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System Messages
3/20/2012 6:20am
Two of the services
hung up on the server at approximately 5:10am today. Attempts
to restart those services worked only temporarily, so a server
re-boot was ordered, and all seems to be working correctly
now. We apologize for the short interruption in service.
Your Support Team at
Valley TechNologies
-----------------------------------------------------------
3/3/2012 11:30am
Re-boot of the
server successfully installed the software updates and associated
security patches. Some sites that used specific components
are being "re-linked" to the updated files, and
may temporarily affect access to e-mails, websites, and/or
database files.
All should be back to normal access shortly. We appreciate
your patience.
Your Support Team at
Valley TechNologies
-----------------------------------------------------------
3/2/2012 10:00am
Normal system re-boot takes
place at 2am on Sunday morning. A software upgrade is requiring
an early re-boot, taking place at 9am on Saturday, 3/3/2012
Your Support Team at
Valley TechNologies
-----------------------------------------------------------
UPDATE - 2/2/2012 1:00pm
For those that have not yet
done so, please re-boot your computers to
make sure that your systems are not attempting to reach settings
that may have been tied to the old server.
Your Support Team at
Valley TechNologies
UPDATE ON SERVER MIGRATION
- 2/2/2012 - 10:10am
We have noted that some sites
may have not yet completely "resolved" through the
"world wide web" to point to the new server instead
of the previous one. This is something that can take a few
more hours to work itself out, but in the meantime we are
doing what we can to make sure that all requests that come
into the old server are "forced" to the new one.
Thank you for your patience while these last issues are resolved.
Your Support Team at
Valley TechNologies
.
____________________________
UPDATE ON SERVER MIGRATION
- 2/2/2012 - 7:30am
The overnight migration to our
new server went as expected, with very few instances of items
that need to yet be re-established. Specifically:
- SSL Certificates (clients may get a "security
warning")
- Databases have yet to complete testing
- Spam filtering on e-mails is still being
configured, so you may see a rise in spam until that is
completed
- Files that were damaged need to be re-built from the server
outage on 1/30/2012 are still in progress
As you can imagine, there are likely to be some instances
of things that are not exactly like they were before the migration.
We expect any issues to be both minor and easily corrected.
If you have a specific request for instances that need to
be addressed, please submit
a Help Desk Ticket here for quickest resolution.
Thank you for your patience during this server migration.
Your Support Team at
Valley TechNologies
____________________________
UPDATE ON SERVER OUTAGE -
2/1/2012 - 1:45pm
E-mail service and websites have stabilized, and we expect
at worst-case scenario that they will be intermittent throughout
the day today.
Please note that at midnight tonight, all services will
be taken down for approximately 2-3 hours, until 2-3am
on Thursday, Feb. 2 - web sites, e-mail, databases, help desk
ticketing, etc. - while we migrate all
of the files to the new server. In doing
so, you should see no change in the way you access any of
your services.
There was an initial plan to possibly do the migration at
6pm today, but the systems appear to have stabilized to the
point that we are confident that we can hold off to a time
when there will be less impact on the use of the systems.
If you need service on any other issue, please submit
a Help Desk Ticket here for quickest resolution,
We will update this message with additional information as
it becomes available.
Our apologies, and we thank you in advance for your patience
while we correct the remaining issues.
Your Support Team at
Valley TechNologies
____________________________
CRITICAL OUTAGE ON 1/30/2012
- 8:15am
Our main website and e-mail server had an incident sometime
around 5:30AM on Monday, 1/30/2012, that caused an interruption
of e-mail services. Such an interruption does happen on rare
occasion, and can normally be corrected by simply re-starting
the specific features on the server. In this case it did not.|
Our server team suggested restarting the server. This is something
that is not done in an uplanned mode except in critical conditions,
and when in non-critical mode we would do so only at the least
impact hours, normally 2-4am on Sunday mornings.
In this case, the re-boot (and 2nd re-boot) of the server
indicated a corrupt file on the server that prevented it from
booting to full and normal operating conditions. The hard
drive did not "fail" but some of the information on that drive
prevented it from functioning as it should, indicating that
the situation was more likely an issue with the operating
system on the server.
