Web Wiz Network Announcements

New Service; Website Anti-Virus Scanning

19 June 2018, in Shared Hosting

We are launching a new service for Shared Hosting Customers that will each night scan their websites for viruses and malware.

If a virus or malware is found you will receive an email letting you know that the website is infected.

If you login to your Hosting Control Panel and view the website settings you will find a new tab for 'Anti-Virus'. Under this tab you can see which files on your website are infected. You can also run a manual scan from this tab to check your website is clean of any viruses once you have removed the infected files.

Start Date: 18th June 2018

Anti-Virus Software:
We are using ClamAV for scanning websites for Viruses as ClamAV is one of the only Anti-Virus scanners that detects malware in website files. Additional signatures from Malware Experts, who create signatures to detect malware in PHP files, are also used when scanning websites.

Reason:

Website that are infected with malware are often used as part of a Botnet to launch DDoS attacks, hacking attacks, email spamming, fake banking pages to scam people, and many other unpleasant activities.

Often the first a website owner knows their website is being used maliciously is when browsers such as Chrome block access to their websites.

WordPress Website Owners:

Most malware infected websites are WordPress websites. As WordPress is very popular hackers write bots that search out websites running out of date versions of WordPress to infect. It this therefore important that if you run a WordPress website that you check weekly for any updates to WordPress.

Cloud Server Windows Server Updates - June 2018

13 June 2018, in Managed Cloud Servers

We will be carrying out Windows Updates to Managed Cloud Servers during the times set out below.

Start of work - At Risk period:

Start Date: 13th June 2018

End of work - At Risk period:

Risk End Date: 14 June 2018

Times work will be carried out:

Start Time: 05:00

End Time: 9:00

Service Impact:

Servers will need to be rebooted after updates are applied.

Reason:

Microsoft release Windows updates and patches on the second Tuesday of each month. These updates fix security vulnerabilities, performance and other issues.

After testing the latest updates we roll out Windows updates to all Managed Cloud Servers during off-peak times.

Shared Hosting Windows Updates - June 2018

13 June 2018, in Shared Hosting

We will be carrying out Windows Updates to our Windows Shared Hosting Servers during the times set out below.

As well as the usual Windows patches we will also be upgrading SQL Server 2016 Database Servers to SQL Server 2017.

Start of work - At Risk period:

Start Date: 13th June 2018

End of work - At Risk period:

Risk End Date: 14 June 2018

Times work will be carried out:

Start Time: 05:00

End Time: 9:00

Service Impact:

Servers will need to be rebooted after updates are applied.

Reason:

Microsoft release Windows Servers patches on the second Tuesday of each month. These updates fix security vulnerabilities, performance and other issues.

After testing the latest updates we roll out Windows updates to all our Windows Shared Hosting Servers during off-peak times.

UPS and Generator Load Test

30 May 2018, in Data Centre, Network

As part of Web Wiz planned and preventative maintenance regime we will be carrying out load testing on the UPS and Generator Systems at our Poole Data Centre.

During the 20 minute test period the UPS systems will take the full load of the Data Hall while the Neutral Gas powered 3 Phase Standby Generator comes online and the Automatic Transfer Switch moves the facility from Mains Utility Power to Generator Power.

Once the load testing is complete power to our facility will return to Mains Utility Power.

At Risk period:

Start Date: 1st June 2018

Times work will be carried out:

Start Time: 08:00

End Time: 08:20

Service Impact:

No impact to services is expected.

Reason:

This maintenance is essential to ensure that the UPS, Generator and Switching systems work as intended and are able to provide power to our Poole Data Centre in the unlikely event of a Mains Utility Power Outage.

Migration of Servers to new Poole Data Centre

17 May 2018, in Network, Shared Hosting, Managed Cloud Servers, Cloud Servers

We have recently completed our new Poole Data Centre located at our headquarters in Poole, Dorset, UK. You can read more about our new Poole Data Centre at https://blogs.webwiz.net/web-wiz-new-poole-data-centre_post2191.html

Between now and the end if June we will be migrating all servers located at the C4L Bournemouth Data Centre over to our new Poole Data Centre.

Start of work - At Risk period:

Start Date: 17th May

End of work - At Risk period:

Risk End Date: 31st May

Service Impact:

We have already mirrored all Shared Hosting and Cloud Servers to our new Data Centre using Point-to-point dedicated connection between the two Data Centres. Migration will only require two reboots of each server causing two short outages lasting less than 2 minutes each time.

Dedicated Servers and Co-located Servers will have around 20 to 30 minute outage while servers are moved a short distance between the two Data Centres. We will be contacting these customers directly to let them know when their servers will be moved.

Update 30 May 2018

Migration to our new Poole Data Centre is now complete