Rolling back ExchangeDefender Spooling Interval
If your mail server ever goes down, ExchangeDefender automatically spools messages for it and delivers them when the server connection is restored. Because the delivery is staggered (we don’t fire a thousand connections to your server the moment it boots up) it can take over an hour to deliver spooled messages that have been stored due to an outage that lasted over an hour.
By default, we keep these messages for an interval of five (5) days, but since we are based in the southern United States and prone to hurricanes, flash floods, tornados and other inclement weather (one DC even got hit by a earthquake this year) we tend to extend the spooling period on ExchangeDefender from June through November of each year to 14 days. Last year, in light of many of our customers in the northwest suffering from ice/snow storms, we extended this period through January.
This is a notice that our mail spooling will revert back to 5 day interval on February 1st, 2008 and we will extend it back to 14 days starting June 1st, 2008. Email spooling is an automatic low-level process, that has since been supplemented by the free ExchangeDefender LiveArchive service. The two are meant to be used in conjunction to provide full business continuity and guard against less-than-reliable Internet connections.
As usual, thank you for your business.
If you have important email to send save it for tomorrow
January 2nd, when it falls on a weekday, is the worst day of the year to send email on. From business perspective, it’s the first day of the calendar year so everyone is back and probably from more than just a few days off, some even two weeks off. From the technical side, this is also the first day of the year that IT admins come back to work, doing the tasks they do to keep the systems working, usually catching up on a few days of missed maintenance tasks.
Every year the SPAM problem gets worse. On January 2nd not only are you going to be fighting maintenance intervals that didn’t take place but also people coming back from work and catching up to days of piled up emails, where catching up means sending out even more mail. Most email servers out there are overloaded with just the SPAM problem alone, compounding a few days of email correspondence on top of it will make today the least likely day for your email message to be delivered and read.
So if you have a newsletter, a really important note, a critical deadline to meet or an important contact that you absolutely have to reach… email is not your friend on January 2nd.
Of note, ExchangeDefender is currently performing at 43% capacity (10 AM EST, -5:00 GMT)
Free Urgent Support Requests Today (VoIP Issue)
The following was posted on the NOC group site this morning:
Our VoIP provider (IAX-PSTN termination service) is performing routine maintenance on our accounts in order to port some of our numbers from third party services and telcos. We have been advised to expect outages throughout the day as their proxy servers are updated to route new numbers to us, after which we will be programming the proper DID routes in our system.
As a result, our phone systems may not be the most reliable way to reach us today, January 2nd, 2008. If you have an urgent issue, or even an issue that you would like human followup on, please post a support request at https://support.ownwebnow.com.
I understand this may be inconvenient for some of you that need to speak to us, NOW, so to bridge the gap we’ll waive charges on all Urgent cases opened in the system today only, January 2nd, 2008. If you need a callback right away open an urgent ticket with your phone number and extension we can reach you at and we will contact you promptly.
Thank you,
Vlad Mazek, MCSE
CEO, Own Web Now Corp
Wishing you a happy and prosperous 2008
Dear Clients, Partners and Friends,
On behalf of the entire team at Own Web Now Corp, from 18 data centers around the globe, I wish you the happy and prosperous 2008. January is the month in which we announce our new products and services for the calendar year and this time we have a little surprise for you!
Thank you for your business and your continued support.
Vlad Mazek, MCSE
CEO, Own Web Now Corp
ExchangeDefender Desktop Agent (Spam Monitor)
Today we proudy introduce yet another way for users to conveniently get rid of Junk Mail and still have it all stored just a mouse click away, on a network far far away. ExchangeDefender Spam Monitor is a piece of .NET 2.0 software that runs on your computer and pops up a small bubble notification letting you know how much SPAM is waiting for you. If you ignore it, it goes away in seconds, if you click on it the browser pops up and logs you right into your account so you can quickly review your SPAM and go about your day.
SPAM Monitor runs as a standalone application and consumes just 74kb of memory. Double clicking on the icon brings up the configuration window that allows you to enter your ExchangeDefender email address and password. Right clicking on the icon gives you an option to suspend the agent or View Spam. Suspending the agent stops it from checking the web site and displaying hourly message counts while View Spam menu option launches the browser and gives the user access to their account.
