Seems Microsoft's Server software is balking at the new motherboard change and is denying remote logon attempts, so application services will be unavailable for a while.  Webmail is fine.  I will address the remote access issue by Monday, October 23 when we perform the reboot and power resilience test.

UPDATE -- As of 6:00PM October 23, ALL services are running normally.  Our mail and web mirror server is now on a better backup power source, and remote access to applications has been restored.  If you have any comments or problems, please contact us.

We are trying one last ditch effort to keep our backup server and mail services online.  We have fixed all known errors, but the system continues to randomly crash.  What's good at this point is that mail will not be lost during downtime, but I do plan to take the server offline one last time on October 17th to perform a final sanity check on the OS and all files.  Because mail in fact will not be lost, I plan to stay offline extra long to ensure the system's reliability.

UPDATE -- We have opted to rebuild the server from scratch with a new motherboard and power supply.  The system should be back online no later than October 18, 4PM Eastern.  Again, mail is being queued, and old data has not been lost.  Our application services are down, but they too will be back online tomorrow.  The system will undergo a short reboot sometime next week to test power resilience - that will be done during the late evening hours.  Thanks for your understanding and again, sorry for the inconvenience.

At 5AM Eastern this morning, I was alerted by our remote monitor that our webmail server was down; this server also handles our remote application access.  Incoming messages are being queued, and will be delivered once the server is back up.  Once I am able to get over to the server's location, I will apply some of the latest Windows security updates as well as update our mail software to the latest version.  Apologies for the inconvenience.

UPDATE - 11:30AM EST - SERVER SEEMS TO HAVE COME BACK UP ON ITS OWN, AND IS RUNNING FINE.  I WILL THEREFORE DEFER ALL UPDATES TO SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 30TH AT 6PM EASTERN.  DOWNTIME SHOULD BE LIMITED TO ABOUT 45 MINUTES.

During the hours of 7:00PM Eastern and 10:00PM Eastern, our websites were redirected to our mirror server.  Some sites were in a loop; please call or e-mail me if you or your customers could not access your site.

SEPTEMBER 14TH - SAME SYMPTOMS OCCURRED FOR AN HOUR (7:00PM EST. TO 8:00PM.  I HAVE FORCED A NEW IP ADDRESS AND EVERYTHING SEEMS OK, ALTHOUGH A BIT SLOW.

For an unknown reason, mail services were down for customers not using forwarded mail.  I have the server set to reboot upon an error condition, but it did not do so this time.  Incoming messages have been QUEUED, and anyone needing to send mail to a user on our system should try again now.

A power transformer in Union went down, affecting our servers beyond what our UPS could handle.  Downtime was limited to approximately 1 hour; customers will be compensated if necessary.   Also, during the weekend of August 29, 2006, we will perform some network upgrades.  Most services will be re-routed to our backup server, although RAVMAS services may be unavailable.

All mail through RAVMAS was unavailable from 8:30PM Eastern to 10:30PM Eastern. We apologize for the downtime.  Also, as of July 1, our message boards will no longer be utilized.

Hotmail access through RAVMAS has been intermittent this past week, and I have applied the latest module for proper operation.  Again, the access problems are due to Microsoft's Windows Live Mail beta, and any slight change in the web interface may break our gateway software, requiring another patch.  Thank you for your understanding.

As of 1:30PM Eastern, webmail is down for our clients not using forwarded mail.  Remote application access is also down.  Seems to be an environmental / power issue as both the router and server itself are not responding.  Will investigate, and hope to have the problem corrected by 3:30 PM Eastern, perhaps earlier.
UPDATE -- SERVICES RESTORED 3:05 PM EASTERN
UPDATE 2 -- SHORT DOWNTIME FROM 4:30PM, MAY 27 to 5PM DUE TO UNKNOWN PROBLEM

A failed boot drive in the server that runs our clients' webmail services was replaced this afternoon.  Webmail went down at about 8PM Eastern yesterday, and is now operational.  No mail should have been lost, but if senders got any mailer-daemon messages, please resend your mail.  Apologies for the inconvenience.

This morning, there was a problem with the router at our secondary server location, and webmail was down for a few of our clients (those not using forwarded mail).  I have sidestepped the router issue; although things are not optimal, webmail is working once again.  This weekend I will reset the router to resolve the issue.

As Microsoft is changing their Hotmail services' login procedures almost daily, the POP3 gateway is having a hard time keeping up.  Once Windows Live Mail goes full time we expect to have a stable fix.  Hotmail is WORKING as of this writing.   Also, we received a new IP address from Comcast which may help other issues. All sites and services have transitioned to the new IP address.

All connections were down earlier today (around 1:00PM-3:00PM Eastern), and there are new problems with Hotmail which we are investigating.  It may have to do with their new Windows Live Mail services.  Yahoo and AOL are still operating normally over our connection. 

