Phurix Status

Account migration from lemon.phurix.com

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 14:34:30 +0100

This is a notice about part of our ongoing commitment to providing a high level of service, accounts will be moved from one of our servers to another server tomorrow night, at 11:00.

We have introduced a new server into our network which will become the new home to accounts which are currently hosted on older hardware. To achieve this, we need to transfer all your accounts from one server to another. We have therefore scheduled a maintenance window when the accounts will be migrated.

Maintenance Type: Migrate accounts to new server.

Expected effect on your service: Your account will be moved to a new server with new IP addresses, ensure you update any references to this. Although your service should never be unavailable during the migration, please allow up to 48 hours for your domain name to complete DNS propagation to the new server.

Expected downtime duration: None.

This will occur between 12/04/2012 22:00 and 13/04/2012 03:00 (UK Time)

The following services are relevant to this message:

lemon.phurix.com [87.117.209.249]
mail.lemon.phurix.com [87.117.209.250]

If you are currently using the above IP addresses or hostnames it is recommended that you update them as per below after the maintenance window. To avoid any confusion we recommend that you switch to using your domain name instead which will automatically update to the change.

For example, assuming your domain is example.co.uk:

Your incoming (POP3/IMAP) mail server is: mail.example.co.uk
Your outgoing (SMTP) mail server is: mail.example.co.uk
Your ftp server is: ftp.example.co.uk
Your web server is: www.example.co.uk
To access cPanel: www.example.co.uk/cpanel
To access webmail: www.example.co.uk/webmail

Your accounts will be migrated to:

bronze.phurix.com [78.129.236.105]
mail.bronze.phurix.com [78.129.236.109]

We understand and appreciate that our pre-allocated times might not always be convenient for everyone. If this is the case, you can arrange to move your server at any point before the pre-allocated slot, please contact support to arrange this.

Regards,

The Phurix Team

[closed] Server yellow.phurix.com is unreachable

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 09:50:00 +0000

09:44am - Our monitoring service informed us of a server outage.

09:45am - A power cycle was issued.

10.01am - The hardware began to respond over the network again.

10.05am - cPanel/WHM services are reachable again.

[closed] Major UK Network Upgrade – Phase 1

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 09:53:00 +0000

As part of the long term commitment to continually raising the level of hosting service that we provide, the entire network will be upgraded.

The net result of this programme will be a network with greater capacity and redundancy, complete with a ‘future proofing’ capability enabling us to offer new services like IPv6 and MPLS in the very near future.

The plan is to implement this upgrade in two phases over the coming weeks, with the first scheduled window being 1st December between the hours of 01:00 am and 06:00 am GMT. During this window you may experience a very short period of connectivity interruption of less than two minutes as we change the routing configuration from the current equipment to four fully redundant network segments. The second phase, details of which will be released in a separate communication, will involve the migration of the rack uplinks to the new network segments. Once again as a consequence of implementing Phase 2, you may also experience a period of less than two minutes of connectivity interruption.

We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause, and hope that you’ll appreciate that we are undertaking this action to ensure that we can continue to provide you with the best hosting service available.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any queries or questions concerning this message.

The Phurix Team

[closed] Planned Maintenance on 04/11/2011 at 01:00

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 11:17:00 +0000

This is a notice about part of our network improvement work, some of our servers will be powered off and moved to another rack tomorrow night, between 01:00 and 03:00.

As part of our ongoing work to increase network resilience, the data centre is being split up into a number of discrete zones, each running an entirely separate network. To achieve this, we need to move some servers from one rack to another. We have therefore scheduled a maintenance window when the servers will be shut down, moved to another rack, and started back up.

Maintenance Type: Move servers between racks

Expected effect on your service: Server will be powered off and restarted

Expected downtime duration: 30 minutes

This will occur between 01:00 and 03:00 on 04/11/2011 (UK Time)

The following services are relevant to this message:

lime.phurix.com [87.117.209.200]
peach.phurix.com [87.117.209.202]
cherry.phurix.com [87.117.209.201]
vps110.lime.phurix.com [87.117.209.203]
vps111.lime.phurix.com [87.117.209.215]

We have allocated times for each server to be moved. We understand and appreciate that our preallocated times might not always be convenient for everyone. If this is the case, you can arrange to move your server at any point before the preallocated slot, please contact support to arrange this.

Regards,

The Phurix Team

Update @ 01:55am

The planned maintenance has now been completed and according to monitoring systems, the servers are back online.

100% uptime! (Sept-Oct 2011)

Thu, 03 Nov 2011 11:07:16 +0000

We’ve scored again: 100% uptime through September and October.

We’ve been very busy working on new things, so don’t forget to signup to our newsletter to stay updated.

