GeekISP Tech Blog » GeekISP http://blog.geekisp.com Tech info about GeekISP's Shared and VPS Hosting Service Sat, 21 Nov 2020 19:53:05 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 GeekISP Closing Down http://blog.geekisp.com/2020/11/geekisp-closing-down/ http://blog.geekisp.com/2020/11/geekisp-closing-down/#comments Sat, 21 Nov 2020 19:53:05 +0000 Dave http://blog.geekisp.com/?p=216 Today I am announcing that GeekISP will be closing down effective January 31, 2021. The tech world, and my life, has changed in many ways since GeekISP first started in November of 2002 and while GeekISP has been incredibly stable and reliable over that time, there are options available today that reflect the more modern state of hosting technologies. I am proud that GeekISP has always been a one-man operation and although it is bittersweet, it is time for me to close this chapter of my business and my life.

The timeline and details are as follows:

* GeekISP’s hosting services will terminate officially on January 31, 2021.
* Final archival backups will be taken starting approximately February 1, 2021 and stored for 3 months. These archives are intended for extraordinary circumstances.
* Machines will be powered down once the archival backup is complete. This will likely proceed in phases.
* Registrar reseller services via Dotster will continue indefinitely. Your domain ownership is safe!
* Customers who have paid for service beyond January 31, 2021 will receive a prorated refund by PayPal or check.

In terms of transitioning your account to a new hosting company, there are many capable and reasonably priced options. Here is a list of possible options that I considered for my own usage:

Hosting:

* wordpress.com
* render.com
* Amazon Web Services (caveat: requires a nontrivial effort)

Mail Services:

* PolarisMail
* ProtonMail

I will unfortunately not be able to perform a migration of your site or email. I would recommend reaching out to whatever company you choose for assistance transitioning your information and of course, I will be available to answer any questions.

Thank you for your business over the years. It has been a pleasure working to provide hosting services for you!

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Mail Maintenance – Sunday March 27th at 9:30pm ET http://blog.geekisp.com/2016/03/mail-maintenance-sunday-march-27th-at-930pm-et/ http://blog.geekisp.com/2016/03/mail-maintenance-sunday-march-27th-at-930pm-et/#comments Thu, 24 Mar 2016 18:18:43 +0000 Dave http://blog.geekisp.com/?p=210 On Sunday, March 27th at approximately 9:30pm US/Eastern GeekISP’s mail servers will be offline for some disk maintenance work. During this time period all mail-related services will be offline. The work is expected to complete by 10:30pm ET.

During the work inbound mail to accounts at GeekISP will be delayed. Webmail, desktop, and mobile mail clients will likely report errors. Follow us on Twitter (@GeekISP) for updates along the way.

EDIT: Maintenance is complete as of approximately 9:50pm ET. Disks were swapped and we’re on a new zpool. Please email support@geekisp.com if you have any issues or questions.

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IMAP Server Maintenance – 10pm – 12am EST http://blog.geekisp.com/2014/01/imap-server-maintenance-10pm-12am-est/ http://blog.geekisp.com/2014/01/imap-server-maintenance-10pm-12am-est/#comments Tue, 28 Jan 2014 20:44:52 +0000 Dave http://blog.geekisp.com/?p=205 We’re planning on performing some maintenance on the IMAP server tonight that will require me to bring the main mail volume offline. The hope originally was to do this work online, but it appears that it is not possible.

During the maintenance window, all mail-related services will be offline. Follow us on Twitter (@GeekISP) for updates along the way.

It’s not clear that this maintenance will directly fix the issues that we’ve seen lately. The hope is that if we’re able to boost the IO performance of the primary mail volume by reconfiguring it slightly, then we’ll relieve some of the pressure in the system and things can return to normal. Absent the underlying cause, it appears to be our best and easiest option at the moment.

Update: 12:01am EST – Mail service has been restored. The original plan had to be scrapped as it was simply taking too long to clone the mail volume to the secondary server. Instead an upgrade to FreeBSD 10 was performed and this went smoothly. Several additional improvements were also planned but not yet executed in an effort to minimize the total outage. These include migrating from courier imap to dovecot as well as moving authentication data into MySQL.

We will likely need to perform another service interruption at some point in order to execute the original plan of changing our disk layout, but the aforementioned newly planned items can likely be handled, at least mostly, while still online.

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VPS Server Maintenance http://blog.geekisp.com/2013/08/vps-server-maintenance/ http://blog.geekisp.com/2013/08/vps-server-maintenance/#comments Thu, 08 Aug 2013 17:16:53 +0000 Dave http://blog.geekisp.com/?p=198 Tomorrow morning at approximately 9:30am ET we’ll be performing some maintenance on our primary VPS server. The following services will be affected:

  1. VPS servers – most will be offline.
  2. SMTP mail services – all customers will not be able to send or receive mail during the maintenance window. You can still check mail and compose drafts.
  3. SVN services – all repositories will be offline.