The team decided to replace the hard drive, and then restore
all data back to the new hard drive from backups. This procedure
is tested every couple of months for integrity. Unfortunately,
the corrupted data on the server also affected the ability
to do a complete restore from the backup. It also affected
the data stored on the server's "mirrored" drive, as that
drive also contained the corrupted file.
Update 1/31/12 3:20am
It turns out that the corrupt data on the server also corrupted
the backup process. We were able to restore much of the data,
and most websites are back and functional - if they are not
as of this writing, they should be shortly.
However, most of the e-mail boxes will have to be re-created,
as well as many of the databases that were used on the sites.
Sites that contained SSL certificates will also have to have
them "re-keyed".
Our first priority is to re-establish the e-mail accounts.
Our entire Valley Technologies team is working to restore
these accounts. If your e-mail account is not working properly,
please submit a helpdesk ticket here,
and supply the full address of the account, as well as the
initial password that you would like on the account.
Then make sure that your local e-mail software is set to the
same password.
We will update this message with additional information as
it becomes available.
Our apologies. And we thank you for your patience while we
correct the remaining issues.
Your Support Team at
Valley TechNologies
____________________________
11/21/2011 - 3:30pm
We have received one report of a client having some issues
with SMTP service. As of this writing, it does not appear
to be an issue on our server, however, we are investigating
it. But due to the issuse experienced on 11/14, we wanted
to post this and ask that if anyone else is experiencing the
issue to please submit a Help Desk Ticket here.
Thank you.
Your Support Team at
Valley TechNologies
____________________________
11/14/2011 - 11:30am
We received a message that email processing began slowing
at approximately 2pm CT on 11/14/2011. A look at the system
indicates that incoming e-mails (POP3) are processing as they
should, but the outgoing (SMTP) were processing slow.
If you receive reports of emails that you send are not being
received by the recipient, or if the matter is urgent, we
recommend temporarily using another email SMTP service or
phone the recipient to discuss the matter in person.
This message will be updated as we have additional information
available.
** UPDATE 11/15/2011 - 6:50am: SMTP mail queue still process
e-mails slowly; re-booted system at 6:55 am to attempt to
clear it.
** UPDATE 11/15/2011 - 9:10am: The reboot of the server did
not resolve issues with the outgoing SMTP service. The incoming
still appear to work as usual, but the outgoing are "spotty'
at best. There is apparently an e-mail in the outgoing queue
that is a corrupted file that is blocking other e-mails from
processing properly. We are working to correct the issue,
and appreciate your patience while we attempt to clear it.
** UPDATE 11/15/2011 - 7:30pm: The e-mail outgoing SMTP service
was sporadic throughout most of the day. We were able to identify
the corrupt file, but nature of the file prevented it from
being deleted until all of the "good" files were sent from
the queue. That happened at approximately 7:30pm, and we were
able to then delete the corrupted file, and all has been working
as it should since then.
Your patience is appreciated.
Your Support Team at
Valley TechNologies
____________________________
10/23/2011 - 11:30am
Some websites began having problems displaying beginning Saturday
evening, 10/22. By early morning today, all websites were
down. All e-mails were working properly during the web site
outages.
To correct all issues, the server was re-booted at 11:15am,
and all was back working as it should by 11:30am. We are investigating
to find and correct the cause. We apologize for any inconvenience.
Your Support Team at
Valley TechNologies
____________________________
10/15/2011 - 7:20am
Yesterday's server outage required us to completely re-configure
our SSL settings - so you are likely still getting a notice
regarding an invalid certificate when sending or receiving
e-mails. The certificate IS VALID, so you just need to authorize
the use of the certificate.
We are working on getting that resolved now, and will update
this message board with the results.
Your Support Team at
Valley TechNologies
____________________________
10/14/2011 - 2:30pm update
It appears that all issues regarding the SSL and server hardware
failure have now been cleared, and all should be working as
expected.
