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Luna Server Migration Scheduled for July 23, 2016

June 23, 2016

On Saturday, July 23, 2016 all customers hosted on our Luna server will be migrated to a new web hosting server as part of our commitment to provide all existing customers with a free upgrade to our next generation hosting platform that we launched earlier this year.

The migration to our next generation hosting platform will be completed in two stages:

1. Server Migration / Operating System Upgrade (Date: Sat, July 23 at 7am MST)

Our Luna server currently uses a Linux operating system which reaches its end of life next year and must be upgraded. We will take this opportunity to migrate all customers currently hosted on our Luna server to a new, significantly more powerful server that features the latest Linux operating system.

Our new Granger server is physically located in our new Saskatoon data center and its upgraded operating system introduces many highly requested features like TLS 1.2 encryption and the ability to install SSL certificates without the need for a dedicated IP address.

We have deployed our Granger server with a similar configuration as Luna to eliminate compatibility issues at this stage.

2. Feature Additions / Server Software Upgrades

Once all customers are migrated to our new Granger server we will gradually begin to add new features and upgrade server software to bring it inline with the feature set of our next generation hosting platform so all customers may enjoy the vast performance and security improvements our new platform offers. Customers will be notified when major features are introduced or when changes are scheduled that require customer attention.

HOW DOES THIS IMPACT ME???

If your domain names are connected to our name server addresses ns1.varialhosting.com, ns2.varialhosting.com, ns3.varialhosting.com and ns4.varialhosting.com (or our older diy-dns.com or diywebhosting.ca name servers), your migration will be fully automated and no action is required of you. Your domains will begin to resolve to the new server within 24 hours of being migrated.

If you are using a 3rd party DNS service to point your domains to our servers you must manually update your IP address from 72.55.178.69 to 69.27.124.146 to complete the migration. This change should be made immediately after your account has been copied over to the new server on Saturday, July 23rd to avoid an interruption of your service. Customers with dedicated IP addresses will be contacted with alternate instructions.

No website downtime is anticipated however we ask that you do not update your websites on Saturday, July 23rd and Sunday, July 24th while the migration occurs. We will begin at 7am MST on Saturday and expect it to take roughly 24 hours to copy all data to the new server and complete the migration for all customers.

Once your account has been migrated you may experience a delay receiving new mail until your domain is resolving to the new server. If you require urgent access to your email you can directly login to Webmail on the new server at https://granger.varialhosting.com/webmail/ to view new mail you have received until you are able to connect to your email normally. If your email accounts are connecting over SSL please accept any certificate warnings if prompted.

If you have any questions or concerns please contact us at support@varialhosting.com so we can help to ensure that your server migration will be as smooth as possible.

We will be posting updates on the day of migration at https://varialhosting.com/support/luna-migration/ if you wish to follow along with our progress.

Thank you for your attention to this matter and we hope you enjoy the many performance and security improvements coming your way!

PHP 5.6 Upgrade on Weasley Scheduled for July 10, 2016

June 15, 2016

The developers of PHP have announced their plans to discontinue the 5.5 branch of PHP on Sunday, July 10, 2016.

On this date we will upgrade the default version of PHP on our next generation hosting platform (Weasley server) to PHP’s 5.6 branch.

While most existing PHP code should work without changes under PHP 5.6, information on its new features and compatibility considerations can be found at: http://php.net/manual/en/migration56.php

In addition to our default version of PHP, please note that alternate versions of PHP 5.2, 5.3, 5.4, 5.5, 5.6 and 7.0 are available for customers to switch to if your website code requires an older version of PHP or you would like to test your website using the latest versions.

Information on how to change your PHP version can be found at: https://varialhosting.com/support/faq/hosting/#changephp

 

 

Varial to Sponsor MoSo Conference, June 16-18 in Saskatoon

June 9, 2016

MoSo Conference is just one week away and we are thrilled to be the web hosting sponsor of the event for the fourth year in a row!

MoSo is a tech conference and indie music festival taking place in Saskatoon from June 16-18.

This year’s speakers include:

  • Buffy Sainte-Marie
  • Saadia Muzaffar (TechGirls Canada)
  • Lisa Charleyboy (Urban Native Magazine)
  • Jessica Walsh (Sagmeister & Walsh)
  • Jesse Brown (Canadaland)
  • Terry O’Reilly (CBC Under the Influence)
  • Dioselin Gonzalez (Unity Labs)
  • Sam Sheffer (Mashable)
  • And over 50 touring and local bands!

We hope to see you there!

Apollo Server Shutdown Notice

June 6, 2016

Now that the migration of all customers from our Apollo server to our new Granger server has been completed we are making plans to shutdown and decommission our old Apollo server.

On Monday, June 20, 2016 we will stop all services that are running on our Apollo server.

If you are using a 3rd party DNS service to point your domains to our servers and have not yet updated your IP address from 64.15.130.247 to 69.27.124.146 to complete the migration, your service will cease to function on this date until this change is made. Similarly any attempts to directly connect to Apollo’s IP address 64.15.130.247 will no longer function.

All data will be wiped from the server one week later on Monday, June 27th when Apollo is fully taken out of service.

 

Apollo Server Migration Progress

June 4, 2016

The transfer of all customers from our Apollo server to our new Granger server has been completed.

If your domain names are connected to our name server addresses ns1.varialhosting.com, ns2.varialhosting.com, ns3.varialhosting.com and ns4.varialhosting.com (or our older diy-dns.com or diywebhosting.ca name servers), your migration was fully automated and no action is required of you. Your domains will begin to resolve to the new server within 24 hours.

If you are using a 3rd party DNS service to point your domains to our servers you must manually update your IP address from 64.15.130.247 to 69.27.124.146 to complete the migration. This change should be made immediately to avoid an interruption of your service. Customers with dedicated IP addresses have been contacted with alternate instructions.

Over the coming weeks we will begin to add many exciting new features to bring our Granger server inline with the feature set of our next generation hosting platform.

If you have any questions or concerns please contact us at support@varialhosting.com for assistance.

 

Celebrating our 13th Anniversary with a Sale on Domains and Hosting

June 1, 2016

Today marks our 13th anniversary so we are celebrating with a sale and a look back at the amazing year we’ve had!

Our next generation hosting platform and optimized WordPress hosting plans were launched with great success in February and hundreds of customers are now enjoying the huge performance and security improvements our new platform offers.

Not only does our next generation platform include server side caching, a content delivery network and automatic WordPress upgrades, but we’ve even opened a second data center location in our hometown of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada to house all of our new servers.

So what’s in store for the rest of the year?

We have committed to providing all existing customers with a free upgrade to our next generation hosting platform and will be migrating customers to new servers, beginning with our Apollo server this weekend and completing for all customers this fall.

We also plan to extend our server side cache to support other popular web applications and will closely integrate our billing website and customer control panel to create a more unified experience.

With the sales pitch out of the way, here’s what you really came here for — a bargain!

Over the month of June we are offering a recurring 10% discount on domain names and any of our hosting plans when ordering using the coupon code LUCKY13.

Click here to save 10% on your order!