Category: 1&1


I wasn’t going mad yesterday. My OneAndOne (1&1) hosted domains really did disappear from the web.

Seems they had some sort of DNS ‘overload’ problem – response to my support call yesterday:

“Thank you for contacting us.

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience that this had caused you. DNS propagation for domains has been interrupted due to overload on the system which resulted to an intermittent on the connection for the Website and emails of the domains. Our system specialists have resolved the concern and have monitored this case to avoid future downtime of service. Thank you so much for your patience while we have worked on the resolution.

If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact us.”

Although 1&1 took longer than they predicted to move my server between data centres, it all seems to be up and running.
I have had this dedicated server for around 4 years now (largely without incident) so am relieved that its up and running again.
Had a few comments from readers recommending that I ditch 1&1 but in my opinion as long as you don’t need technical support the service is ok.

Thank you for contacting us.

The server will be physically moved to a new segment in our datacenter.

If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact us.

So I email 1&1 server team and ask what a ‘hardware realignment’ involved and this is the rubbish I get back:

“Thank you for contacting us.

Server realignments are done to ensure that we are able to maintain the
quality of our network infrastructure and that you continue to have the
same experience that you have come to expect from us. A decision that a
server realignment to be done is not something that is decided upon
lightly. We always try to keep any downtime as low as possible. We
sincerely apologize for any inconvenience that this caused to you.

If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact us.”

Sheesh.
A whole bunch of words that don’t actually say anything.

Good grief. I have just received this email from my server hosting company 1&1.

“Please be advised that we will need to briefly shut down your server
while technicians perform an internal hardware realignment.

The realignment will be performed overnight on 09 March 2009. Our
technicians will begin at 11:00 PM and finish by 5:00 AM the next
morning. Your server will not be accessible for up to
three hours during this time.

If you have made any changes to your system in the past, please
reboot your system at least once prior to 09 March 2009. We
recommend this step to ensure your system will reboot properly
after the realignment.

Your data will not be affected by the move. However, as a
precautionary measure, we strongly recommend that you back up
your data and server settings before 09 March 2009.

You may find it useful to post a notice on your website telling
visitors or to inform web-based application users that your site or
service will be unavailable during this time.

If you have any questions or concerns before or after this process,
please contact our server team directly”

What on earth does an “internal hardware realignment” mean ?
Needless to say I have emailed them to tell them not to touch my server until I know exactly what they intend to do.

Has anyone else had their hardware realigned by 1&1 ?