Angus
21-10-2008, 12:09 PM
Last month our sister business, Dedicated Servers Australia, obtained accreditation with APNIC, the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre. This is a great step forward in our growth as one of the leading providers of Web Hosting and Dedicated Servers in Australia. In conjunction with this we are in the process of creating our own private network within our primary Data Centre in Brisbane. We have already installed 2 servers to handle our DNS records along with 2 routers and are in the final stages of configuring them. This means that our essential hardware has a backup already online to take over in the event of any hardware failure – this is known as redundancy
Simply put, this means we will become a self contained entity within the Data Centre using all our own equipment. This in turn means we will be able to have direct control over the next level of our Data Centre services.
While previously we have rented IP numbers which belonged to the Data Centre, our membership of APNIC now entitles us to own our own IP ranges e.g. 115.178.16.1. Each computer / server is identified by one of these as is any site which has an SSL certificate and in turn a “Dedicated IP”
When you first joined up with us you were given a set of nameservers to delegate your site to e.g. ns1 and ns2.myownserver.net. Each of these has their own unique IP address. As part of our upgrade we will be removing these and replacing them new IP’s from our new IP range.
When this happens it will take a little time for ISPs around the country and indeed the world to update their records so they know about the change. Different ISPs have different protocols in place and have their systems configured to perform these updates with different regularities. For example hourly, six hourly etc. Some ISP’s can take over 24 hours to update their dns records.
Until your, or a client’s ISP, performs this update your site(s) will appear to be unavailable for anyone trying to see it through that particular ISP. Whereas, in actual fact your site will be fine and most likely already viewable by people using other ISPs.
There is no way for us to make these updates happen any faster so if your site is unavailable during the changeover please just be patient.
In order to implement the Data Centre and IP changes we will be creating a server by server schedule to cover the upgrades to our entire fleet of servers over the next few months. We will be performing the upgrades on a Friday of each week
Steve will post further information in http://www.alpineforums.net/forumdisplay.php?f=7 for each server within an overall schedule so you can see which particular Friday your server will be upgraded. He will then post in the sections for the individual servers the week before the upgrade on that particular server is about to take place.
REDUNDANT DNS
We have also implemented the first stage of our redundant dns service for all clients. This has involved setting up a powerful Quad Core Xeon DNS server in Seattle which mirrors all servers DNS records, and where the second nameserver for each server and reseller will now be pointed to.
This means in the unlikely event of a failure in our local dns servers, or in the network all clients dns records will still be completely accessible online, allowing clients with remote or secondary mail services to continue working. It also helps resolve some issues we have seen intermittently with a couple of ISP’s who have routing issues into the Brisbane data centre.
Currently all our CPanel hosting server clients are now configured to use it and as we re-ip resellers and our Windows servers we will introduce this added feature to these clients as well.
PLEASE NOTE – we strongly recommend that if you have not already done so that you register at the forums and then subscribe to the section for your particular server. If you are unaware how to do this or which server your account is on then Steve will post instructions on how to find out which server you are on and how to subscribe to its’ forums at the above link.
If you have any general queries about the upgrades then please do not submit a support ticket. This would only cause a delay to work due to our techs giving the same answers to multiple clients. Simply post your query in the forum thread for your server and we will get back with a reply that anyone with the same query can quickly view
This is a very exciting time for all of us here and I ask for your understanding as we grow and strive to increase what we feel are already Industry leading standards in terms of Service and Support
Best regards
Angus Thomson
Managing Director
Alpine Internet (http://www.alpineinternet.com.au)
Simply put, this means we will become a self contained entity within the Data Centre using all our own equipment. This in turn means we will be able to have direct control over the next level of our Data Centre services.
While previously we have rented IP numbers which belonged to the Data Centre, our membership of APNIC now entitles us to own our own IP ranges e.g. 115.178.16.1. Each computer / server is identified by one of these as is any site which has an SSL certificate and in turn a “Dedicated IP”
When you first joined up with us you were given a set of nameservers to delegate your site to e.g. ns1 and ns2.myownserver.net. Each of these has their own unique IP address. As part of our upgrade we will be removing these and replacing them new IP’s from our new IP range.
When this happens it will take a little time for ISPs around the country and indeed the world to update their records so they know about the change. Different ISPs have different protocols in place and have their systems configured to perform these updates with different regularities. For example hourly, six hourly etc. Some ISP’s can take over 24 hours to update their dns records.
Until your, or a client’s ISP, performs this update your site(s) will appear to be unavailable for anyone trying to see it through that particular ISP. Whereas, in actual fact your site will be fine and most likely already viewable by people using other ISPs.
There is no way for us to make these updates happen any faster so if your site is unavailable during the changeover please just be patient.
In order to implement the Data Centre and IP changes we will be creating a server by server schedule to cover the upgrades to our entire fleet of servers over the next few months. We will be performing the upgrades on a Friday of each week
Steve will post further information in http://www.alpineforums.net/forumdisplay.php?f=7 for each server within an overall schedule so you can see which particular Friday your server will be upgraded. He will then post in the sections for the individual servers the week before the upgrade on that particular server is about to take place.
REDUNDANT DNS
We have also implemented the first stage of our redundant dns service for all clients. This has involved setting up a powerful Quad Core Xeon DNS server in Seattle which mirrors all servers DNS records, and where the second nameserver for each server and reseller will now be pointed to.
This means in the unlikely event of a failure in our local dns servers, or in the network all clients dns records will still be completely accessible online, allowing clients with remote or secondary mail services to continue working. It also helps resolve some issues we have seen intermittently with a couple of ISP’s who have routing issues into the Brisbane data centre.
Currently all our CPanel hosting server clients are now configured to use it and as we re-ip resellers and our Windows servers we will introduce this added feature to these clients as well.
PLEASE NOTE – we strongly recommend that if you have not already done so that you register at the forums and then subscribe to the section for your particular server. If you are unaware how to do this or which server your account is on then Steve will post instructions on how to find out which server you are on and how to subscribe to its’ forums at the above link.
If you have any general queries about the upgrades then please do not submit a support ticket. This would only cause a delay to work due to our techs giving the same answers to multiple clients. Simply post your query in the forum thread for your server and we will get back with a reply that anyone with the same query can quickly view
This is a very exciting time for all of us here and I ask for your understanding as we grow and strive to increase what we feel are already Industry leading standards in terms of Service and Support
Best regards
Angus Thomson
Managing Director
Alpine Internet (http://www.alpineinternet.com.au)