FastHosts Down Again

Our clients using FastHosts are contacting us today again saying things are not working.

The problems we face with this is that we spend hours looking into things that out of our control.

FastHosts is one of the larger hosting companys but it seems that they are effected by Downtime more than others.

Fasthosts Internet Ltd has warned UK businesses not to spam their customers with unsolicited newsletters and marketing emails as this is a growing concern on the same day that issue this statement the service fails. One could look at this and think that could see a failure coming sooner than later as the growing number of spam emails continues. Every hosting company has a limit to what it can handle.

The FastHosts Status Website states on Tuesday 13th September 2011 (13.09.2011):-

System Issues

Under Investigation: Virtual Servers Log Entry 1000006667

Some customers may currently be experiencing issues connecting to their virtual servers. Our engineers are working on this as a priority and we apologise for any inconvenience caused.
Our engineers have identified the problem and are working to restore full service to affected servers as a priority. The majority of servers are now online, but may be operating with reduced performance. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.

This issue is presently under investigation:

Systems Affected:

Shared Hosting Network

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Fasthosts is one of the leading hosting provider which is a subsidiary of the global company Fasthosts Internet LTD.

Fasthosts is based in the UK and operates a 24×7 service for their dedicated UK data centers.

Fasthosts hosts over 1 million domains and provides services for over 42 million emails each day.

Fasthosts services include domain registrations, shared web hosting, business-class email, virtual servers, dedicated servers, software-as-a-service, online back-up, secure online storage and unlimited broadband.

Finger crossed Fasthosts gets things back up soon.

Fasthosts Website Down | Fasthosts problems | FastHosts Hosting Down

 

Groundhog Day Song

At work we all at times feel like this is groundhog day. We found on YouTube a music video called “Groundhog Day Song” and this is great.

The guy Richard Warren from the UK is singing about his working activites with a video to go with it.

To watch the groundhog day music video song visit:- http://youtu.be/g7GwoYM1GeA

 

Google Apps mail servers MX Records

To deliver mail to Gmail inboxes, configure your domain to route incoming
messages to the Google email servers. To do that, add MX records that point to
the Google servers shown in the table below.

See Creating MX records for details
about adding MX records to your domain.

Priority Mail server
1 ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM
5 ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM
5 ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM
10 ASPMX2.GOOGLEMAIL.COM
10 ASPMX3.GOOGLEMAIL.COM

Note: The values in the Priority column show the
relative priorities of the Google servers. The values do not need to be
exactly those shown in the table; different domain providers have different
systems for setting MX record priority. Regardless of the system,
ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM must be the top priority record.

http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?answer=174125

Configuring Your MX Records with GoDaddy.com for Google Mail

A mail exchange (MX) record identifies a server that handles email messages
for your domain. A domain has one or more MX records listed in priorty order.
When someone sends an email message to your domain, the sender’s mail server
delivers it to the first available server in the priority list. You create new
MX records, or change their priority, in order to change how email is processed
for the domain. (Learn more about MX records
and mail server priority
.)

You create MX records using the administration tools available from your
domain provider.

If you purchased your domain from
GoDaddy while signing up for Google Apps, do not use these instructions. Google
will automatically configure the MX records for your domain when you activate
email in the Google Apps Control Panel.

There are two ways to create MX records for the Google Apps mail servers when
GoDaddy hosts your domain:

To manually create MX records for a domain hosted by GoDaddy:

    1. Log in to your account at http://www.godaddy.com by clicking the My
      Account
      tab.
    2. Under the Domains header, find the domain you’re using with
      Google Apps. Click (Advanced Details) to the right of this
      domain.
    3. Under the DNS Manager header, click
      Launch.
    4. In the MX (Mail Exchanger) section, click Quick
      Add
      .
    5. Add an MX record for each mail server in the table below.
      Priority Mail
      Server
      1 ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
      5 ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
      5 ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
      10 ASPMX2.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.
      10 ASPMX3.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.

      For each MX record, make sure to:

      • Enter the corresponding priority in the Priority field.
      • Enter an @ sign in the Host field.
      • Enter the fully qualified server name of the email server—such as
        ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.—in the Points to field. Include a period at
        the end of the server name.
      • Select 1 Hour from the TTL drop-down list.
    6. Delete any existing MX records, or lower their priority. For now, we
      recommend that you keep all existing MX records, but lower their priority.
      Later, once you have tested your service and confirmed mail flow, you can delete
      these records to ensure that mail flows through the new mail server(s).
    7. Once you’ve added all 5 MX records in the table, click Save Zone
      File
      at the top or the bottom of the page.

GoDaddy screenshot

Congratulations! Your new MX records now point to Google. Keep in mind that
changes to your DNS settings can take up to 24 hours to propagate through the
Internet, but depending on your host, this can happen faster.

If you have difficulty creating MX records, contact GoDaddy for
assistance.

http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?answer=33353