In view of frequent server outage problems with our servers at the GX Networks Ltd., Manchester Bank data centre, it has been decided to upgrade to new servers at a different location. The new servers, with a higher specification, will be located within IP House, a data centre owned by Legend Communications plc. The data centre is a purpose built multi-million pound Tier 1 facility, situated on the outskirts of London Docklands, providing the ultimate in redundancy, uptime, and network colocation services. The data centre has been built utilizing N+1 design philosophy. N+1 ensures that every part of the data centre is not only redundant, but has a hot spare on standby in case of an emergency.

This initially affects the following Eqwebs Limited servers, which will be migrated to a single new server during the week commencing 24th March 2008

ns.eqwebs.com, IP 212.67.194.111
ns2.eqwebs.com, IP 212.67.194.112

The other servers at Manchester (ns4.eqwebs.com and ns5.eqwebs.com) will be migrated at a later date.

Changes for clients using the old ns.eqwebs.com and ns2.eqwebs.com servers

The old ns.eqwebs.com server has been renamed ns0.eqwebs.com and replacement server has been named ns.eqwebs.com. This has allowed for an automated changover of mail being delivered to the new server.

As from 27th March 2008 all clients using Outlook, Outlook Express or a similar program for email and having their incoming mail server set as 212.67.194.111 or 212.67.194.112 should change the incoming server (pop3) setting to 194.93.130.44. Click HERE for a screenshot.

The new mail server has Spamassasin installed and marks some of the mail it identifies as spam with (Spam?) added to the subject line of the message (Some spam messages are also deleted). In order to deal with the messages marked as (Spam?) you are advised to set up a message rule in Outlook (or Outlook Express) (Message rules are on the Tools menu) which reads as follows:-

Apply this rule after the message arrives
with 'Spam?' in the subject
move it to the Deleted Items folder

For those clients using webmail, this is accessed at the same URL, with the same username and password as previously, but Open Webmail on the old servers has been replaced with Squirrelmail. The saved mail and sent mail folders on the old servers have not been migrated to the new servers, though we have, in most cases, migrated the inbox as it was on 21st March. When you first log in to webmail on the new server (squirellmail) please go immediately to options and then under the personal information setting you should enter (as a minimum) your Full Name and your email address in the appropriate boxes and click on submit.

For those clients editing their own websites and using FTP the old host address of 212.67.194.111 or 212.67.194.112 should be changed to 194.93.130.44 and the default remote directory (previously ../../web) should also be changed to ../../../web .

For those clients publishing their websites with FrontPage, Sharepoint Services or Expression Web, your publishing settings should not be changed as they will eventually work on the new server. However when the websites were migrated they were not enabled with FrontPage server extensions and each site has to be enabled individually. We have found that each website can take up to 75 minutes to enable but most take only about 15 minutes. Even at 15 minutes per website, with 237 websites migrated, and allowing for frequent interruptions, it will take several weeks to complete enabling FrontPage server extensions on all websites. If you urgently need to update your website and get a FrontPage or Sharepoint services error please contact us to move your website up our list.