It is important to note that we will NEVER, EVER REBOOT THE
SERVER BETWEEN 6AM AND 11PM - or all during the week - unless
we find it ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY to do so.
On the contrary, it is our responsiblilty to you - our valued
clients - to keep the server running by all possible means
and at the highest level of efficiency 24 hours a day, 365
days per year. There are times however, and luckily quite
rare, when a particular situation does require that service
is interrupted.
Rest assured that the crew members managing our server are
very competent, and work diligently to minimize any interruption
in service.
If you continue to experience any issues, please use the above
links to submit a ticket to our Help Desk Staff - this is
the quickest way to resolve any issues you may be having.
Your Support Team at
Valley TechNologies
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
10/14/2011 - 1:45pm update
In order to resolve the earlier SSL message, it was determined
that a server re-boot was necessary, which was done at approximately
10:45am CT, and should have only disabled systems for a matter
of a few minutes. However, there was a hardware failure indicated
on the re-boot which we believe was the reason that the SSL
message never cleared.
That hardware failure is being addressed as quickly as possible.
Service now seems to have restored completely as of about
1:40pm, except the SSL connection still is showing an error,
and we are working to resolve that issue.
We apologize for the inconvenience, and appreciate your patience
while we worked diligently to correct the issue.
Your Support Team at
Valley TechNologies
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10/14/2011 7:50am
Valley TechNologies access is showing an "Invalid Certificate"
error message when attempting to login to our systems, or
when accessing e-mail accounts. We have corrected the issue,
and it will correct itself by the end of the day - it could
take up to 24 hours to propagate throughout the World-Wide
Web.
In the meantime, allow access to remove the message.
Thank you for your patience.
Your Support Team at
Valley TechNologies
____________________________
UPDATE 9/16/2011 2:35pm
We have found the earlier issue and corrected it.
ISSUE SUMMARY: Our server-based anti-spam software - SpamAssassin
- was caught in an error loop that caused it to continually
re-process e-mails, slowing down the system, running up server
CPU usasge, and delaying both incoming and outgoing e-mail
processing. As soon as we stopped and restarted the SpamAssassin
process, all e-mails were delivered immediately from the message
queue.
Even though the issus has been resolved, we are going to re-boot
the server. But because all is working as it should right
now and we will continue to monitor it throughout the day,
we are going to delay the re-boot until 10:00pm Central Time
in order to not interfere with normal processing during regular
business hours.
Your patience is greatly appreciated.
Your Support Team at
Valley TechNologies
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
UPDATE 9/16/2011 12:05pm
We have noticed that there is an error loop within the memory
of our primary web server that is causing a slow down in e-mail
processing, FTP access, and some of the activities on that
server. This will require a re-boot of the server to clear
it.
Although it is an inconvenience, our staff has discussed the
situation, and we will continue to push the e-mail processing
throughout the day, and then re-boot the server at 5pm Central
time. Until the re-boot is complete, you may also notice an
increase in spam messages as the spam filter on the server
may stop and retart intemittantly.
The server and all e-mail processing will be inaccessible
during the re-boot. The entire process could take 30-90 minutes.
Please pass this message on to others in your organization.
We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience
while we resolve the issue.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
9/16/2011 9:50am
Valley TechNologies incoming and outgoing e-mail services
are experiencing delays of up to 60 minutess on e-mails, where
normal processing takes place within just a few seconds. Because
of the slow processing, e-mails are backing up in the mail
queue. We are monitoring the systems to push e-mail processing
ahead of other services to speed up delivery, while at the
same time trouble-shooting the issue that is causing the slow
down..
We will update this message as we progress through the resolution.
Our apologies for any inconveniece.
Your Support Team at
Valley TechNologies
____________________________
6/21/2011 9:50am
Valley TechNologies incoming e-mail services is experiencing
delays of up to several hours on e-mails. Outgoing e-mails
are not affected.
Update 6/21/2011 10:25am - we are re-booting the server to
resolve the issue with the incoming e-mail, and all serivces
(including websites and e-mails) will be down for a short
period.