I expect the maintenance will require approximately 20-30 minutes to complete. We’ll be replacing a disk backplane and adding additional memory.

Sorry for any inconvenience this causes, and as before, follow @GeekISP on twitter for updates.

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Datacenter Migration Complete http://blog.geekisp.com/2013/07/datacenter-migration-complete/ http://blog.geekisp.com/2013/07/datacenter-migration-complete/#comments Sat, 20 Jul 2013 16:56:22 +0000 Dave http://blog.geekisp.com/?p=195 This morning’s datacenter migration has been completed successfully. We’re in Gotham’s new facility, in a nice clean new rack. At this point all services have been restored. If you’re seeing any issues, please email support@geekisp.com and we’ll take care of it.

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We’re Moving Redux http://blog.geekisp.com/2013/07/were-moving-redux/ http://blog.geekisp.com/2013/07/were-moving-redux/#comments Mon, 15 Jul 2013 19:47:24 +0000 Dave http://blog.geekisp.com/?p=191 It’s been a while since we initially announced that we’re moving to Gotham’s new datacenter, but after a bunch of delays, it’s finally happening.

We’re currently scheduled to move at roughly 6am US/Eastern time on Saturday July 20th. We expect all services to be offline during the move for approximately 4 hours. More updates and more estimates will be posted as we get closer. For updates during the migration, follow us on Twitter.

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Webserver load issues over the past week and wp-login attacks http://blog.geekisp.com/2013/05/webserver-load-issues-over-the-past-week-and-wp-login-attacks/ http://blog.geekisp.com/2013/05/webserver-load-issues-over-the-past-week-and-wp-login-attacks/#comments Fri, 17 May 2013 14:40:00 +0000 Dave http://blog.geekisp.com/?p=187 As some users have noticed we’ve had some intermittent load issues with our webservers this week. After quite a bit of puzzling, I determined that the source appears to be an attack targeting WordPress blogs, specifically the wp-login.php page. Something about this attack seems to be causing a spill-over effect resulting in broader disruption.

Since that discovery I’ve been trying to find effective mitigation techniques, but have had to resort to periodic blocks of all requests to that URL. My apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused. As of yet I don’t have a complete resolution to the issue, but will post updates when possible.

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Upgrades in progress for the SVN/Trac box http://blog.geekisp.com/2013/05/upgrades-in-progress-for-the-svntrac-box/ http://blog.geekisp.com/2013/05/upgrades-in-progress-for-the-svntrac-box/#comments Mon, 06 May 2013 16:07:50 +0000 Dave http://blog.geekisp.com/?p=184 I’m in the process right now of replacing the main data disk on the SVN/Trac box with an SSD. The machine should be back up within about 15 minutes.

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We’re moving! http://blog.geekisp.com/2013/04/were-moving/ http://blog.geekisp.com/2013/04/were-moving/#comments Fri, 26 Apr 2013 15:11:21 +0000 Dave http://blog.geekisp.com/?p=179 After 10 years in our datacenter in Port Jefferson, NY, we’re moving to a new space. We’re staying with the same provider – GothamBus – but moving to their new facility which is a few miles down the road. While the old space served us well, the new building (and it is brand new!) fills in a few gaps in the equation that we felt every so often, and also offers us more resources to grow.

This move will be a “lights out” cutover. E.g. we’re going to power down the existing equipment, disconnect it, toss it in a truck, and drive it to the new facility. Unfortunately that means we’ll be offline for the duration of the cutover, but it is the only realistic way to do it given GeekISP’s current architecture. We’re expecting about 2-3 hours of downtime during the move, and this will affect all services at GeekISP. For email, don’t worry – your mail will be queued on the sending side and delivered once we’re back online. We’re looking into the possibility of having our provider send HTTP traffic to a maintenance page during the move and if possible, we’ll do that as well.

We’re currently targeting May 5th at 7am to start the move, but this is not completely final. Updates will be posted if the date or time changes.

As always – please contact support@geekisp.com if you have any questions.

UPDATE 1 – May 1st: Word from Gotham is that there are some issues with routing between the current and the new datacenter. We will not be migrating on May 5th, and are waiting for updates before rescheduling.

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Mail Issue http://blog.geekisp.com/2012/10/mail-issue/ http://blog.geekisp.com/2012/10/mail-issue/#comments Wed, 31 Oct 2012 11:30:54 +0000 Dave http://blog.geekisp.com/?p=174 We had a minor connectivity issue with the mail server this morning from about 6:30am ET to 7:30am ET. It’s resolved now and mail is flowing normally.

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