Comfy Computing

Update

2009-05-02T13:18:00.002+01:00

Since my last post in December last year my monitoring of servers and websites has shown that one server affecting one client was down for 20 minutes on one day, between 4.10 and 4.30 am. Otherwise the whole system has worked without faults all year to date!

HiTech Hosting.

2008-12-23T06:46:00.004Z

All systems have performed 100 per cent this week.
We are still evaluating a supplier in depth for a hitech option for technically minded clients. Thus far we have pleased with the reults and we hope to be able to offer an advanced set of features for websites and e-mail. More in the New Year.
A Happy Christmas to you all.

Update

2008-12-10T23:25:00.003Z

The switch to new servers by one of my upstream suppliers has settled down after around one day of occasional inability tp connect, and all now seems OK.
I have identified a possible supplier as an alternative and I am evaluating them in depth. If all works well I will be contacting clients on an individual basis to offer an upgraded service at the same cost.

Server 20 Clients Only

2008-12-02T04:45:00.002Z

I am pleased to report that all accounts on this troublesome little server have been successfully switched to shiny new servers and so we should now be back to 100% e-mail efficiency.
I should like to thank clients for their forbearance. My "wholesalers" have said that theeir primary consideration was to ensure that no data was lost over the problems. Websites all worked 100% and no e-mails have been lost although they had to shut down access to e-mails and to the ability to update sites.

I am however taking a step back to revisit the question of alternative suppliers and strategies to minimise problems in the future.

Again thanks for your forbearance.

Website Updates

2008-11-17T09:37:00.002Z

All client websites and e-mail facilities working OK
New Website for Comfy Computing Ltd being tested.
I will post Progress reports on this blog.

Our new website: a progress report

2008-11-10T22:03:00.002Z

We have made good progress on setting up this website using a "Content Management System" but there is a good deal of work to be done before it can be officially declared open. There is a link on www.comfycomputing.com at the moment, but apart from contact details there is a woeful lack of information. (No change there then)

We are racking our brains for a snazzy slogan. Suggestions welcome. Discarded Candidate is
"It's not as bad as you think" as it looks as though it alludes to the website.
Our latest attempt is "Putting you in charge of your PC" but we need to do a little more brainstorming.

More progress details later. It's getting past the hour when sensible prose can be produced.

Update

2008-11-09T13:19:00.001Z

All E-mail and servers are working 100%

The Comfy Computing main website is being upgraded but no clients are affected at all.

2008-11-04T13:32:00.000Z

A few problems on some e-mails today. Sorry
Time
11:06 Tue 4 Nov 2008
Services Affected
Server 20
Details
Server 20 is currently experiencing a loss of connectivity; our engineers are aware of the problem and expect to have the issue resolved shortly.

E-Mail problem resolved.

2008-09-28T10:31:00.001+01:00

The problem regarding duplication of e-mail has been resolved. Apologies to those affected.

Duplications of e-mail

2008-09-26T11:53:00.000+01:00

From my server maintainer
10 am Friday 26th September

We are aware of an intermittent issue occurring on our mail server cluster, the symptoms of which are multiple copies of some emails are created in users' mailboxes. Our engineers have isolated the issue, the background to which is that on occasions our server message filters (for virus/spam scanning) create a looping process which results in scanning times for some emails being dramatically increased. As a guideline a typical message will be scanned by our spam and virus filters in fractions of seconds, in the issue condition messages can take 200+ seconds to scan, resulting in the remote SMTP server presuming the connection has been dropped and re-sending the message again. Because our cluster has not dropped the original connection (it is just taking a long time to scan it), both the original and any resent mail by the remote server are transferred to the users mailbox, resulting in the appearance of messages being duplicated. As mentioned, our engineers have now isolated this issue and we are giving full attention to putting a fix in place, which we hope to have applied across our mail platform within the next 48 hours. In the meantime we apologise for any inconvenience caused by this issue and ask you to bear with us until resolved.

A Good August

2008-09-08T05:33:00.002+01:00

During August I am pleased to report website availability for my servers has again been 100%
Also all facilities are currently working.

Follow Up on E-mails

2008-08-29T16:38:00.002+01:00

Emails you send out out may be subject to slight delays whilst server capacity is being increased. They will not be lost, and the situation should be back to normal by 1800gmt. I will post again if this is not the case.

Outgoing Mail

2008-08-29T16:33:00.000+01:00

This aappears to be delayed: I will look into it and post another update
Websites and incoming mail are all fine.

Website Updates

2008-08-15T07:40:00.000+01:00

At the moment my website is running using Joomla, a content management system.
Joomla has been upgraded recently and the new version contains many improvements.

I am therefore upgrading the site but this is a major undertaking. So, over the next couple of weeks the website will occasionally be unavailable. However, there will be a link available to this blog at any time the website is being upgraded.

Hello

2008-08-09T14:25:00.000+01:00

Hello from Comfy Computing. I have created this blog as a sort of noticeboard where clients can check if there are any technical problems with the services I provide.

These are mainly e-mail and website services. Obviously I would like to be able to say everything is 100% for 365 days a year.

But if anything is wrong I intend using this blog. I am using Blogger (A Google Owned Sevice) as it would obviously be a bit silly to have the blog on my own server.

I am pleased to say at the moment the situation is

E-Mails 100% working
Websites 100% working