New .ASIA domain promotion

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New .ASIA domain promotion Posted: 29 Oct 2012 10:08 AM PDT Starting on November 1 and continuing through to the end of the year, .ASIA domains will be on sale at a registry cost of just $1.99. Considering the usual registry cost for .ASIA is $10, it’s a pretty great deal. Like most OpenSRS promotions, you’ll need to sign up to take advantage of the savings and do a little promotion of .ASIA domains. That can be done with something like a banner on your website, or through an email to your customers. Sign up here. Continuing Promotions We have a few other promos still ongoing as well – .MOBI, .INFO and .PRO are all on sale, as is .ORG. You can always view current promotions on our website.

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OpenSRS Help & Support

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OpenSRS Help & Support Posted: 22 Oct 2012 07:50 AM PDT If you’ve opened a ticket with us in the past week or so, then you’ve probably already noticed something new. We recently transitioned to a new platform for OpenSRS Help and Support. The cutover went quite smoothly. The new ticket system for Reseller Support offers some great new things for you – ticket history, the ability to view and update tickets via the web (and on mobile devices), and a clean new look and feel. New Forums, Knowledge Bases and Announcements Sections Along with the new ticketing system comes new Community Forums, Knowledge Bases and Announcements sections. The new forums are integrated into the ticketing system now and we have the ability to promote forum posts into tickets when it makes sense. Our goal is to give you more support options – email, phone, public forums, Twitter, Facebook, etc. You’ll also note a new “Feature Requests” forum. This one operates a bit differently and allows you to make a request for something you’d like to see from OpenSRS, and vote on requests that have been made. We don’t promise to add every new feature that’s requested, but we do pledge to consider each and every one thoughtfully. It’s visible only when you are logged in to the OpenSRS Help & Support site. The Knowledge Bases (for services and integration) are a bit on the empty side right now, but we’ll be filling those up with articles and content over the next few weeks. Feel free to suggest articles to us. We expect this to become a significant resource for our Resellers and it’s something we’ve wanted to provide for a long time. We’ve created an Announcements section as well. That will be home to things like Incident Reports, service release notes, Maintenance notifications, support updates (like holiday hours) and any other bits of info we need to pass along to you. Some of these areas are only visible to logged in users. A couple of notes You’ll have to create a new login for OpenSRS Help & Support. We’re working on integrating your Reseller account login with this support site, but until we have support on the OpenSRS side for multiple logins for a single Reseller account (coming soon!), we’re going to keep things separate. Those of you who already had forum accounts, sorry…you’ll need to create a new account (which will also function as your Reseller Support account). We’ve shut off posting on the old forums, but we’ll leave that content up in a “read-only” state for now in case you want to reference anything. Take a look! We invite you to head over and create an account today. Please feel free to provide any feedback in the General forum – we’re committed to making this a great resource site for you. Let us know what works and what doesn’t and provide us with suggestions on Knowledge Base articles and other ways we can provide better support.

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OpenSRS Email Cluster B Migration Update – October 19

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OpenSRS Email Cluster B Migration Update – October 19 Posted: 19 Oct 2012 11:43 AM PDT The migration of customer mailboxes off the troubled storage infrastructure to the new NAS clusters continues as expected. We’re pleased to report that the migration of customer mailboxes from the specific head that was causing the issues on Email Cluster B is nearly complete, within the expected timeframe noted in our previous update. A very small percentage (~5%) of customer mailboxes remain and we expect that migration to be completed shortly. Migrations of remaining customer mailboxes to the new storage infrastructure will begin immediately following. Those mailboxes represent 55% of the total mailboxes which were stored on the troubled infrastructure, but all of these mailboxes are stored on the “good” head that hasn’t been the cause of any issues. The timeline for the completion of the full migration of customer mailboxes onto the new hardware remains the same – early to mid-November. We’ll have a further update within 7 to 10 days, or as milestones are reached.