If you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Thanks!

- The Phurix Team

Over 99.9% uptime! (Aug 2011)

Mon, 05 Sep 2011 22:31:00 +0100

It seems we’ve dropped (a little) below our aim for 100% uptime this month.

As always we aim to be as honest and transparent with our customers to avoid any surprises along the way.

We assure you that this is NOT network downtime and is only the downtime of one specific server.

The affected server is our oldest server and unfortunately is no longer able to cope with the increased traffic.

We’re confident that our network is highly available and are currently investing in new servers and technology to ensure our systems and services are also highly available.

Please signup to our newsletter for further updates!

If you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Thanks!

- The Phurix Team

100% uptime! (July 2011)

Wed, 10 Aug 2011 19:50:30 +0100

We’ve scored again: 100% uptime through July.

Don’t forget to signup to our newsletter for future updates…

If you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Thanks!

- The Phurix Team

100% uptime! (June 2011)

Sun, 03 Jul 2011 18:03:01 +0100

Good news: Yet another month of 100% uptime!

We’re not that surprised though as we’re always aiming for a 100% availability.

We felt that it was important to keep you’re informed as possible about our services.

For other news, we recommend signing up to our newsletter.

If you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Thanks!

- The Phurix Team

100% uptime!

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 15:47:00 +0100

We’re happy to announce that, according to independent reports (from availability monitors such as Pingdom) we’ve had 100% uptime since November 2010 after a (since resolved) hick-up in October.

We wanted to post this because users were beginning to wonder why there’s been no updates.

Yes, we’re still here but we’ve had no issues to report!

We don’t expect anything but 100% uptime, but if you do have any issues or concerns, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Just check out our contact details in the sidebar.

Thanks for your continued support!

- The Phurix Team

[closed] Servers are unreachable

Mon, 18 Oct 2010 11:38:00 +0100

This issue was closed Oct 18th, 2010

There is currently an internal routing issue at the UK data centre and engineers are working to resolve it as quickly as possible.

There is currently no ETA on a fix, but they are working on it as I type this.

This will be updated as soon as there is any change.

Thank you for your patience.

The Phurix Team

Update @ 11.00AM

We are currently experiencing an interruption to connectivity. We are investigating and will provide further updates as soon as possible.

There is currently a network issue affecting the data centre. At this time we believe this to be caused by a network routing problem at one of our peering connections. This problem is only affecting a proportion of traffic.

We are working to resolve this problem and will provide further information as soon as it is available.

Update @ 11.30AM

The issue is ongoing. A proportion of the traffic will currently be experiencing increased latency and packet loss at varying levels. In some instances this may appear to be complete connectivity loss.

We are investigating the cause and will provide further updates as soon as we possibly can.

Update @ 12.30PM

The initial problem with a peering point that occurred earlier this morning has led to a problem within the VSS routing cluster. The network team quickly eliminated as many causes as possible. This issue was then escalated to Cisco and we are currently involved in joint investigation to try and discern the underlying problem.

As soon as we have any progress from this work we will inform you immediately.

Update @ 01.45PM

All servers are starting to respond again. We await the all clear.

Update @ 02.30PM

Today’s network connectivity issue should now be resolved and service should be returning to normal. We will be issuing a further update later today with more details on this incident, but until this information is released we will not be able to answer any queries.

If however any of your services are still experiencing any problems please do contact us immediately for assistance.

We understand and appreciate that today’s events will have caused inconvenience and apologise for this. We will issue information as soon as we are in a position to do so.

Regards,

The Phurix Team

Update @ 5.30PM

This update follows up today’s network issue with further information, to give you our latest understanding of the issue.

The technical engineers at the data centre reported the following details:

The issue we detected was affecting both the primary and secondary Cisco 6500 network system that are configured in a VSS-1440 redundant cluster. We ran through our emergency procedures to identify the problems, but all tests were responding within normal parameters.

A case was raised with the Cisco Technical Assistance Centre. A Cisco engineer was able to logged into the routers but was unable to identify a problem.

After 3 hours, the Cisco engineer was unable to provide a resolution; we understood the problem was either a software bug within the routers, or else a hardware fault.

Both routers were rebooted, the primary router failed, the secondary started normally, which restored the network to normal.

Our conclusion is that the failure of the primary Cisco 6500 to boot indicates a hardware problem. We take full responsibility for all the infrastructure required to provide you with a reliable service, and therefore we asked Cisco to provide an answer to these questions:
1) Why were Cisco unable to diagnose a hardware fault within a 3 hour time frame?
2) Why did traffic not automatically fail-over to the secondary 6500, as by design?
Cisco commented that they do not know for sure if this is a hardware problem, and so were unable to provide a specific response to these two questions. Clearly these are very important questions that need to be answered, and we will continue to work with Cisco to provide a full and adequate response to them.

