Welcome to the High Availability Hosting Blog

Today (Saturday) we’ve completed the decommission of our original Hyper-V cluster built for TheVirtualCloud.

All VM’s running on that cluster were migrated to our new HVS cluster over the last month, with the final 3 moved last Tuesday morning just before we installed new iSCSI SAN switches.  The legacy servers are now unpatched and ready to be de-racked.

Our new Hyper-V cluster runs on custom built hardware, controlled by Microsoft System Centre Virtual Machine Manager, with a client interface via WebsitePanel.  Full information on the product offering can be found at:

http://www.sheffielddatacentre.com/servers/

TheVirtualCloud decommission

Decommission of TheVirtualCloud services is well underway with DNS, SharePoint, Control Panels, and now Hyper-V all moved to brand new platforms.

Web Hosting, Legacy Basic Mail, and Exchange remains (in that order).  New web hosting and mail servers are already in use for new customers, and the Exchange 2010 SP1 build plan has been signed off.

Web Hosting and Basic Mail customers will be moved to new servers before the end of September.  Exchange 2010 builds are due to start at the end of September.

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.

We’ll be launching the latest version of the Sheffield Data Centre website next week…

All the services of TheVirtualCloud will now be alongside colocation and rack space on www.sheffielddatacentre.com, along with updates to Cloud VM Servers, Hosted Exchange, and Colocation.

Lots of new info, lots of updates.  We’ll blog it when it goes live!!

Sneak preview of homepage:

Sheffield Data Centre January 2011 home page preview

Last week we (quietly) launched our Flexible Virtual Servers hosted on Hyper-V.

Since we had a number of back-orders from existing clients to fulfill, we’ve been working hard to provision these new servers first – as well as creating documentation, support access, procedures etc (I know, bit boring but has to be done…)

Demand has sure outstripped supply, at least on the first cluster nodes we’ve built.  So much so that this weekend we’re upgrading the memory in the first 2 cluster nodes, before looking at buying more physical servers as we move forward.

Flexible Virtual Servers will be available to new customers in May.  Pricing will be formally announced shortly, as well as updating the websites, but I can give an example server here:

• 1 x Opteron 2.0Ghz CPU
• 1GB memory
• 25GB SAN Disk Space
• Unlimited Bandwidth
• 2 x IP Addresses
• Linux OS

£38.50 per month!

Windows server OS + £5 per month

You’ll be able to configure your server as you want it, with anything from 128MB to 3GB memory, a variety of Operating System options, 25GB to 1TB disk space, inclusive bandwidth.  The “smallest” server, will start at just £7 per month.

If you can’t wait, or want to know more, contact sales(at)hahosting.com or call us on 0114 228 0022.

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

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!

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!!

With The Sheffield Data Centre heading towards completion, as well as to resolve ongoing “quality” issues with our current VoIP telephone service, we have changed our telephone provider along with our primary phone number.

With immediate effect our new phone number for High Availability Hosting, The Virtual Cloud, and The Sheffield Data Centre is changing too:

0114 228 0022

Our fax number remains the same – 0845 867 6660, and our registered address remains the same:

High Availability Hosting Limited
Sheffield Technology Parks
60 Shirland Lane
Sheffield
S9 3SP

Whilst the existing 0845 867 6659 number will continue to divert for the foreseeable future, please update your records straight away with our new number.  All our branding, websites and printed material will be updated as soon as possible.

Best regards,
Stuart.