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Take your business global because that is where the market is going

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Take your business global because that is where the market is going Posted: 18 Oct 2012 08:52 AM PDT Editor’s Note: This is the latest in a series of guest posts by Phil Shih, founder of Structure Research. The hosting business has shown exemplary growth since its inception in the 90s. Surging Internet adoption and the larger shift to communicating, collaborating and conducting business online guaranteed that hosters would have plenty of addressable market. The shift to outsourcing infrastructure rather than housing it on-premise was another key driver. The market is still healthy. There continue to be businesses that need an online presence and there are plenty of organizations that use hosting for email or document management or lease servers to run applications or archive files. But it is also fair to say that the low-hanging fruit is not as plentiful as it once was. Having a personal website is still something people want to use hosting for but there are other outlets now. Facebook is perhaps the best example of a plausible alternative to web hosting and there is no shortage of free hosting services that similarly attract customers previously targeted by hosters. Maturation can mean shrinkage The fact is that as an industry grows and matures competition tightens and the total addressable market tends to shrink. To frame the problem at its core: with less new Internet adopters and growing numbers of outsourced hosting users along with more alternatives there are less people and businesses for hosters to sell to. There are plenty of ways for hosters to address this dilemma. They can move up-market into other infrastructure services or add value around the domain name, hosting and email "triple play". But it is imperative that hosters start looking at easy ways to expand their total addressable market and the most logical thing is to start moving into emerging markets. In places like Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, China, Indonesia and Russia – to name a few – the Internet is just starting to take off and there is a huge untapped market of users that is moving online. They represent prime candidates for business-class domain names, hosting and email. Check the facts Consider some of the numbers. In VeriSign's last domain industry brief, Brazil and China were among the three fastest-growing ccTLDs on a q/q basis. In that same period total ccTLD registrations were up 5.4% q/q. Takeaway? There is clearly new and accelerating Internet adoption coming from all corners of the world and many of them can be found in emerging markets. Contrary to common perception moving into new markets is also not hard to do. It certainly is not as hard as it was even five years ago. Country-code top-level domains are readily available on a wholesale basis and setting up a small hosting operation is as easy as leasing a few servers or taking down a small colocation suite. Automation, remote management and software portability make location a relatively minor issue. The main challenge for the hoster will be to hire some local language support staff, which is plentiful and easy to find in emerging markets at an affordable cost. Still a healthy sector It is worth reiterating: the hosting sector is healthy and continues to grow even in the most mature markets. While things are getting tougher there is still plenty of runway and upside. The tailwinds behind the sector are favourable. But as the market continues to mature hosters would be wise to start looking for opportunities that offset the structural challenges that will have an increasing impact over time. Hedging your bets and expanding addressable market is the path to long-term success. Take advantage of the fact the Internet is borderless and take your hosting business global.

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OpenSRS Email Cluster B Migration Update

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OpenSRS Email Cluster B Migration Update Posted: 11 Oct 2012 12:54 PM PDT We want to provide an update on our effort to restore the level of service that you and your customers had become accustomed to prior to the recent outages affecting OpenSRS Email Cluster B. As mentioned in the Incident Report for the latest degradation of service, we've begun moving customer mailboxes off the troubled storage infrastructure and onto the new hardware (NAS). Current Migration Status: At this point, about 20% of the total customer mailboxes that were on the troubled storage infrastructure have been moved over to the new NAS cluster(s). When you count only customer mailboxes located on the specific head that was failing and causing the degradation of service, that percentage of customer mailboxes moved is about 40%. We're focused on first moving all customer mailboxes on the head that was specifically causing all the issues. Once those customer mailboxes are moved, we'll continue with customer mailboxes located on the other head. It's worth noting that all new accounts are being provisioned directly onto the new NAS hardware. Next Steps: We're continuing to migrate the remaining customer mailboxes off the affected hardware as quickly as possible. Those migrations are being done in a very measured way to ensure that we maintain the high level of service and availability that we aim to provide. The speed at which we can migrate customer mailboxes is dictated by the load on the Cluster at any given time. We're throttling the migration process to move customer mailboxes as quickly as possible, with as little risk as possible. Additional hardware to create two further NAS clusters has now been installed and is ready to enter service. Once the first NAS cluster is at capacity, we'll begin migrating customer mailboxes to the second NAS cluster, followed by the third, as each NAS cluster is filled to approximately 40% of the rated capacity (what we consider "full"). It's important to note that as we move customer mailboxes off the troubled hardware, we also reduce the overall load on it. We expect that the decrease in load on the troubled storage infrastructure will lead to improved reliability for those customer mailboxes still on that storage system. Migrations of customer mailboxes will continue over the coming weeks. We estimate that all customer mailboxes will be migrated off the older hardware sometime late next week (October 18-20). The remaining customer mailboxes on the other head will be moved off after that and we estimate all customer mailboxes will be off the problematic hardware sometime in early to mid-November. We'll provide further updates on our progress until we have all customer mailboxes migrated. Our aim is to keep you in the loop with posts at least every week to ten days and as we reach significant milestones.

