DDoS In Effect 8/30/2007 6AM – 2PM EST
We are dealing with a fairly significant distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) at the moment and are doing all we can to mitigate the traffic. Please stand by.
ExchangeDefender Delivery Alert
Over the past 24 hours we have received a lot of complaints about the non-delivery of email to random recipients from random hosts on the Internet. At this point we have been able to narrow it down to Microsoft Exchange 2003 servers running IMF v2 and Microsoft Exchange 2007 servers also running IMF. In all instances the mail was acknowledged by ExchangeDefender, processed and delivered to the target mail server. In several instances mail disappeared completely. In others only certain recipients “didn’t get” the message.
We cannot stress this strongly enough: Turn OFF any SPAM filtering enabled on your servers, along with any SPF checking, validation or firewall port 25 data inspections.
The only rules that should be enabled are those described in previous posts dealing with port 25 restrictions.
How come an email was received by one user but not on the other if they were cc’ed?
Frequent question asked today in our support portal. For example, two users in the same organization were receiving an email. Or perhaps a distribution list where a single email address delivers to Outlook/mbox and other relays externally to a Blackberry address. If one gets it and the other doesn’t thats ExchangeDefender’s fault, no?
No. ExchangeDefender does not modify/alter the message body nor does it split the message that is being delivered. The message is delivered in a single direct stream at which point Exchange further processes the message and delivers it to the delivery agent (which further relays the message or forwards it depending on local rules.) Exchange also uses technology called single instance storage, allowing a single message to be stored in the database if it is received for multiple recipients.
So, if a message was received by one user it must have been received by the other. Why can one see it while the other can’t? Turn up message tracking and see. However, we are currently seeing this as an issue related to Outlook Junk Filters and IMF, both of which need to be disabled for reliable mail delivery.
ExchangeDefender v3.1 Live
ExchangeDefender v3.1 core is now live.
Over the next five days we will go through the core aspects of ExchangeDefender and all the new features. We will provide ample screenshots and feature details so you can best implement ExchangeDefender in your day-to-day email management.
Keep an eye on our blog at http://www.ownwebnow.com/blog
Extended Maintenance Cycle for 7/21/2007
We are extending the maintenance cycle window for July 21, 2007. Our regular maintenance cycle is from 3AM to 7AM EST but due to the number of systems going online this week we are going to have to extend that window until noon EST. We will follow up with full details of the work being done but suffice to say it is significant.
If you are not familiar with our maintenance cycle activities do not worry, they are routine and they happen every week. Generally they are things you would expect – reboots to add more memory, storage, reboot for software patch installation, etc. At times there are other items such as electrical or network maintenance.
This particular weekend involves nearly all of the above plus a significant upgrade to our core infrastructure of ExchangeDefender, offsite backups and virtual servers. We’re bringing online 3 new data centers to top it off so we wanted to give ourselves more time to get everything done right.
Live at Microsoft WWPC
Dear Partners,
I (Vlad Mazek, CEO) am at the Microsoft World Wide Partner Conference this week.
I have intentionally kept Thursday completely open on my schedule and have absolutely no appointments after breakfast – so if you are interested in speaking to me just track me down and lets get together whenever you have room between meetings. I have done this last year and found it very valuable to catch up with those of you that are very busy and just can’t find time in connect to arrange for an official gettogether, or meetings get cancelled, moved, etc. So send me an email and lets meet up whenever there is time.
PBX Upgrade
You may have had a difficult time reaching us on Wednesday 6/27 and Thursday 6/28.
I have mistakenly redirected my DID to an unmonitored extension at the same time that the PBX was undergoing a software upgrade to Trixbox. This resulted to all incoming calls being routed to an unmonitored extension that didn’t even have a greeting assigned to it. I have been able to track down the voicemails and will be returning calls tomorrow on Friday, 6/29.
All other support mediums (email, web, portal) were working during this time, we did not become aware of the problem until one of our partners let me know. We’re really sorry about the inconvenience this has caused some 40 of our callers, we will match up the caller ID with the customer database and contact you all as soon as possible.
Offsite Backup Expansion Complete
The previously mentioned offsite backup work and SAN maintenance has been completed. All systems should be back to normal and performance should be back to rock solid. We will be doing some final stress testing scheduled for tonight, along with a few DR scenarios so its likely that tonight is the last night your backups get interrupted. If you do start experiencing problems with your backups on Tuesday please open up a trouble ticket and we will do our best to get to the bottom of the issues.
Thank you for your patience and sorry about the inconvenience. As mentioned before, we are crediting the month of service to all customers regardless of whether you were affected by the performance issues or not.
Growing the SAN Infrastructure
The backup SAN infrastructure scaling work has officially started, things are moving along very well. Unfortunately, the data copy and sync process is very time consuming and we expect it to take a better part of the day. We expect this move to drastically improve the performance and reliability of the offsite backup service and allow us to stack additional features that you have been asking for since we started offering this service.
We will post an update here when the upgrades have been completed.
Big Changes at Own Web Now
Dear Clients and Partners,
I wanted to take a moment to write to you about the changes that will be happening in our company in the very near future.
I first want to thank you for your business and your loyalty over the years. If you’ve been with us for a while you know of our dedication to service and delivering the services that make sense. As we embark on the next growth stage of our company, I want you to know that the same commitment to service and offerings that make sense will stay at the core of who we are and what we do.
Over the course of next 30 days we will be bringing online more ways to obtain support as well as an easier way to track, escalate and manage IT support for your business. Following that we will be publishing several training and troubleshooting systems to get you up to speed and let you take the advantage of all the services we offer. Finally, we intend to become more aggressive in our release schedule as the new Microsoft platforms launch, bringing you more applications and services that you can use without a large up-front commitment or long contracts.
What is really changing, at the core, is that until now we have been an infrastructure building company. The work that has gone into Own Web Now Corp since Jan of 2006 has been to transform it to the solution delivery organization. In plain terms that means: we will no longer only build the networks, we will focus on helping you take advantage of them.
Literally everything at Own Web Now is changing, expect more communication from me over the next month detailing all that we’ve been working on for the past 15 months. You’ll love what we have built, and we look forward to continuing down the path of offering solutions that make sense.
Sincerely,
Vlad Mazek
CEO, Own Web Now Corp
Backup Systems Maintenance
We have scheduled an emergency maintenance interval on our Offsite Backup System network for Wednesday, June 6th, 2007. We are adding new hardware, upgrading some of the software and replication systems, adding more equipment to the mix and extending the reporting functionality to offer more reporting and branding functionality to you and your clients.
The backup network will be unreachable to the public between 10 PM EST – 11 PM EST.
Furthermore, we will be moving certain users to a more scalable network storage system. Because this change affects a very small group of users and involves a more extended downtime, you will be notified directly with some contingency planning and preparation as we intend to make the move in off-peak hours during the weekend when backup activity and change management is low. While you will have the ability to retrieve data during this interval, you will not be able to store more data to it.
Thank you for your patience. Backups and proper disaster recovery planning are very important to us and we realize that the offsite component is the most important one, after all, it is the one you use for compliance and in case everything else disappears, so we’re doing all we can to make sure that data is there when you need it.