Update 6/21/2011 12:14pm - the problem appears to have been
related to a single e-mail account on the server, that was
generating an "error loop" that kept sending error messages
to that account filling up the mail queue with over 10,000
messages (normally there are no more than 10 messages in the
queue at any given time).
We believe that the issue is now resolved, and all e-mails
should be delivered within the next hour.
Our apologies for the inconvenience, and our thank you for
your patience as we worked to resolve the issue.
Your Support Team at
Valley TechNologies
____________________________
5/27/2011 9:40am - Valley TechNologies Bandwidth exceeded
At approximately 5:30am this morning, the Valley TechNolgoies
server had reached a limit on its monthly bandwidth usage
that affected access to some e-mails. No e-mails were lost
by any of our clients during this service interruption.
The only exception were for a few that were sent directly
to an address @valley-technologies.com. Those that sent an
e-mail to that address should have received a "rejection"
e-mail with an error message explaining the rejection.
All domains - including our own - have a bandwidth limit
imposed, although somewhat arbitrarily, in order to make sure
that no single domain is "hogging" bandwidth (and therefore
slowing down access by others) as well protect our server
from outside attacks from those that launch spam and malware
to the outside world from unsuspecting domains.
The good news is that business activity has been on the rise,
and our own server has been seeing a related increase in activity.
We have also seen a welcome increase in activity by our clients,
which hopefully relates to an increase in their business as
well. The down side is that we received the unforseen jump
in bandwidth usage.
That condition has now been corrected, so that from now on,
not only on our domain but on all domains, any imposed limits
may be exceeded without service interruption, and a message
will automatically go to our Support Team to investigate and
manually take any action necessary to correct the condition.
Our apologies for any inconvenience, and our thank you for
your patience as we worked to resolve the issue.
Your Support Team at
Valley TechNologies
____________________________
3/30/2011 12:05pm
At approximately 10:15am, one of our main servers that hosts
a majority of our website and e-mail accounts reported a hardware
issue that could not be resolved by re-boot. At 10:50am
the technician on-site reported that he is working on the
issue.
The server issue was found and the server came back on-line
as of approximately 11:55am, however, the issue was found
in a string of connections to our server, and as each of those
connections in the string are tested over the next 24 hours,
there may be some intermittent and temporary interruption
of service.
Our apologies for the inconvenience, and our thank you for
your patience as we worked to resolve the issue.
Your Support Team at
Valley TechNologies
____________________________
3/10/2011 12:30am
We are updating several systems including the DNS, Web, E-Mai
and FTP servers. You may experience slow response times or
timeout errors for the next hour or so. The main reason for
the upgrades is to apply a security patch to prevent a denial
of service attack on our DNS. While the DNS is being serviced,
we will also be applying several minor upgrades to the previously
mentioned servers. We are doing our best to minimize down
time of all services.
Our apologies for the interruption of service, and we appreciate
your patience.
Your Support Team at
Valley TechNologies
____________________________
Update 11/22/2010 12:51am
A minor security update had previously been causing login
errors when using the FTP services. This issue has been resolved
without any reduction in security.
Our apologies for the interruption of service, and we appreciate
your patience.
Your Support Team at
Valley TechNologies
____________________________
11/21/2010 10:25pm
A few clients who use FTP may be experiencing "Login Incorrect"
errors when attempting to login. We are addressing this issue
and will have it resolved shortly.
Our apologies for the interruption of service, and we appreciate
your patience.
Your Support Team at
Valley TechNologies
____________________________
Update 10/22/2010 9:25am
Our servers experienced a connectivity earlier this morning.
As a result, websites and e-mails were completely inaccessible
for a period of approximately one hour. As sites are
now back and fully functional, e-mails may be delayed, over
the next 60-90 minutes as systems are brought back to full
functionality and processes are re-synced.
If you continue to have e-mail issues after 10:00am CDT, please
submit a system Help Desk Ticket using the link on the above
navigation bar.
