Welcome to the High Availability Hosting Blog

Last week we completed the migration of our web hosting customers to our new DotNetPanel controlled hosting cluster.

Customers of TheVirtualCloud’s Professional Web Hosting (http://www.thevirtualcloud.com/webhosting/) are now using Windows 2008 IIS7 powered servers, SmarterMail 6 email, SQL Server 2008 and MySQL5 databases.

The migration which was completed over 2 weekends was a complete success with only 1 period of short scheduled downtime while mailboxes were copied to to the new servers. As an added bonus, no support tickets were raised as a direct result of the migration, and 1 week later customer feedback is positive!

DotNetPanel

Our DotNetPanel control panel now controls all website, email (except Exchange), DNS, SQL, and SharePoint hosting. Plans to integrate DotNetPanel with our Outlook Anywhere Hosted Exchange system are already being discussed.

DotNetPanel totally replaces Helm which has now been withdrawn.

DotNetPanel

We’ve successfully migrated all our Professional Web Hosting customers’ DNS and Email from the old web servers to new dedicated DNS and shared web servers.

All existing Professional Web Hosting customers will now enjoy quicker responce times, fewer errors and an updated SmarterMail web server, updated from v4.3 to v6.1.

Moving of the IIS / web sites will happen over next weekend, but we’re on track to switch off the old web hosting platform for mid-December.

More info on our Professional Web Hosting service can be found at:

http://www.thevirtualcloud.com/webhosting/

The new websites for HA Hosting, TheVirtualCloud and The Sheffield Data Centre went live last night.  Information on every service we offer has been updated, some prices reduced, and new services introduced.  Along with a fresh new look based on a shared stylesheet and master page.

Major updates include:

• Single look and feel across all sites (and this blog!)
• Extra “value added” services added for VMware hosted Dedicated Servers (HA Hosting)
• Outlook Anywhere – now with same day setup (TheVirtualCloud)
• New Professional Web Hosting service added (TheVirtualCloud)
• SharePoint Hosting service added (TheVirtualCloud)
• Updated colocation services added (Sheffield Data Centre)
• New bandwidth offers and options added (Sheffield Data Centre)
• Extra services (firewalls, rDNS, Backups, SAN) added (Sheffield Data Centre)
• Extra data centre information, power, cooling, network etc… (Sheffield Data Centre)

Blog posts on specific services (such as the new Professional Web Hosting) will follow next week, in the meantime if you get a chance, check out our new websites at:

• www.hahosting.com
• www.thevirtualcloud.com
• www.sheffielddatacentre.com

Hello!  Firstly, hope you like the new look blog.  We’ve moved the blog from the old home on the Sheffield Data Centre website  to a dedicated site here at www.hahosting.info – the new blog will have news, info, updates and media from HA Hosting,  TheVirtualCloud and the Sheffield Data Centre.  All the content from the original blog is here too.

This new look and feel for the blog is a sneak preview of what our websites will look like when they’re updated next week.  All  our websites will have a shared theme and flow into each other with common menus and headers.

We’ve got a lot going on right now, and we’ll be posting detailed updates later, but here’s what we’re up to in November:

HA Hosting

• Trials are being planned of Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 with failover clustering for Virtual Dedicated Servers.
• Upgrade of the Client Control Panel due before christmas.

TheVirtualCloud

• New web hosting infrastructure on Windows Server 2008 is starting to be rolled out.
• Outlook Anywhere Hosted Exchange price reduced to just £6.50 per month for a 1GB mailbox.
• First trial customers for our upcoming Hosted SharePoint service are now live.
• Replacement DNS Name Servers are now live, customer migrations due soon.

Sheffield Data Centre

• Energy Saving Evaporative Cooling technology delivered to site, awaiting installation.
• Ground works for the site generator have started.
• Low Latency Network for gamers has been successfully trailed.
• Free Bandwidth Forever is being offered in the shared colo racks.
• 5Mbit for £50 per month package coming soon.

In the short term we’re working on the new cooling system in the Data Centre, preparing the network for the Unlimited Bandwidth Forever deals, and completing the rollout of the new web hosting infrastructure.  Detailed updates for everything will be posted soon, so watch this space!