Open Mind Status

All mail has now left the backup mail server and systems are running normally.  The migration is complete and we can now issue the all clear.

Many thanks for your patience in what was a very smooth migration.

Account restoration has now completed and access to the Helm control panel has been restored.

We are currently checking migrated information to ensure everything is running smoothly before giving the all clear.

At this stage though, everything seems to be running well and migration appears to have been a great success with greatly reduced resource usage on the new mail server meaning faster access via webmail as well as an increase in the delivery speed of email to users accounts.

Access to email has now been restored and webmail is now available for access in the normal way.

As we have found a method to allow users to send/receive mail at the same time as we are restoring mailboxes from Helm, the downtime in users not being able to collect email has been reduced significantly.

Mail is also now being sent through from the backup mail server.

The final job is to update the Helm control panel so that mailboxes belong to the correct mailserver so access to Helm is still unavailable but mailboxes are being restored at a rate of 2 per second so this shouldn’t take too long to complete.

All mail server data has now been migrated across to the new mail server.  We are just checking the data and configuring IP addresses before commencing the restoration of account access.

We have commenced the migration of the mail server.  All mail services are currently stopped and mail is being sent to our backup mail server.  Access to Helm is now restricted until the migration is complete.

We have bought the migration forward slightly as it is necessary for us to upgrade the old SmarterMail server to the latest release prior to the move.

Mail services will be unavailable whilst we complete this upgrade.

Update 18:30 – This is now complete, the migration will begin in the next few minutes.

We shall this evening be upgrading the primary Windows mail server and relocating all user mailboxes to a new dedicated server. We apologise for the short notice for this work but it has become necessary as the current server is starting to show signs of instability and we would rather act now to resolve the issue quickly thus avoiding any unnecessary disruption to your service.

The work will involve moving all user account currently hosted on server IS-3712 to our new server IS-11329. There will be no changes required by you as we will be migrating the mailboxes and data as well as moving the current mail IP address to the new server. We have already synchronised the mailbox data to the new box to ensure the migration is as smooth as possible.

In addition, whilst the migration is being carried out, mail will be delivered to our backup mail server and once complete, will be delivered as normal to your mailbox to ensure no mail is lost in the transition.

The anticipated time line and updates is shown below. You can also follow updates via out twitter account http://twitter.com/openmindhosting

Please note that you will only be affected by this work if you have a shared or reseller Windows hosting plan. All dedicated mail server clients and Linux plans will NOT be affected.

Anticipated Schedule

Please note this is a planned time line for this work and may be subject to change. All actions will be carried out this evening, 26th April 2010:

• 19:00 – The mail server will be stopped and access to the Helm control panel/webmail access disabled for the duration of the move. We shall then begin a final synchronisation of the mailbox data. This synchronisation will take approximately 30 minutes to complete.
• 19:30 – We will carry out some final checks on the data and reconfigure the new mail server to use the existing mail IP address.
• 19:45 – Once the mail data has been synchronised we will begin to restore accounts on the new server. Each domain takes between 5 and 20 seconds and the domains are restored alphabetically.  There are approximately 1,300 domains to restore on this particular mail server. As each domain is restored, mail will start flowing into the new mail server and will also start arriving from the backup mail server. We anticipate, and this is a very rough estimate, that the restoration of accounts will take about 4 hours to complete.
• c. 23:45 – The mail restoration should be complete. Helm will be restarted and access to webmail will be restored.

Please note that the above timings are subject to change but we will keep you updated throughout the move both here and on our twitter account at http://twitter.com/openmindhosting

We are currently installing new software on each of the Windows cluster servers. This process does involve stopping IIS for about 2 minutes whilst the software installs.

Currently we are installing on the primary mail server and this should be completed shortly.

Update 10:57 – Mail server installation completed.

Update 11:32 – MySQL4 database server installation in progress

Update 12:53 – This work is now complete.

We are aware of a delay in receiving email.  This has been caused by a backlog in the mail server queue which we are resolving at present.

Update 14:29 – We have identified the issue and working to resolve it now. It looks like emails are sitting in the spool ready to be delivered but not actually leaving the server.

Update 14:47 – Mail is starting to work it’s way through now but this may take some time to complete due to the previous backlog.

Update 15:12 – We have found the issue to be associated with the spam check we carry out on all email coming into the server. As a temp. measure to clear the backlog, we have removed the spam checks and will re-enable them once the queue has been cleared.

This will result in a higher level of spam being received for a short period.

Update 15:25 – The backlog has now been cleared.  We will now start re-enabling the anti-spam services we have in place one by one whilst monitoring the delivery spool until we are satisfied all is OK.