Our apologies for the interruption of service, and we appreciate
your patience.
Your Support Team at
Valley TechNologies
____________________________
10/22/2010 8:35am
At approximately 8:20 this morning, our servers re-booted,
and are extremely slow in bringing the systems back to normal
state. The disruption is also affecting e-mail service.
It appears as though systems are coming back, but very slowly.
We appreciate your patience while the issue is being
resolved, and rest assured that our support team is working
vigorously to resolve the issues.
This message board will be updated after we have reviewed
the issue.
Our apologies for the interruption of service, and we appreciate
your patience.
Your Support Team at
Valley TechNologies
____________________________
9/14/2010 1:30pm
Approximately 1:10pm today, our server began sending messages
that some of the services (such as e-mail) were unavailable,
and reports were coming from clients getting "fatal errors"
while accessing some on-line features such as e-mail or Content
Management Systems (CMS).
Our technicians determined that a reboot of the server was
required. That took place at approximately 1:30pm, and all
services should return to normal within 1/2 hour.
Our apologies for the interruption of service, and we appreciate
your patience.
Your Support Team at
Valley TechNologies
____________________________
9/9/2010 3:45pm
Our VTECH5 web/mail server is currently experiencing an unusual
amount of e-mail being processed (especially e-mails being
sent to a large number of recipients), and is processing outgoing
e-mails very slowly (some even having been "hung up" in the
server for over an hour).
We are monitoring the flow of e-mails. While this slow-down
is occurring, we encourage you to send each message to only
five recipients at a time, which will help to ease the congestion
on the server.
We appreciate your patience.
Your Suppot Team at
Valley TechNologies
____________________________
UPDATE: 6/10/2010 11:00am
Note
that the re-boot of the VTECH5 server occurred at 10:50 am,
and has succeeded in resetting our out-going mail queue. The
actual outage was for about 10minutes, but it can take up
to an additional 20 minutes to restore connections for all
of the websites, e-mails, active databases, etc.
All
should now be back to a normal state. If you have any further
issues with e-mails (or any of our other services), please
make use of our
on-line ticketing system here to report and track any
problems.
Normally,
a re-boot of the server will typically take place on a weekend
night during very early moring hours in order to have the
least amount of impact on your business. The only time we
reboot a server during "active business hours" is when attempts
to restore a critical service fails, and our only option is
to re-boot the server during those busier hours.
We
apologize for any inconvenience caused by this short outage.
Your
Support Team at
Valley TechNologies
____________________________
6/10/2010 10:10am
Our VTECH5 web/mail server is currently processing outgoing
e-mails very slowly (some even having been "hung up" in the
server for over an hour), and requires that we re-boot the
server to re-establish some connections.
Web service and e-mail incoming/outgoing should be down
for no more than 5 minutes beginning at approximately 10:30am
today, 6/10/2010.
Thank you for your patience!
Your
Support Team at
Valley TechNologies
____________________________
3/11/2010 3:50pm
Valley
TechNologies has received reports that e-mails have not been
received by some of our clients, or have been unusually delayed
in being received.
The
issue seems to be very isolated and sporadic, and comes only
from websites on our servers that have the "DNS Pointers"
settings to a particular destination. The settings are
valid, and have been in place for almost six years.
Some of those DNS settings were updated in September of 2008.
We
have found that updating some additional settings - even though
we do not change any of the destination DNS pointers - seems
to "re-align" and correct the DNS issues, almaost as if the
setting had been "dormant", and needed something to "kick
it" so the World Wide Web would recognize it as a valid setting.
Once reconciled, the e-mails are received without issue.
We
are in the process of going through each of the domains on
our servers that have not had the settings updated prior to
September of 2008, to take a pro-active role in correcting
the issue, as well as avoiding any other issues that may be
the result of these "dormant" settings.
For
those domains in which we do not control the DNS settings,
we will be contacting the Domain Manager with instructions
for changing the affected settings.
