on Mail5 have been resolved. The issue was caused by a large number of big attachments which caused delays for the antivirus service on the mailserver. This resulted in high CPU usage while scanning, which in turn delays the processing & delivery of mail creating a backlog.

We have resolved the issue by reconfiguring the antivirus settings within the mailserver, and the server load is now back to normal. The mail queue that reached over 1600 messages at it’s peak is now down to less than 150 and delivering the final delayed messages.

We apologise for the performance problems and their effects on your ability to send/recieve email earlier today, and thank you for your understanding.

We are experiencing problems with the Mail5 SmarterMail server, which are affecting the performance and availability of the POP3 service that is used to collect email.

We are currently working on the problem and hope to have normal service resumed shortly. We apologise for the problems and the inconvenience caused.

We have noticed a common trend affecting sites running Wordpress on servers running the latest version of PHP 5.2.9-2. The issue appears to be with the way that php5.2 handles include files, which WordPress uses extensively, and results in an empty (blank) white page being displayed when your site/blog is viewed.

The fix is extremely simple, which is to edit the following line found towards the bottom of the index.php page from:

require(’./wp-blog-header.php’);

to:

require(’wp-blog-header.php’);

That’s it!

If you use Permalinks in association with the ISAPI ReWrite software we have installed on our software, you may also like to include the following block of code at the very top of the index.php page you just edited:

//*****************************
//    IIS FIX for Isapi ReWrite
//
$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] = $_SERVER['HTTP_X_REWRITE_URL'];
//*****************************

This fixes problems with all permalink pages/entries displaying the default blog/home page.

If you require any other help with your site please contact support.

Tonight we will be migrating domains from Mail2 to our new Mail5 Smartermail 5 Enterprise Server as part of our ongoing server migrations.From 10PM the mail2 service will be intermittently unavailable while domains are migrated.

This migration involves a change of IP address for the mail.yourdomain.com DNS record, which will change from 217.158.60.110 to 79.99.64.54. If you experience problems following the migration the most likely cause will be that your DNS cache has not expired. This will happen automatically, but in the meantime to connect to the server you can update the POP3/IMAP and SMTP server addresses in your email program from mail.yourdomain.com to mail5.eurofasthost.com.

If you continue to experience problems please leave us a message using the form at http://www.eurofasthost.com/company/contact.asp

We apologise for any disruption caused while we migrate to the new mailserver, and thank you for your patience during this time.

This morning there was a problem affecting the mail2 mailserver following on from some migration work we carried out last night. We have restarted the mailserver processes and POP3, IMAP, and SMTP are working correctly. Our backup MX servers are currently despooling mail and based upon current performance we expect all the mail to be delivered to mailboxes within the next 90 minutes. We sincerely apologise for the inconvnience this outage has caused.

Tonights work is going slightly slower than we anticipated, so we are extending the maintenance window by a further 3 hours. We now expect normal service to have resumed by 7:00 this Sunday morning. We apologise for any inconvenience this delay causes.

This weekend we will continue the work we started last weekend with the migration from Mail3 to our new Mail5 mailserver.

Work is scheduled to start at 8PM on Saturday 21st March, and is likely to last until 4AM. Most services will be available during this time, and individual domains will only be unavailable for a period of approximately 15 minutes during the time the mailboxes are being moved.

For full details of the changes please read last weeks announcement at http://www.eurofasthost.com/blog/

This weekend we will be migrating clients on our Mail3 server to our brand new Mail5 server which is running the latest version of SmarterMail5. This migration involves a change of IP address for the mail.yourdomain.com DNS record, which will change from 217.158.60.30 to 79.99.64.54.

We will update all the DNS records on your behalf, and unless you receive an email from us relating to your updating your DNS records no action is required.

All usernames and passwords will remain the same.

Work is scheduled to start at 8PM on Saturday 14th March, and is likely to last until 4AM. Most services will be available during this time, and individual domains will only be unavailable for a period of approximately 15 minutes during the time the mailboxes are being moved.

If you experience problems following the migration the most likely cause will be that your DNS cache has not expired. This will happen automatically, but in the meantime to connect to the server you can update the POP3/IMAP and SMTP server addresses in your email program from mail.yourdomain.com to mail5.eurofasthost.com.

If you continue to experience problems please leave us a message using the form at http://www.eurofasthost.com/company/contact.asp

There is currently a large amount of spam in the spool on mail2, which we are currently investigating. The server will be operating more slowly while we resolve this issue, and there may be a small delay delivering inbound messages to your mailboxes and outbound messages to their recipients.

Access to Helm has been restored and DNS/FTP functions are now working correctly. If you experience any more problems please email support@eurofasthost.com and we’ll investigate for you.

We are currently experiencing problems affecting services across some of our servers.

Certain HELM functions including adding domains and updating DNS records are intermittently reporting errors when trying to perform standard tasks.

The FTP services have a problem with passwords being rejected caused by synchronisation problems between Helm and MSFTPSVC.

We are working to resolve these issues as a matter of urgency, but in the mean time please contact support@eurofasthost.com if you need assistance. Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience caused by these problems.

Following on from the earlier post about DNS issues that were being experienced earlier this morning, we are no longer seeing any errors in the DNS logs and it looks like the small number of external nameservers that were experiencing problems resolving domains using our servers are now operating correctly.

We will shortly be deploying an update to distribute the dns services to different locations which will prevent the problem from recurring. We apologise to those customers who have been affected by these issues, and would like to thank them for their patience and assistance resolving the problem.

Some customers are reporting problems connecting to their websites this morning. The issues appear to be DNS based and all webservers are online and responding correctly. We are investigating the DNS issues at the moment and will post here again when more information is available. Please accept our apologies for the current problems.

Access to our HELM control panel is now working correctly again, and the original problems affecting DNS and EMail accounts have been resolved. If you experience any more problems please contact us with details. Once again we’d like to apologise for any problems caused.

Our HELM Control Panel is currently offline while we investigate permissions problems reported by users earlier which were preventing DNS + Email Accounts from being modified. We will try and get the control panel back online as soon as possible and apologise for any inconvenience caused.

The earlier problems affecting EFHWEB3 performance have been resolved, and the webserver has been operating under normal load for the last 15 minutes. We apologise for the problems previously affecting websites.