This conclusion has lead us to reconsider our current network routing to avoid this kind of issue in future.

This issue is now considered closed.

[completed] Scheduled Infrastructure Maintenance on 02/10/2010 at 00:00

Fri, 24 Sep 2010 18:09:00 +0100

We will be carrying out maintenance which is applicable to some of your services with us.

Maintenance Type: Infrastructure
Expected effect on your service: Power Loss
Expected downtime duration: 4-8 hours
This will occur between 00:00 and 08:00 on 02/10/2010 (UK Time)

- We will be enacting our procedures for a controlled power outage. This will happen between the hours of 00:00 and 08:00 on Saturday 02/10/10.
- Procedures are being put into action to allow essential repairs to the main power systems.
- As part of our procedures for a controlled power down, all systems will be automatically shutdown for you.
- As part of procedures for restoration of power there will additional staff on site. They will be checking that all services have power restored and pro-actively investigating any issues reported.

We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause, please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any queries or questions regarding this maintenance window.

Regards,

The Phurix Team

Update @ 08:19 AM

This message is to notify you of the successful completion of the maintenance in Spectrum House between 00:00 and 08:00 today, the 02/10/10. The maintenance works themselves were completed approximately 45 minutes ahead of schedule. The team have successfully implemented the planned procedures for restoring service to the site. Over 96% of services have already been restored and we are working with clients to resolve any remaining problems.

[closed] amber.phurix.com issue

Tue, 07 Sep 2010 16:57:00 +0100

We”re currently experiencing some technical problems with amber.phurix.com. This is causing system instability. We are working to resolve this issue as fast as we can.

We will provide an update shortly.

Update 7th September. 7:00pm BST

amber is back on-line, however we are still performing various tests, which may lead to further system reboots.

Update 7th September, 10:00pm BST

We believe that the problem has been resolved, however we will continue to monitor amber closely for the next few hours.

Thank you for your understanding and patience.

[closed] cPanel not licensed

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 17:01:00 +0100

The following cPanel error is displayed for some customers logging into cPanel on some of our servers:

This server is currently not licensed. Please contact the server administrator. Other services available on this server such as web services are likely functioning normally. (Cannot read license file)

There was a payment issue with a third party cPanel supplier, but has since been resolved.

We are waiting for the licenses to be reactivated.

How are we going to avoid this in future?

Good news.

We are applying to be our own cPanel distributor through the cPanel partner program, which will eliminate the need for third party cPanel suppliers.

We plan to transfer all of the cPanel licenses by the end of next month.

This transfer should have no affect on your service.

Sincere apologies for the inconvenience.

Regards,

The Phurix Team.

Update

This was resolved within an hour but we had to force a license update on these cPanel servers.

If you’re still having problems, please contact us via the normal support channels.

Thanks.

[ended] UK network unreachable

Tue, 25 May 2010 00:30:00 +0100

Our UK network is currently unreachable.

Update @ 01:35am

At approximately 00:20 a network issue was detected affecting connectivity to the North cluster in Spectrum House.

The on call engineers were contacted and the problem has been resolved. Service was restored at approximately 01:35. Unfortunately we do not currently have any further details available at this time but will issue them as and when they become available.

We would like to express our sincere apologies for the inconvenience this will have caused. If you are experiencing any problems as a result of this please do not hesitate to contact our support team immediately and we will look into this for you.

Regards,

The Phurix Team.

[closed] Network issue at LINX: 16/02/10

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 10:04:00 +0000

The London Internet Exchange (LINX) is currently suffering from a network issue that is affecting traffic. The connections to LINX were shut down until they resolve this problem. Traffic has been rerouted over other peering points until the situation is resolved.

Date: 16/03/2010
Time: 22:30
Effect on service: Increased latency for traffic that would normally reach us via LINX
Duration: Ongoing
Affected Service(s): All UK services

The only information that we have from LINX at this time is that they have acknowledged an issue and are investigating the problem. This problem has only affected traffic that reaches our network via LINX, which due to our diverse peering points with many of the major ISPs has meant minimal impact on incoming and outgoing traffic. The network has remained stable throughout.

Traffic that would normally reach us via LINX will now be rerouted and connect to us via other peering points. This may result in a slight increase in latency for that traffic, if it involves additional hops. We are now waiting on LINX for updates as to the nature of the problem, likely resolution time and ultimately for an all clear notification.

If anyone is experiencing problems with their service, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Regards,

The Phurix Team

[closed] Scheduled Switch Reboots

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 17:59:00 +0000

Maintenance will be performed which will affect your service. This will last about 2 minutes, and during this time, the servers will lose network connectivity while the switch is rebooted.

