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LiquidSix Hosting Newsletter Sep 2014
Posted by Paul Woodland on 24 September 2014 07:21 PM

Welcome to another LiquidSix Hosting customer newsletter! Although we do not have any big announcements this time, we have a number of scheduled maintenance nights during October, as well as information on changes to the default operating system used for new domains and a couple of other items. Please read on for more details!

CONTENTS

I. Windows 2003 and Windows 2012 Information
II. PHP Upgrades
III. MySQL Upgrades
IV. Migration of Websites on UK Web Server 'Metis'
V. SQL Server 2014
VI. Insecure Scripts
VII. Release of .uk domains

 

I. Windows 2003 and Windows 2012 Information

As you will be aware, at the beginning of this year we released our new hosting platform based on Windows 2012 R2. Many customers have been making use of this platform for their new websites, as well as using our migration tool to move existing Windows 2003 based sites onto it.

In July 2015, Microsoft will be ending support for Windows 2003 and not releasing any further security patches. Because of this, we would like to encourage all customers to start thinking about moving their websites to Windows 2012 R2, if they have not done so already. Not only will you receive the benefits of the newer operating system, but also of the more powerful hardware that we use on our new platform. The "Move to Windows 2012" tool, which you will find for each domain in the control panel, allows you to perform the move at any time that you wish, so that you can plan exactly when it will take place.

In the lead up to Microsoft ending support, we will be taking steps to reduce the number of domains on Windows 2003. The first of these steps will affect resellers only, and will take place on the 1st December 2014. On this date we will be enabling Windows 2012 on all reseller accounts that have not already enabled it, and making it the default for new domains. Further steps will be announced in 2015.

If you have any questions about our Windows 2012 hosting, or need any assistance with the move, please do not hesitate to contact us. Remember that Windows 2012 does not cost any extra on any of our plans!

 

II. PHP Upgrades

Between 12.30am and 6.00am on Saturday 11th October 2014 we will be upgrading PHP 5.4 on Windows 2003 to the latest 5.4 release, and PHP 5.5 on Windows 2012 to the latest 5.5 release. This process should not cause any issues for websites as there should be no breaking changes in these upgrades, but we encourage all customers using PHP to check that their scripts remain compatible. There is no upgrade available to PHP 5.2 on Windows 2003, but in order to keep sites secure and up to date we do recommend that customers still using 5.2 investigate changing to PHP 5.4 which can be done from the "Website Settings" page in Helm once scripts have been checked for compatibility.

Each web server, both in the UK and the US, will be being upgraded in turn. The downtime for each server should be less than 10 minutes during the 12.30am to 6.00am window.

 

III. MySQL Upgrades

Between 12.30am and 6.00am on Saturday 18th October 2014 we will be upgrading MySQL both in the UK and the US to the latest release of MySQL 5.6. This process should not cause any issues for websites as there should be no breaking changes in these upgrades. The downtime for the MySQL servers should be less than 30 minutes each, during the 12.30am to 6.00am window.

 

 

IV. Migration of Websites on UK Web Server 'Metis'

Between 12.30am and 6.00am on Monday 13th October 2014 we will be moving websites on the UK web server Metis to new hardware. This will only affect websites that are hosted on Metis and will not have any effect on websites hosted on the other web servers. The migration will be prepared in advance so that the downtime for websites should be less than 30 minutes, during the 12.30am to 6.00am window.

 

V. SQL Server 2014

We have had some enquiries about when we will be moving from SQL Server 2012 to SQL Server 2014. We intend for this upgrade to take place in late December or early January for both the UK and US servers. Once we have further information and a date we will email all customers to give plenty of warning of the change.

 

VI. Insecure Scripts

We would like to take this opportunity to remind customers of the important of keeping scripts up to date with all the latest security patches. Many popular scripts have well known flaws in them that can be exploited to take control of a website if they are not properly patched. We especially recommend that customers using Joomla or Wordpress upgrade to the latest versions, as these are some of the most common targets. We have also recently seen a reoccurrence of attacks against an old ASP editor called "FCKEditor". If you have this installed on your website we recommend removing it immediately and replacing it with an alternative, as it has a number of major security flaws.

If you would like to secure your website further, Helm will allow you to disable features that you do not need on the "Website Settings" page. We recommend only having scripting languages that you need enabled, and also disabling "Website Write Permissions" unless your website needs to write to files.

 

VII. Release of .uk domains

Since our last newsletter, the UK registry Nominet has released a new product in the form of ".uk" domains. This allows you to use the shorter extension, such as liquidsix.uk instead of liquidsix.co.uk. For the first few years, anyone with a .co.uk has first rights to the .uk equivalent. If you have a .co.uk domain with us and would like to take advantage of this, or you wish to register a new .uk domain (for which there is no equivalent .co.uk domain currently owned by anyone else) you can do so through the "LiquidSix Domain Registrations" icon in the control panel. The price remains the same at £8.00 for 2 years.

 

 

We would like to thank you for your continued custom and if you have any questions about anything in this newsletter, please do not hesitate to contact us in the normal way via the helpdesk at https://support.liquidsix.com.

Regards,
LiquidSix Hosting


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