The agent was designed to assist users that needed a realtime, accountable way to get to their SPAM without waiting for email reports, but who didn’t want to create desktop shortcuts. We also hope this allows our resellers to support their customers in a more efficient way – “Do you see the orange box with the X on it in the lower right hand corner? Right click and select View SPAM.”
We hope this makes Howard Cunningham happy 
Holiday Hours
Our hours will not be changing during the holiday season, we are open 24/7, 365 days a year. All cases will be handled under the usual SLA but do bear in mind that most of our partners and vendors are working limited hours. So while we are here for you, some external research and service requests may take longer to complete than usual.
Have a safe and happy holiday season.
ExchangeDefender BugFix Release 3.1.1
On December 16th, 2007 we will be releasing a massive update to the ExchangeDefender policy server, to account for a number of rather unpleasant bugs that have come up as a result of changes from 2.x to 3.0 and 3.1.
Because this is a large scale upgrade with lots of changes under the hood, there may be some temporary downtime while we roll the new system out. This downtime is only going to affect the web site https://admin.exchangedefender.com but mail will continue to flow and no other systems will experience issues. We expect the outages to last a few seconds at most as we reload one system after another.
We chose to announce this on the corporate blog instead of the Network Operations site because some of these bugs have been inconveniencing many of our users and we wanted to let you know that this bulk of updates addresses all the issues that have been brought up in our portal. Specific changelog will be posted at a later date.
This release will not have any new features and the new feature releases will resume on Jan 2, 2008. We have used the past two months to correct all the outstanding issues in the system, from nagging bugs to poor documentation, and I believe you will be very pleased with the results starting next Monday.
Communications Platform Upgraded
Over the weekend we completed our communications overhaul with an upgrade to the core of our network based around Exchange 2007 and Asterisk VoIP. We have upgraded our infrastructure to Exchange 2007 Service Pack 1, Asterisk (Trixbox) to the latest stable edition and we have also added the following components: Microsoft Office Communications Server, Microsoft Responsepoint and Microsoft Livemeeting. We are also still in process of finalizing the SIP/IAX2 connectivity as we have brought another provider into the mix.
The above upgrade to our major communication systems was in order to help us connect better with you. These solutions will allow us to provide more personal and direct support, become more responsive and efficient. I hope you can be patient with us over the next day or two while the new phone numbers are programmed in and we get all our voicemails and voice prompts together.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Vlad Mazek, MCSE
CEO, Own Web Now Corp
OWN Guide for Troubleshooting ExchangeDefender Delivery
We have folks at Own Web Now that do nothing but troubleshoot ExchangeDefender delivery issues all day long and we figured we’d share in the fun. This is the first draft of the document titled Troubleshooting ExchangeDefender Delivery and is meant to help the jr administrators master the art of troubleshooting SMTP.
Covered in the document are steps to troubleshoot inbound and outbound delivery, server configuration, IP restrictions and even how to help remote senders find out where the issue may be. I have been working hard on designing a troubleshooting portal (to send sample messages, check RBLs, etc) but we thought putting the whole best practices process on paper would be very helpful an save a few trouble tickets in the process.
Take a look at it, hope you enjoy it. Feedback is always appreciated.
New ExchangeDefender Service Provider Feature: Alias Domains
One of the very basic yet missing features from ExchangeDefender has been the ability to add an alias domain to the existing ExchangeDefender account. Truth is, we used to have this feature and had to pull it from the feature set because resellers kept adding new clients domain names to the single domain login. Since domain to IP (or hostname) mappings at ExchangeDefender are 1:1, this eventually breaks and huge privacy and litigation nightmare ensues. Imagine client upon client receiving each others email for example or bouncing it outright.
Fast forward a few years and now we have actual service providers that are experts at managing customer’s messaging environments. We decided to bring the feature back and bring it into the Service Provider feature set. Just select a domain name under the Management screen and select “Add Domain Alias” – type in the new domain name you are adding to this client and you are done.
P.S. As mentioned earlier on this blog, we have had to freeze development in order to deal with some internal affairs. We have resumed development on the 10th of November so you should see the usual improvements to Own Web Now products continue as we head towards new years. If you’ve got an idea or recommendation on how to make our services better we are always listening, either submit it through the product feedback link under the Development tab at support.ownwebnow.com or through anonymous feedback portal.