Again,
the reports are very isolated and sporadic, so you may never
have been affected by the settings. The
issue is in the process of being corrected, and should resolve
itself within 24 hours. If you continue to have an issue with
it, please submit
a help desk ticket here, so we can document the problem
and resolution on our system.
Thank
you!
Your
Support Team at
Valley TechNologies
____________________________
03/04/10
8:36pm
Due to a recently found bug in our spam filtering software,
we will be doing UNSCHEDULED MAINTENANCE on our mail servers
with the necessary updates starting at 10:00 tonight. The
bug caused some e-mails sent in 2010 to have a higher score
(+3.2 points) based on the 2010 sending date.
You may experience intermittent "Server not found" or "Server
timeout" errors between 10:00pm and midnight when sending
or receiving e-mail. If you receive any errors while sending
or receiving e-mail, please wait a few minutes and try again.
While we are upgrading our mail servers, we will also do
some minor updates to the web servers as well. While the websites
will not be effected, access to your Domain Administrator
account may be unavailable. If you experience troubles logging
into your Plesk account, please wait 30 minutes and try again.
Should you experience any troubles after midnight, please
submit a help desk ticket here, so we can document the resolution
on our system.
Thank you!
Your Support Team at
Valley TechNologies
____________________________
10/14/09
11:15am
If
you are receiving a message regarding a Security alert when
logging into your e-mail account or your account manager,
it is okay to go ahead and by-pass that warning.
One
of the Security Certificates for one of our servers simply
needed to be "re-keyed" with some updated information.
This
is one of the beauties of an SSL certificate, in that if absolutely
everything does not coincide as it should throughout the entire
process, the site gets "flagged" until the issue is resolved.
The
issue has been corrected, and should resolve itself before
the end of the day today. If you continue to have an issue
with it, please submit
a help desk ticket here, so we can document the resolution
on our system.
Thank
you!
Your
Support Team at
Valley TechNologies
____________________________
10/2/09
1:45pm
A
corrupt e-mail file locked up e-mail processing, requiring
a re-boot of the server; e-mail processing was interrupted
for about 15 minutes, and complete system outage lasted approximately
5 minutes during the server re-boot.
____________________________
9/25/09 - 8:00am
The upgrade to the e-mail spam filters allows more flexibilty
to the individual user for filtering unwanted e-mail.
If you are experiencing issues with an increase in spam,
try making adjustments as outlined in this instruction: click
here.
____________________________
9/22/09 - 4:00am to 5:30am
We are performing minor upgrades to the spamfilters in use
for all mail servers.
You will experience slow response times, login errors, and
server not found errors during this time.
If any problems persist after 5:30am, please submit
a help desk ticket.
____________________________
7/13/09 11:20am-CDT
Reports are widespread across the WWW of intermittent slowdowns
in accessing some websites and in e-mail processing, likely
due to additional measures being taken by host companies around
the world to make sure that last week's cyber attacks against
some US and S. Korean websites (suspected originating from
N. Korea) are not invading their servers as well.
Hopefully, this slowdown is temporary.
____________________________
6/26/09
10:55am-CDT
The
issue earlier this morning in regards to our e-mail server
has cleared. This is a new server on our system, and should
be processing the e-mails much faster than it is.
To
get a better handle on the issue, our team will be performing
some tests on this server after 5pm CDT. These tests are expected
to last up to two hours. During this time, outgoing e-mail
service may be sporadic. This will only pertain to those customers
where the outgoing SMTP server is set to mail.valley-technologies.com,
or mail.<yourdomain> (where the <yourdomain> is
replaced by your actual domain name). There will be
no effect on incoming e-mails.
Please
contact our office if you have any questions.
____________________________
6/26/09 10:00am-CDT
Our e-mail server needed to be re-started about 9:45am, which
may cause an error regarding "invalid rcpthosts". This is
a temporary condition that should be resolved shortly.
Our apologies for the inconvenience.
____________________________
6/15/09 UPDATE 11:30AM-CDT
FLOODS OF E-MAILS FROM LAST WEEKEND'S SLOWDOWN REQUIRED A
RESTART OF THE E-MAIL SERVER THIS MORNING. ALL SHOULD NOW
BE WORKING PROPERLY.
