X10 Hosting Notifications

[ajayesh]

Hi,

First of all let me congratulate on an awesome hosting service.

But there is a major improvement required in the notification system (especially regarding service alerts and upgrades).

My sites went offline on the last week of Jan and came up this week.

Apparently a patch was required in the config files to reflect the clustering of database servers on X10.

My purpose for this thread is to provide a basic suggestion which is used in most corporates:

A notification to all users who login to their CPanel or account panel with the following details:

Activity to be undertaken, Period of Activity, Impact (possible as well as assessed), Workarounds required, Stable from Date (post-testing) and userbase/applications affected.

For example for the MySQL server clustering activity, the notification would look like this:

Activity - MySQL clustering
Period - 25th Jan 12PM GMT - 1st Feb 12PM GMT
Impact - MySQL DB's on all MySQL DB Servers (Name - XXX, YYY, ZZZ)
Workaround - Patch all configs and change DB host name to localhost.
Stable from - Estimated - 2nd Feb 12PM GMT
UserBase - All users on the DB server (Name - XXX, YYY, ZZZ) and applications using MySQL db.

This would give users a heads-up regarding problems and possible issues. Its a simple notification and should be a cinch to implement using CPanel.

PS: Have been in the Risk mgmt/Compliance field for ages. So the above is like basic Change mgmt process.

Thanks and kind regards,
Ajayesh

 

[jtwhite]

The administrators do post the problems. You can find them in one of two places:

• http://forums.x10hosting.com/news-announcements/
• http://status.x10hosting.com

 

[yjjzjw]

Thank notice

 

[joejv4]

The new status site is nice, however, when the Service Alerts forum was the means of communication, I always received an email because I subscribed to that forum, now I have to specifically browse the service status page to see if there is anything underway that I might need to be aware of.

Aside from the RSS feed which requires me to have either google reader or iGoogle up and running, is there any way to sign up for a mailing list or something so that I am emailed when there is a service change/alert/notification? While I may not necessarily have a browser open to receive notification via RSS, I always have my gmail notifier up and running.

 

[changc]

The new status site is nice, however, when the Service Alerts forum was the means of communication, I always received an email because I subscribed to that forum, now I have to specifically browse the service status page to see if there is anything underway that I might need to be aware of.

Aside from the RSS feed which requires me to have either google reader or iGoogle up and running, is there any way to sign up for a mailing list or something so that I am emailed when there is a service change/alert/notification? While I may not necessarily have a browser open to receive notification via RSS, I always have my gmail notifier up and running.

In both Firefox and IE, there are options to subscribe to Feeds/have feeds as bookmarks. You do not need a separate feed reader to do so.

Firefox: click on the RSS icon on the far right side of the address bar.Then there should be some options from there.

Internet Explorer: There is an RSS button on tthe right side of the tab bar. Click that, and then add it the same way you normally would for any bookmark.

 

[masshuu]

everyone is required to login to the forums once a month. If you want service announcements, spend 5 minutes read them every night before you go to bed. The staff usually does a good job of making a post 24 hours before they do anything major.

my site when i had it on the free servers was at least worth 5 minutes a night checking

 

[xav0989]

And for the changes (for instance the localhost change), it has been announced in the free hosting support section of the website.

 

[mc se7en]

In both Firefox and IE, there are options to subscribe to Feeds/have feeds as bookmarks. You do not need a separate feed reader to do so.

Firefox: click on the RSS icon on the far right side of the address bar.Then there should be some options from there.

Internet Explorer: There is an RSS button on tthe right side of the tab bar. Click that, and then add it the same way you normally would for any bookmark.

Safari as well.

Here's a cool trick for Mac users: subscribe to the RSS feed of status.x10hosting.com in Mail. Click the RSS button in the address bar and then on the right side, click "Subscribe in Mail." Every time there's a new post, it will come in like an email to the RSS box, and you can even set it to show up in your inbox instead.

If you don't have a Mac, I'm pretty sure Thunderbird can do this as well, but I'm not sure about other clients like Outlook.