Welcome to the High Availability Hosting Blog

Change 2011-06_09 to bring our new DNS & NTP servers into live service, and retire the old legacy DNS servers has been completed.

If anyone still has issues resolving internet names, a clear of the ARP cache should work.

The new servers (.241 and .242) are DNS and NTP servers, meaning you can resolve internet addresses as well as set y0ur devices’ clock against them.

** These servers are only used by internal customers of the Sheffield Data Centre, and do not impact any DNS servers for hosting web domains. **

The first customers are now using our new Hosting Control Panel, based on WebsitePanel.

The new control panel will replace several web interfaces to our services, including DotNetPanel (for web hosting & DNS), WebsitePanel (old – for Hyper-V), and MPS (Exchange 2007).  Enabling us to have a single point of control for all services hosted at the Sheffield Data Centre.

The new control panel also takes us further towards Exchange 2010, through which mailboxes will be provisioned via WebsitePanel.

Customers who have a service on any of the original control panels will see their services migrated over the coming weeks.  Login details, and a link will be sent to each customer individually.

This week we registered our 2 replacement DNS servers for websites, public-facing resolution, and Reverse DNS lookups.

• dns1.sheffielddatacentre.net
• dns2.sheffielddatacentre.net

These servers will replace the 2 existing servers (dns1/2.thevirtualcloud.com) over the coming weeks.  First to migrate over will be the Reverse DNS zones for all the networks at the Sheffield Data Centre.

Part of the ongoing project to phase out resources on TheVirtualCloud onto a new Active Directory infrastructure, and a major step forward before the launch of Exchange 2010 hosting.

The new Hosting Control Panel will go-live to customers soon, the first service to migrate will be DNS hosting, but will eventually be a single portal for web hosting, virtual servers, DNS hosting, Exchange, and WebAppliance servers.

Over the weekend we upgraded our DNS resolver servers with the latest build of CentOS 5.5 x64.  We also added NTP capability so as well as resolving internet addresses for customers of the Sheffield Data Centre, they can now set the time too.

If you’re using the .241 or .242 addresses for your DNS resolution, no need to change anything.  If your server or device also supports having it’s time set by NTP, use the same addresses and select UTC or ETC/London as the time zone.

NB – this only affects customers inside the Sheffield Data Centre.  The servers are not accessible outside for hosting or general DNS/NTP use.

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!

Great news for new and exisiting web hosting customers, we are in the final build and test phase for the upgraded Professional Web Hosting service, due to go live in October.

The Professional Webhosting Service will include these features:

 > IIS7
 > DotNetPanel
 > Windows server 2008
 > MSSQL 2008
 > MYSQL 5.1
 > PHP5.2
 > SmarterMail 6
 > SmarterStats 4
 > 3Gb Disk space
 > 10Gb bandwidth
 > 100 email accounts
 > DNS editor

First website is £59 PA, additional websites are £39 PA including domain name fees (ev VAT).

Due to go live October.
Further annoucements will be posted here.

We’re now able to offer DNS resolution and Reverse DNS services to all customers of HA Hosting, The Virtual Cloud, and the Sheffield Data Centre. 

DNS resolution is essential for all servers connecting to the Internet, and Reverse DNS is ideal for customers who need reverse lookup for email servers, as well as those who need to confirm “ownership” of IP addresses for firewalls and secure services.

DNS Resolution

We have two DNS servers for clients to use within their server or application to resolve external addresses, contact us for the address details.  These servers will only resolve external addresses from within our network, and are not accessible from the outside world – preventing DNS spoofing.

Reverse DNS

All HA Hosting / Sheffield Data Centre customers can now submit Reverse DNS requests to us by emailing support@hahosting.com – we endeavour to have all requests complete within 24 hours.

Reverse DNS is currently not available to Professional Web Hosting customers due to shared IP addresses, we aim to offer dedicated IP addresses for web hosting in the near future.  Our Web Hosting platform is undergoing an upgrade, with Windows Server 2008 IIS7 hosting with a new Control Panel due soon!!