ANY MESSAGES THAT YOU RECEIVED INDICATING THAT A PARTICULAR
DOMAIN IS NOT IN THE LIST OF ALLOWED RCPTHOSTS WILL NEED TO
BE RESENT.
OUR APOLOGIES.
____________________________
6/11/09
UPDATE 4:00M-CDT
IT
TURNS OUT THAT WE ARE NOT ALONE IN SLUGGISH E-MAIL SERVICE.
SEVERAL COMPANIES ARE REPORTING INTERNET DELAYS ALL OVER THE
COUNTRY, NOT CONFIRMED BUT SUSPECTED TO BE LINKED TO TORRENTIAL
DOWNPOURS AND FLOODING IN THE SOUTH, INCLUDING THE DALLAS
/ FT. WORTH AREAS, WHERE SEVERAL AREAS ARE WITHOUT POWER AS
OF THIS WRITING.
____________________________
6/11/09
UPDATE 10:00AM-CDT
OVER THE LAST SEVERAL HOURS
THERE HAVE BEEN REPORTS OF A WEB OUTAGE IN THE DALLAS AREA
THAT IS AFFECTING THE ABILITY OF WEB USERS ALL OVER THE COUNTRY
TO ACCESS WEB PAGES. IT IS ALSO AFFECTING THE ABILITY TO SEND
OR RECEIVE SOME E-MAILS.
HERE IS A FREE TOOL THAT
CAN ASSIST IN FINDING WHERE THE OUTAGE IS OCCURRING: http://network-tools.com/.
TYPE IN AN IP ADDRESS OR
A WEBSITE THAT YOU ARE HAVING AN ISSUE WITH (LIKE "hotmail.com"
OR "mail.valley-technologies.com"), CLICK "GO", AND IT WILL
IDENTIFY BY "TIMEOUT" WHERE THE CONNECTION IS FAILING.
NOTE THAT THIS IS NOT AN
ISSUE WITH VALLEY TECHNOLOGIES SERVERS, BUT A FAILURE IN THE
CONNECTIONS ALONG THE WEB ROUTING OF THE INFORMATION.
MORE INFORMATION WILL BE
POSTED HERE AS IT BECOMES AVAILABLE.
____________________________
6/1/09
UPDATE 10:20AM-CDT
LAST NIGHT (5/31) ATFER EXTENSIVE TESTING, WE COMPLETED THE
SETTINGS CHANGES FOR THE SYSTEM SPAM FILTER, SO YOU SHOULD
SEE A DRASTIC REDUCTION IN THE AMOUNT OF INCOMING JUNK MAIL
TODAY. AS THE SPAM FILTERS CONTINUE THEIR "TRAINING", SPAM
WILL BE REDUCED EVEN MORE.
AS PART OF THAT PROCESS, YOUR OUTGOING E-MAILS MAY OR MAY
NOT BE AFFECTED. IT APPEARS TO BE AFFECTING ONLY MICROSOFT
OUTLOOK, AND THE ISSUES SEEM TO DEPEND ON THE EXACT VERSION
OF MICROSOFT OUTLOOK 2003 OR 2007 THAT YOU ARE USING. E-MAILS
USING MICROSOFT OUTLOOK EXPRESS OR WINDOWS MAIL (IN VISTA
OPERATING SYSTEMS) AND OTHER E-MAIL PRODUCTS DO NOT APPEAR
TO BE AFFECTED.
IF YOU ARE RECEIVING A SYSTEM MESSAGE CONTAINING INFORMATION
REGARDING AN "ERROR
551" OR "ERROR 553" YOU MAY NEED TO ADJUST YOUR SETTINGS AND
TEST THEM TO MAKE SURE WHICH RESOLUTION FITS YOUR APPLICATION.
IF YOU ARE NOT COMFORTABLE ADJUSTING THESE SETTINGS, CALL
OUR OFFICE AT 262.673.1979 AND WE WILL STEP YOU THROUGH THE
SETTINGS.