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New webmail arrives for all users on November 8, 2012

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New webmail arrives for all users on November 8, 2012 Posted: 10 Oct 2012 12:11 PM PDT On Thursday, November 8, 2012, the new webmail application that has been in preview for the past few months will become the default webmail application for all users. The current webmail application will be unavailable after that date – all users will see the new webmail only. If you haven’t spent any time with the new webmail, now would be a good time to familiarize yourself (and your support staff) with some of the new features and the new look and feel. Your users have likely been checking out the new webmail which has been available to them as a preview since July. If you had disabled the preview mode through the Branding Tool, we strongly suggest that you enable it for your users so they can become familiar with the new webmail prior to the cutover. New webmail features: New look and feel – we’ve updated the default theme to be more modern and useable. This includes a change to a tabbed interface for things like calendar, file storage and settings. Improved performance – we’ve done a lot of work around making webmail faster and more responsive. Users should notice an increase in overall speed, especially those on dial-up, wireless or slower broadband connections. More complete release notes with details on everything that is new or updated can be found here. If you have any questions or concerns about the switchover, or about the new webmail application, don’t hesitate to contact Reseller Support. You can also ask questions in the OpenSRS Forum.

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October means savings on .CA and .ORG domains

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October means savings on .CA and .ORG domains Posted: 09 Oct 2012 07:22 AM PDT Can you believe that October is here already? Summer in Canada, home to OpenSRS HQ, is pretty much over and thoughts have turned to getting ready for another winter. But on the bright side, the change of season also means a pair of new domain promotions to tell you about. First up is a great promotion on .CA domains. We’re slashing the cost for .CA registrations to just $10 throughout the month of October (compared to the usual cost of $14). And, as a special bonus for our Canadian resellers, we’ll knock another $1.50 off if you are based in Canada. Also on sale starting October 1 are .ORG domains. We’re taking $2.00 off the registry cost on new .ORG registrations through to the end of the year. You can read more about the terms of both promotions on our promotions signup page. Like most OpenSRS pricing offers, you’ll need to sign up to take advantage of the savings and we’ll pay out in the form of a rebate into your reseller account in the month following.

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Holiday Hours for Canadian Thanksgiving, October 8, 2012

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Holiday Hours for Canadian Thanksgiving, October 8, 2012 Posted: 01 Oct 2012 08:19 AM PDT Monday, October 8 is Thanksgiving Day in Canada. Given that our headquarters is also in Canada (Toronto, to be precise), most of us have the day off. Like the American Thanksgiving Day, we’ll be spending the day overeating and watching Canadian football. We have no idea what is happening in this photo, but it’s of some Canadian Football League players. For the record, the Edmonton Eskimos stink and the team is really named the Eskimos. We’ve never really explained what Canadian football is so here’s a quick guide for those not in the know. The game is relatively similar to American football, and nothing at all like the football the rest of the world plays (aka soccer). Some key differences in the far superior Canadian game – there are only three downs, the field is 110 yards long with 25 yard end zones and, of course, rouges. The rouge, or single point, is a cleverly Canadian innovation. We don’t like to call out failure, so even if a team misses a field goal, as long as the ball gets over the goal line into the monstrous end zone, they can still score a single point by preventing the receiving team from running the ball out of their own end zone. Even our crappy kickers can still score a single point – no need to apologize (although, obviously, they would still say sorry to the rest of the team, and the rest of the team would then say sorry for not putting the ball in a better position for the kicker to make the field goal). Sorry about the length of that explanation…here’s the info you really came here for: Hours by department: Our Technical Support team continues to be available 24/7 to assist you. Department Dates and Hours Reseller Support Regular hours Payments Email support: payments@opensrs.org Compliance Closed October 8th (Monday) Service Bureau (for transactions requiring manual processing) Closed October 8th (Monday) Our normal hours will resume on Tuesday, October 9.

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