Ares Server Migration Scheduled for March 25 & 26, 2017
February 22, 2017
Beginning Saturday, March 25, 2017 all customers hosted on our Ares 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 recently launched last year.
The migration to our next generation hosting platform will be completed in two stages:
1. Server Migration / Operating System Upgrade
Our Ares server currently uses a Linux operating system which will soon reach its end of life and must be upgraded. We will take this opportunity to migrate all customers currently hosted on our Ares server to a new, significantly more powerful server that features the latest Linux operating system.
Our new Sirius 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 will deploy our Sirius server with a similar configuration as Ares to eliminate compatibility issues at this stage.
2. Feature Additions / Server Software Upgrades
Once all customers are migrated to our new Sirius 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 108.163.173.34 to 69.27.124.150 with your DNS provider to complete the migration. This change should be made on Sunday, March 26th after your account has been copied over to the new server 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, March 25th and Sunday, March 26th while the migration occurs. We will begin at 12:00am MST on Saturday and expect it to take up to 48 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://sirius.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 during the migration at https://varialhosting.com/support/ares-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!
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