Maintenance Type: Switch Maintenance
Expected effect on your service: No Connectivity
Expected duration: <2 Minutes
Reason for the reboot: To activate new firmware.

The following servers will be affected:

banana.phurix.com between 02:00 and 06:00 on 10/03/2010
white.phurix.com between 02:00 and 06:00 on 11/03/2010
ALL OTHER SERVERS between: 02:00 and 06:00 on 12/03/2010

We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause, please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any queries or questions regarding this maintenance window.

Regards,

The Phurix Team

[closed] Unscheduled downtime

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:14:00 +0000

Currently some network ports are disconnected and the servers are unreachable.

Update @ 2.30pm

Some of our servers were suspended in error. The servers were immediately unsuspended, however there was a error with the re-enabling of the switch ports. This has been rectified and all servers are back online.

Normal service has been resumed.

[closed] Teamspeak Blacklist

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 19:06:00 +0000

Some users are reporting the following error:

The server you are trying to connect to, is on our blacklist.
This is usualy (sic) because the hoster of the server is violating our server license agreement.
The client will not connect. For more information see HTTP://www.teamspeak.org/abuse.php

We have checked the Teamspeak Blacklist and do not appear to be listed. We are also listed on the UK Authorized TeamSpeak Host Provider (ATHP) list.

Tritoncia have been unavailable for comment.

We will update you as soon as we have further information.

Regards,

The Phurix Team

Update @ 8:00PM GMT

Your account has been removed from blacklist. Please let us know if you have any further questions.

Thank you.

- Dez
TeamSpeak Sales

All users should be able to connect to their Teamspeak servers as normal. You may need to close and reopen your Teamspeak client first.

Regards,

The Phurix Team.

Update @ 8:30PM GMT

Some users are still experiencing a problem with their Teamspeak servers.

Users are recommended to try restarting their TeamSpeak client.

We have contacted TeamSpeak again with regards to this issue.

We await their response and will update you as soon as possible.

Regards,

The Phurix Team.

Update @ 8:35PM GMT

Hello,

The IP’s have just been removed from black list. It may take 24 hours for the ban to be fully removed. You may also want to try stopping and restarting your servers. Please let us know if in 24 hours you are still having problems.

Thank you.

- Dez
TeamSpeak Sales

We’ll take the necessary action here. Thank you for your understanding.

Regards,

The Phurix Team.

Update @ 26/01/10 9:00AM GMT

TeamSpeak last responded to us at 10:52 PM yesterday with conflicting information. We requested clarification and have yet to receive a reply.

However, users reported that they were able to start accessing their teamspeak servers around 1:00AM GMT.

We can only now assume that this matter is resolved.

Thanks, with regards,

The Phurix Team.

[closed] Phurix vs Norton

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 15:33:00 +0000

Users using Norton software are unable to visit our site:

http://www.phurix.co.uk/

Norton has wrongly detected 2 software files as Trojan Horses.

These are false positives.

http://safeweb.norton.com/report/show?url=phurix.co.uk

Threats found: 2
Here is a complete list:
Threat Name:     Trojan Horse
Location:     http://software.phurix.co.uk/ares2-101.exe

Threat Name:     Trojan Horse
Location:     http://software.phurix.co.uk/ares.zip

This is genuine software created by us at Phurix called “Ares”, which is software used to safely and security remove files from their computers. It poses no threat.

We have since removed these files anyway, however Norton has not updated to reflect this.

Users using Norton software are still unable to reach the site.

We recommend that users disable or uninstall Norton software until further notice.

————————————————————————————

Norton have so far been unavailable for comment and we have been unable to login to the Norton SafeWeb website.

You are encouraged to leave Norton Feedback with regards to this situation in order to assist us in a speedy resolution.

Regards,

- The Phurix Team

Update 25/01/10

By submitting the files to Norton as a false positive, we were able to get them excluded from Norton products. This may take some time to update across all software on all platforms.

[ended] Unscheduled Outage affecting your service on 08/01/2010

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 09:51:00 +0000

There has been an unscheduled outage, which may have affected your service:

Date: 08/01/2010
Time: 01:10
Outage Type: Connectivity Interruption
Duration: < 35 minutes

At approximately 01:10 a massive DDOS attack was directed at the our network. This, when coupled with a particular chain of events, has caused a routing issue within the North cluster.

Our on call engineers were contacted and the offending traffic has been removed from the network. Service was restored at approximately 01:45.

We would like to express our sincere apologies for the inconvenience this will have caused. If you are experiencing any problems as a result of this please do not hesitate to contact support immediately and we will look into this for you.

Regards,

The Phurix Team