April 25, 2010 | 
Author Windows and email users. As of last week Dot Net Panel has gone open source. What this means is that there will be not more updates to it for the foreseeable future. Although they claim they will still be working on the product, we have not seen nor been told of exactly what there commitment is or will be and since this is not the Apache Project or the Joomla! project. We can not bank on what will become of it over the next year. So it was either Hosting Controller or Plesk by Parallels. Since everyone hates Plesk, Hosting Controller it is.
Starting this week we will be doing upgrades some of which will require a server restart.
Also tomorrow after 11pm OS patches will be applied and require a restart as well, this will take about 30minutes total.
Please let us know if you have any questions.
A lot of stuff is going on that will affect just about everyone in some way so here goes.
1. All Windows based hosting accounts will be migrated over from the HELM control panel to the Dot Net Panel (DNP) control panel software. Why? The good folks that made HELM sold out to a company called Parallels and of course they have chosen to let it die. So rather than move to Plesk for many good reasons. We chose Dot Net Panel for its price and feature set. Hopefully you will like it and they will be around for a while.
What this means to you… if you do not use the control panel then nothing. If you are currently using HELM then you will need to stop using HELM and go here for now…. http://74.52.65.66:9001 to create email accounts etc. until we are done then you can go back to using http://cp.ice9-networks.com. If everything goes ok then there will be no downtime when migrating your site.
2. After #1 is done, we are moving ALL windows accounts to a new server. Why? because it will have more memory, a lot more disk space, and will be a quad core xeon processor. This new home will also give us two things, ONE is the option for direct attached storage so disk space can be added down the road with out having to move. and TWO (and the coolest) is that going forward all windows based hosting account will have unlimited bandwidth. Yes.. unlimited bandwidth. You read it right, due to our data center purchasing A LOT of good tier-1 bandwidth, they need to get rid of it. So they cut us a REALLY good deal.
So… When we have moved your site(s) over and are to change the IP addresses over, we will let you know before hand so you know your sites will be moving over to the new server. This will be happening over the span of the week.
3. Because of #3 we can now offer all kinds of Internet radio and other media based packages. so be looking for those soon!
4. Did you know that we offer just about everything web related you could ever need? and to add to that we now offer turnkey e commerce solutions go here for a list of features. And for as low as $19.99 a month you can have your own fully functional store! complete with dedicated IP address and SSL certificate included! all you have to do is add your products, pick a skin, and start selling.
5. Did you get a piece of spam stating that we (iCE9 Networks) made changes and needed you to install something? if so DELETE IT! this is SPAM and the attached file is a virus of some kind. We will never ask you to install anything ever for any reason. and if we did make any changes to anything you were using you know you can ALWAYS contact us to verify any information you get from us via email.
6. Down time – if you think your website is down … the two fastest ways to check is to follow us on Twitter and two is to check the ice9 portal. And like always, 1-800-975-1652 ext. 1 will give you a status update as well. Then you can log in to your billing account and open a ticket. We will always try and get an email out to everyone effected however this is not always possible so we have these alternative methods for you as well.
Thank you for your time!
Please review the following maintenance notification
Maintenance Window: Tuesday, July 7, 2009 15:00 – 19:00 PDT (Tuesday, July 7, 2009 22:00 – 02:00 GMT)
Customer Impact: The server will be rebooted and inaccessible for up to 30 minutes during the maintenance.
Affected servers: sql01 173.1.58.210 (MySQL v5.1 and MSSQL2008 servers – Dot Net Panel users)
Maintenance Details: We will be performing hardware and software upgrades. This requires a reboot of the virtual machine node. The upgrade will further increase the reliability and availability of our (SQL) sequel server virtual machine.
5/2/09: Server WWW0 will be on and off line over the span of an hour for patching and updates. This will start 11pm 5/2/09. This will interrupt most websites and email services. Resellers please let your customers know.
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5/3/09: On May 3, 2009, between 12:01am and 5:00am CDT, The Planet’s Network Team will update our secondary distribution routers (DSRs) in our D2, D3, D4 and D5 data centers. As you may remember, we performed a similar maintenance in March that did not result in any downtime, so we do not expect any downtime as a result of this maintenance. This update will enable Multi Protocol Label Switching on each router, which allows for new product and service availability in the referenced data centers. In the unlikely event your servers in Dallas are affected, the impact will be less than one minute of service degradation.