If you haven’t already done so, please ensure that your telephone contact records for 1st Easy are up to date: 0808 222 2221 (free from a standard UK landline) has now replaced the 01260 295 222 number, which will shortly stop operating.

17:30: LINX engineers have given the all clear, and our normal routing has been restored.

14:37: We are currently investigating the cause of an unscheduled service interruption, reported today (Wednesday 21st July at approx 14:20). Initial findings suggest a network problem at the London Internet Exchange (LINX). Our network engineers have implemented a temporary fix to re-route traffic around LINX whilst further investigations are carried out by LINX engineers. Traffic to our networks has recovered, indicating a successful intervention by our own engineers.

Updated access procedures have been introduced to further improve security at Reynolds House. As of Wednesday 2nd June visitors requiring unaccompanied access to the facility are requested to sign in at Reynolds House, as opposed to the previous procedure of signing in at Turing House. Please note that there are no changes to the online/SMS access request system (The Server Hotel, ground floor) which you should continue to use as normal, prior to your visit.

1st Easy have been pushing for improvements to access at Reynolds House for several years, and the moving of security services across to Reynolds brings two major benefits to you, your colocation services and Reynolds House as a whole:

1. Security is now based within the datacentre building on a 24/7/365 basis – a major security enhancement.

2. Access is now much simpler, with no need to check-in/check-out at Turing before and after a visit.

We hope these improvements are equally seen as a benefit to yourselves.

If you require further clarification or have any access problems, please call our support line (free from a UK landline) on 0808 222 2221 or raise a support ticket with our team via support@1steasy.com.

10:09: The problem was identified as being related to a switch behind one of our firewalls, which has now been addressed. Apologies for any inconvenience caused this morning.

09:45: We are currently experiencing issues with our border firewalls, which will be affecting a limited amount of servers on a specific IP range. We are investigating the situation as a matter of priority in order to return normal service as soon as possible. Further updates as soon as we have more information.

A LINX issue caused some traffic disruption for around 10 minutes this evening at around 10.45pm GMT.
The NOC quickly grasped the issue and rerouted LINX traffic via secondary paths to restore full service.

Service announcement update 31/01/10, 12:53 – A temporary fix to the break has been implemented last night and all services are restored to full resilience. It seems that the damage to the cable did not completely destroy it and other customers would have lost service if the cable was completely re spliced. Our service has been restored by way of a temporary splice and a maintenance window will be scheduled next week to complete the full re splice of the cable..

Service announcement update 30/01/10, 18:35 – The repair of the fibre break is progressing. Further details can be found on the Internet Connections NOC site at http://noc.inetc.co.uk/?p=64#comments. We expect the repair to be complete this evening at some stage. No service has been affected by this fibre break and both transit and LAN extension services remain unaffected.

Service announcement update 30/01/10, 13:56 – Pictures have been received of the damage to fibre cables on a pathment dig outside Telecity Manchester, that has caused the loss of one of our network legs. Fibre provider has been informed and are planning repairs for later today.

30/01/10, 11:25 – We are currently experiencing a service failure of one of the paths of our network, due to a fibre break in the Manchester area. Although this is not service affecting, please be advised our network is currently in single path mode and is at risk of outage, should this path fail also.

It is expected that this situation may exist for most of today, awaiting fibre investigators identifying the location of the break and splicing in a fix.

This service announcement will be updated as required and once the resilient path is back on stream.

We have a stock of “Limited Edition” dedicated servers pre-loaded with Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard and SQL Server 2008 Express. Of particular note (at this price point of £89/month) are the large, high speed dual SAS disks that these systems feature, which are well suited to intensive database-driven sites and applications. Full details below:

• Dell PowerEdge chassis
• Dual Core 1.86Ghz Xeon processor
• 2Gb RAM
• 2 x 231Gb SAS, hardware RAID-1
• 150Gb bandwidth/month
• Monthly fee: £89+VAT, no setup fee

The systems are available for instant deployment, and can be purchased from our online store. You can find more about our Windows servers here and if you have any questions, we’re here to help!

15/01/10, 09:15 – Yesterday’s outage was caused by a switch of our network supplier located in Telehouse in London. Once the secondary route was being used through this switch after the Level3 route was taken out for maintenance, it seems it highlighted a fault in this switch. This switch has now been removed from service. For further details, please see their blog via the link mentioned in our previous update.

14/01/10, 17:50 – Connectivity was briefly lost again at 17:43, but has now been restored again. It appears that although our route through Level3 is now working, the problem highlighted an issue with a switch connected to our other transit link which is now causing issues. Our network provider has more detailed information on their NOC status blog here: INETC NOC – Partial Outage

14/01/10, 17:17 – Connectivity has now been restored. The issue was related to BGP sessions from Level3 to our network infrastructure not re-establishing correctly.

14/01/10, 16.54 — Some customers may be experiencing connectivity problems. There appear to be issues with certain ISPs routing through to our Manchester datacentre. We will post further updates as our investigations continue.

Thank you!

Thank you all very much for your continued custom and support throughout the year. On behalf of everyone at 1st Easy, have a very Merry Christmas and our best wishes for a prosperous 2010.

Kind Regards,

Stephen Bell

Managing Director

If you changed the VAT rate within your Miva store settings last year, the following information will help you to revert back to the 17.5% rate which comes into effect on the 1st January 2010. If you have any problems, please contact our support staff.

Read the rest of this entry »