Strangecode Hosting Status

Prepare your sites for PHP 5.4.x

We will be upgrading to PHP 5.4.x on April 13th. We wanted to give you enough notice so you have time to ensure your web apps are ready to support this new version. If Strangecode built your website, you don't have anything to worry about. Otherwise, please refer to php.net's notes on Migrating from PHP 5.2.x to PHP 5.3.x and Migrating from PHP 5.3.x to PHP 5.4.x (we're currently running the latest of the 5.2.x branch, which is EOL, so this is a mandatory upgrade). Most sites should be fine with the upgrade, but if your website is running very old code you should take the recommended precautions in the above links.

Server oak ssh unresponsive

Server Oak seems to be inaccessible over ssh because of a high iowait caused by our backup system. We're rebooting this server now so we can go in an see why it was misbehaving.

UPDATE—10:43: we've restarted the server and backup process, and all is running smoothly now. We'll keep a close eye to ensure it stays smooth.

Gmail SSL Issues

In a move not communicated to its users beforehand, Gmail has decided to no longer accept self-signed certificates, causing users to choose between unencrypted downloading of messages, or no messages at all. We've updated our mail server mx.strangecode.com with a non-self-signed SSL certificate, which isn't much more secure, but makes Google happy.

If you are connecting to our mail server using SSL or TLS and are having trouble, please use the hostname mx.strangecode.com instead of mail.whateveryourdomainis.com. If you still have problems, please write to hosting@strangecode.com.

Firewall upgrade scheduled Aug 30

We will be upgrading the software and RAM of our firewall. This required maintenance is scheduled to occur between 3-4am PST early Thursday morning, and will effect all shared hosting servers. Downtime during the upgrade should be 20-30 minutes.

UPDATE—03:18 PST: Upgrades completed; downtime was limited to 10 minutes.

Balsa experiencing traffic spike

We're experiencing heavy traffic on balsa.strangecode.com; some sites may be inaccessible at the moment. We're investigating to determine the cause of the traffic and apply mitigation. Please stand by.

UPDATE 05:34—We've blocked a few IP addresses that seem to be associated with botnet activity from China at the firewall. This should help with the load. We'll continue monitoring to ensure things quiet down.

Hardware upgrade on Sunday May 13

We're taking advantage of recent advances in high-density memory technology, and will be upgrading the host hypervisor for servers Oak, Balsa, and Walnut to 64 GB of RAM. This should significantly improve performance for most websites, especially those which are database intensive.

• Sunday, May 13 at 1-2 am PST (i.e. late Saturday night)
• Anticipated downtime: 45-60 minutes
• Affected servers: Oak, Balsa, Walnut

Websites and email will be inaccessible during this time, but will promptly return to their normal working state once the servers are back online. No incoming email should be lost. Thanks for tolerating this necessary downtime, we hope you'll all be dreaming sweetly during the operation.

UPDATE—01:31 PST: Upgrades completed; all services are up and running. Now we'll spend some time tuning mysqld's configuration to take best advantage of the new memory. Things should be lightning fast when you wake up in the morning.

Reboot scheduled for 1am PST Dec 20

We're rebooting all servers 1am PST on Dec 20 for system updates. Downtime should be about 1-3 minutes.

Announcing the Strangecode Hosting Controls, our customer portal

Today we launched a shiny new management interface for our customers, the Strangecode Hosting Controls. Access it at https://control.strangecode.com/ and you can:

• view and update your account details, contact info, and payment method,
• view and manage your hosted websites,
• add new, transfer, and cancel websites,
• link to email, database and SFTP controls,
• view and pay invoices,
• open support tickets,
• and view support documents.

As always we’re available by phone and email to help you perform these tasks, yet with this site you’ll be able to do all these things on your own. We’d love your comments and suggestions, or if there are any other features you’d like to see.

Reboot scheduled for 5 Nov 2011

We'll be rebooting all servers tonight 10pm PST to install system updates. Downtime will be about 2 minutes.

Intermittent switch connectivity issues

Rackspace has informed us that one of the switches in front of our servers woke up having a bad hair day. It is having intermittent connectivity issues which seems to be affecting access to server pine (aka dev.strangecode.com). The switch will be rebooted, or replaced, to fix the problem. This will all be resolve within an hour.