7th October 2022 @ 18:30 UK Time: We have been informed by our provider of an issue at the datacenter affecting our UK servers, which has caused a loss of connectivity to all services based there.

We are awaiting an update from them regarding this issue.

Please accept our apologies for this issue at our provider and the disruption that it is causing.

UPDATE: Services were restored at approximately 18:50 UK Time. We are checking that all servers are working properly after the outage and awaiting further details on the cause from our datacenter provider. Apologies again for the issue tonight.

We are pleased to announce that we have begun the process of rolling out the latest version of .Net from Microsoft, which they released a few days ago. This will allow our customers to develop in the latest Microsoft technologies for their website.

For customers in our US datacenter, .Net 6.0 is available to use now. 

For customers in our UK datacenter, .Net 6.0 will be available to use when your website is running on Windows Server 2022. Some websites have already been migrated to Windows 2022 and so can use .Net 6.0 straight away. For other websites, the migration date has been sent to you via email. All websites will be migrated by the 22nd November 2021.

.Net 6.0 can be used in the same way as .Net 5.0, by enabling the setting on your website under the "Website Settings" icon in the control panel.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.

We are investigating an issue with one of the UK web server's, Sinope, and will post updates as soon as we have them.

UPDATE: We apologise that the sites on this server are offline. There is a serious issue with the web server and we are having to restore the backups taken overnight. We are starting this process now from our off-site backup location and will update here once we have more information.

UPDATE: We are continuing to transfer the backup data from the off-site backup location. We apologise to affected customers that the sites on this server are unavailable whilst this is completed.

UPDATE: The restoration of the data is progressing well and the new server is ready to serve the data when the restoration has been completed. We wish to apologise again for the issues with this server today.

UPDATE: Approximately three quarters of websites are now back online and we are completing work on the rest. Place accept our apologies for the issue with this server today.

RESOLVED: All websites are now back online. If you are still experiencing any issues with websites on this server, please contact us so that we can investigate. We apologise for the time that the sites have been down today whilst we did a complete restore of the server from our off-site backup location.

The latest release of Microsoft's .Net Platform is available on our services now. The new .Net 5.0 brings together the best of the .Net Framework with the best of .Net Core, and is the future for both of these existing platforms.

It is available now on all plans that include ASP.Net, and can be turned on from the "Website Settings" page for your domain in our control panel. All existing versions of the .Net Framework (2.0 to 4.8) and .Net Core (1.0 to 3.1) are of course still available to use as well.

If you have any questions about using the new platform, please do not hesitate to contact us.

The upgrade to SQL Server 2019 for all customers was completed yesterday as scheduled and notified by email a few weeks ago.

If you are trying to connect to SQL Server using an older version of Management Studio, you may not be able to connect. We recommend that all customers trying to connect install the latest version of Management Studio, which is available free from Microsoft here:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/ssms/download-sql-server-management-studio-ssms?view=sql-server-ver15

If you have any questions or problems, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Dear Customers,

As you may remember from previous messages, last Saturday (26^th October), an upgrade to MySql 8.0 was scheduled in the early hours of the morning, along with a move onto new upgraded hardware at the same time. As some may be aware from announcements on the support site, this eventually had to be cancelled. The other updates and maintenance scheduled for that night were completed as expected.

The MySql move was begun as scheduled, and the databases were moving across without issue. However, as part of this upgrade, a random selection of sites were tested after their database's moved to ensure that they were still working on the new server. Part way through this move it was deemed that the number of sites that were failing these tests was unacceptably high - whether due to scripts still being out of date or being incompatible with MySql 8. As such, to avoid these sites going offline, we were forced to abandon the upgrade, and leave everything running as it was before.

Although the move to MySql 8.0 has had to be abandoned, it does mean that we have new hardware for MySql that is sitting empty and waiting. Therefore, we are scheduling a shorter maintenance for this Saturday (2^nd November) between 12.30am and 5am, during which we will be moving MySql onto the new hardware, whilst staying with the existing version of MySql, 5.7. The expected downtime during this window is approximately 30 minutes. There are no changes to sites needed to prepare for this, as the major version is remaining the same, as well as the configuration.

We are currently working out what is best to do in order to offer customers that would like it access to MySql 8.0, without affecting the websites of customers whose websites are not compatible with the latest technologies. If MySql 8.0 is something that you are interested in, please contact support to register your interest, and we can then plan the best way of doing this and keep you up to date.

LAST DAY FOR .UK PROMOTION

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As always, please contact us via the support helpdesk - https://support.liquidsix.com - if you need assistance with anything in this newsletter, or anything else to do with your hosting service.

Kind Regards,

The LiquidSix Hosting Team