I’m pleased to be able to say that the Zimbra server move went without a hitch, and both servers were back up and running in their new home shortly after 2:40am.

This is a reminder that, following our announcement a couple of weeks ago,  our two Zimbra servers will need to be moved to a new site, starting at midnight tonight. During this time, the servers will be down for up to 3 hours. Any inbound mail during this time will be queued on our other servers and forwarded on to the Zimbra servers as soon as they’re back up and running. The Zimbra servers will change IP address, but will remain within the 85.119.248 range. Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience caused by this.

As part of our network upgrade plans, our two Zimbra servers will need to be moved to a new site. We have scheduled this work to happen at midnight Thursday 25/Friday 26 February. During this time, the servers will be down for up to 3 hours. Any inbound mail during this time will be queued on our other servers and forwarded on to the Zimbra servers as soon as they’re back up and running. The Zimbra servers will change IP address, but will remain within the 85.119.248 range. Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience caused by this.

Over the next 4-8 weeks, we will be making some changes to the network that will involve some IP address changes. These should go pretty much unnoticed by all end-users. However, with all such things, there is an increased risk of problems.

One area that will require some end-user action is for customers with SMTP feeds who have firewalled their servers to a specific IP address. We would ask that if this is the case for you or your customers, that you change your firewall settings to allow SMTP connections to your server(s) from 85.119.248.* – i.e. The whole of the 85.119.248 network. This will ensure that connectivity is not lost when we move your mail feed to a server with a different IP address, and will ensure that the backup procedures that we currently have in place will work effectively.

We will be making an attempt to identify all servers that might be affected and will notify you accordingly, and your prompt action would be appreciated to allow us to make the changes as quickly as possible without causing any disruption.

On Thursday Feb 4th, at approx 20:00hrs GMT, we will be moving MessageBunker to a new, faster and even more secure home. During this time, there will be an outage to the service for approximately two hours. As part of this move, some IP addresses will also change.

How will this affect you or your customers? In theory, not at all. Once MessageBunker is up and running at its new site, it will carry on exactly where it left off archiving your mail. If, however, you have a firewall rule in place to allow MessageBunker access to your mail server, then you may need to adjust this rule. Please allow access to 85.119.249.* – i.e. The entire 85.119.249 network. This will allow for any future changes, so we won’t need to bother you about this again.

Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience this may cause, and for the short notice.

We’ve just experienced a brief outage of the network, which was caused by some finger trouble on my part. Please accept our sincere apologies for any inconvenience caused to you and your customers by this.

We have had a problem today with mail queues building up on one of our inbound servers. This started just after 14:00 and has just been fixed, and was caused by a rogue message with invalid characters in the header causing our software to crash. I’ve removed this message, and things are rapidly returning to normal. Later on tonight I will be trying to fix the code so that such a problem cannot recur in the future.

Happy Christmas to all, and apologies for any delays caused in your Christmas mail…

As stated by the Chancellor in his Pre-Budget Report  on 9th December, the standard rate of VAT will return to 17.5% on January 1st 2010. We are therefore updating our invoicing and payment platforms to reflect this.

If you currently pay for services from The Very Good Email Company, such as Faxtastic, or any of our other email services, through Worldpay you will receive an update directly from them advising you of the amount to be paid. You will need to do nothing and changes in charges we make will take effect from midnight on December 31st.

On a happier note we hope you have a wonderful Christmas and New Year!