In the interest of customer security we have updated our password changing tool to email main account holders when either the main account, or any mailbox under that account has the password changed. The email also will go to any “invoice to email” addresses you have on the account. We hope that this is useful in notifying customers immediately if their account or mailboxes have been compromised.
System Authentication Failure
This afternoon, around 4:30PM we experienced a problem in our main authentication system. This problem effected a handful of user accounts and associated mailboxes. Account and mailbox owners would have seen authentication failures and possible timeouts when attempting to connect to services such as shell, pop/imap, and webmail services. The underlying problem has been fixed. Customers may have seen approximately 10 minutes of authentication failure. If you are experiencing problems with authentication, please call Sonic.net Support at (707) 522-1000. We appologize for the inconvenience this has caused. –Don and Jared
Mail Service Interuption.
Early this morning around midnight one of our clustered NetApp filers suffered a critical failure which caused one of its Ethernet Interfaces to lock up. Some customers may have noticed timeouts or other errors when while trying to check their Mail. The total downtime for the service was around 15 minutes. We will be investigating the problem further with our vendor in the waking hours. –Augie and Don.
Intermittent mail delivery problem from Customer Web Cluster.
Today we fixed a problem on the Customer Web Cluster that would have effected mail flow from Customer scripts on our Web Cluster that were using the local Sendmail program to send e-mail. The problem began on Sunday and would have appeared as an intermittent failure to Customer scripts as only two of the servers in our Web Cluster displayed the problem.
We will be crafting more detailed monitoring so that we can resolve this problem much faster in the future.
–Augie and William.
VPN Concentrator Certificate Expiry
Today the identity certificate for our VPN concentrator expired. This would have prevented new VPN sessions from establishing. We have renewed the certificate, and the VPN concentrator is accepting connections normally now.
-Jared and Nathan
Upstream Routing Issue
Starting this morning, we observed a transient problem with one of our upstream providers. Impact would have been inability to connect to certain websites. We have taken action to correct this issue. -Nathan, Tim and the NOC.
SpamAssassin Outage
SpamAssasin may have stopped filtering mail for some users this afternoon. No mail was lost during this period. Service has restored to normal at this time and mail is being filtered for all users again. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. -William
Los Angeles DHCP Failure
This morning one of our DHCP servers in our Los Angeles PoP suffered a disk failure that prevented it from storing leases that customers obtained. This should not have affected customers connectivity to the Internet. We have swapped over to spare hardware that we had on site to resolve the issue. A small minority of customers may have experienced a brief hiccup while we made the transition while most customers should not have even noticed the transition. -William and Jared
Sonic’s New Member Tools are now Member Tools!
Today we finished the process of switching our Member Tools system from its old home on http://sonic.sonic.net to https://members.sonic.net/. A few tools still remain on the old server but https://members.sonic.net/ is now the URL from which you will access all tools.
Moving to our new server will allow us to add new tools more easily and scale out our systems as needed. We’ve also tried to make our tools more reliable and easier-to-use as part of the move.
If you’ve never tried our tools before, please do check out https://members.sonic.net/. You may be surprised to find how easily they enable you to customize your account to your specific needs.
–Dianne
Mail Cluster Maintenance
Tonight, shortly after midnight, we will replace the failing disk shelf in one of our Network Appliance filers responsible for the POP, IMAP and Webmail service interruptions earlier today. Replacing the shelf is not expected to take more than 30 minutes. During the maintenance users may not be able to check their email. However, new mail will be queued for delivery on our MX cluster and all outbound email will continue to flow unaffected. -Kelsey
Uptdate – The faulty shelf has been replaced and all services have been fully restored. Total downtime for POP, IMAP and Webmail was less than 20 minutes. -Kelsey