I have updated the mirror server software yet again - same program, new version.  For some reason it required a reboot of BOTH servers, one of which I had to do remotely, so we were offline for about 10 minutes.  The sync schedule has also changed from a daily schedule to every TWO days to allow for changes on the main server that customers may NOT want updated to the mirror.

After noticing connection failures with Yahoo and Hotmail, we have updated the webmail-to-pop3 software on our server, and those e-mail services are working normally once again.  New changes for AOL/AIM web mail have also been added.  Please send us a note if you experience any other problems.

Our message board services are being underutilized.  I cleaned up the file paths and moved Ruggiero's Message Boards into another directory, but I plan on completely taking down the forum by July 1st if they are not used anymore (if at all).  We do and will still offer message boards to our clients, either part of a website or as a stand-alone service.

We had some short downtime between 3:00-4:00PM Eastern yesterday - all customers were notified ahead of time.  There was also a short unplanned outage between 6:45PM and 7:00PM Eastern.  During that time I updated the software that controls our mirror server synchronization, and believe I now have a perfect setup; when one of our servers go down, an update is made within 30 seconds to divert all requests to our mirror server.  Our cjb.net and re-directed/cloaked addresses take longer to update than our direct client addresses, but the whole process is nearly automatic now, and should reduce the time our servers remain inaccessible.  The only thing I cannot mirror completely is our webmail and RAVRAS/RAVMAS services, although all data related to those services is backed up weekly.   Synchronization between our servers will occur daily at 8:00AM Eastern, but I am currently running the first - and longest - sync operation.  Once both servers are synchronized completely, future updates should take only a few minutes to propagate.

This morning at around 6:30AM Eastern, I was awakened by an "alarm", but not my usual alarm clock!  It was the system on which I am running some of the mail and FTP services.  I *think* that alarm signals another kind of thermal failure, similar to what happened on our webserver last week.  Ironically, I was planning to take that system offline anyway either this evening or tomorrow to update some hardware.  Maybe the machine sensed that I wanted to take it down, and beat me to the punch!  Anyway, an update will be made here when the affected services are restored.  Meanwhile, since FTP is down, if any customers have websites which need to be updated, you can send your updated content to ME at ruggiero@4email.net or ruggieroav@gmail.com ; I will update the content on the server as soon as I receive it!

UPDATE - The Ravmas and FTP services are running normally as of 8PM Eastern.
Another period of short downtime is planned for tomorrow, March 11th, at 3:00PM Eastern

I need to update the firmware on one of our routers, and will be doing so on MARCH 2... total downtime should be limited to one or two minutes, but there may be intermittent service between 4:00PM and 5:00PM Eastern.  Additional information will be posted when the update is complete.
UPDATE, MARCH 3rd - The router update was successful and all services are running normally.

They often say that everything happens in threes, so along with (1) the server move, and (2) it's failed fan, we had a router "die" at our mirror server location.  Since that router also serves our RAVRAS machine, and the failure was not discovered for a day, some mail and application access was down for that time.  Apologies for the inconvenience.
EDIT - Mail Services were upgraded at 4:00PM Eastern today, requiring a restart of the server.  Also, all remote access services are once again fully operational

As part of our mirror server update I had to take our main server offline a few hours.  Service was intermittent after that due to a failed system fan in the main server that I have now replaced.  I was getting "thermal failures" due to this fan not working properly, causing decreased web performance, and - at one point - a complete server shutdown.   The original shutdown was actually a GOOD thing because it kept the server from overheating completely, and because it happened around 2:00 AM Eastern, many of our clients may not have noticed, unless they are in a different time zone.  While doing the hardware fix, I took the opportunity to update Windows with the latest security patches from Microsoft as well as to re-do a complete backup of both servers' content.

We had some downtime throughout the last few days that could not be helped.  I am no longer running our main server at Parcel Place, but am instead running it at our Stuyvesant Avenue location - this should yield better reliability in light of what has been happening at Parcel Place over the last few weeks.  We still have a secondary web server at a remote location to use as a backup or mirror - I'll be updating that mirror server over the next few days.

To take some load off our main webserver [which was also running FTP] I have changed the FTP services to another machine.  Usernames and passwords for FTP have not changed but you may see a slight change when logging in, especially if you have more than one account with us.  Now, all accounts are consolidated under one login.  If account consolidation took place, your username was changed to reflect the LATEST account you created with us.  For example, John Doe had two websites called WigetDesigns and CandyStore.  He had the username Wigitdesigns for the first site, and Jdoe for the second.  Now, his single login name is JDOE, and it gives access to both sites.

Our servers were down for approximately 1 hour this morning due to some ISP changes and a modem "reset"; the good news is that we should have slightly-increased bandwidth for all of our customers!  We are sorry for any inconvenience this downtime caused, but are sure this increase will benefit us.

Happy New Year!