IF YOU ARE COMFORTABLE WITH MAKING THESE CHANGES ON YOUR OWN,
GET INTO YOUR E-MAIL ACCOUNT SETTINGS AND:
- FIRST,
MAKE SURE THAT THE BOX IS CHECKED INDICATING THAT "MY OUTGOING
SERVER (SMTP) REQUIRES AUTHENTICATION".
NEXT, MAKE CHANGES EITHER AS OUTLINED IN STEP 2.A. OR 2.B
BELOW.
- A.
CLICK TO "LOG ON TO INCOMING MAIL SERVER BEFORE SENDING
MAIL".
- SEND
A TEST E-MAIL TO AN ACCOUNT THAT IS SURE TO GO TO AN
EXTERNAL SERVER (LIKE HOTMAIL, AOL, GMAIL, YAHOO, ETC.),
OR "RESEND" ONE OF THE MESSAGES THAT GENERATED THE ERROR.
AFTER
A FEW MINUTES, CLICK ON THE "SEND/RECEIVE" BUTTON. IF
YOU DO NOT RECEIVE A SYSTEM ERROR MESSAGE, THE REQUIRED
CHANGES ARE COMPLETE. IF YOU HAVE RECEIVED ANOTHER ERROR
MESSAGE, CONTINUE BELOW.
B.
CLICK TO "USE SAME SETTINGS AS MY INCOMING MAIL SERVER".
- SEND
A TEST E-MAIL TO AN ACCOUNT THAT IS SURE TO GO TO AN EXTERNAL
SERVER (LIKE HOTMAIL, AOL, GMAIL, YAHOO, ETC.), OR "RESEND"
ONE OF THE MESSAGES THAT GENERATED THE ERROR.
- AFTER
A FEW MINUTES, CLICK ON THE "SEND/RECEIVE" BUTTON. IF
YOU DO NOT RECEIVE A SYSTEM ERROR MESSAGE, THE REQUIRED
CHANGES ARE COMPLETE. IF YOU HAVE RECEIVED ANOTHER ERROR
MESSAGE, CONTINUE BELOW.
- IF
THE CHANGES IN STEP 2 DID NOT RESOLVE THE ISSUE, CONTACT
OUR OFFICE FOR ADDITIONAL ASSISTANCE.
____________________________
5/28/09
UPDATE 11:30AM-CDT
As of 2:00pm yesterday all e-mail issues were resolved by
moving all e-mail accounts to a new mail server. We are working
on completing the setup of this new server today. All changes
will be minor, but may cause "temporary errors" when sending
or receiving mail. If you receive an error message with the
word "temporary" please try again in two minutes. These messages
are a result of the final setup process and are in place to
ensure the server does not process mail while a new setting
is being put into place.
SPAM
We are aware of an increase in spam e-mail and are working
on "training" the new server's spam settings. Spam should
slowly decrease throughout the day and should no longer be
an issue by Friday.
____________________________
5/27/09
UPDATE 1:30PM-CDT
ALL
E-MAIL SERVICES WILL BE HALTED FOR ABOUT 5 MINUTES BEGINNING
AT 1:35PM IN AN EFFORT TO "UNCLOG THE JAM" IN THE MAIL QUEUE.
WE WILL LIKELY SEE A TEMPORARY SURGE IN SPAM AND JUNK
MAIL WHEN THE MAIL SERVICES ARE RESTARTED.
____________________________
5/27/09
UPDATE 10:45AM-CDT
THE
PROCESS ALSO SEEMS TO BE AFFECTING SOME MESSAGES THAT ARE
GOING TO RECIPIENTS OUTSIDE OF OUR SERVER IP LIST. YOU
MAY RECEIVE A MESSAGE FROM THE "SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR" WITH
AN ERROR # 553 THAT THE DOMAIN IS NOT IN THE LIST OF ALLOWED
RCPTHOSTS. THIS IS BEING ADDRESSED AS WELL, AND ONCE
IT IS RESOLVED (AND MESSAGE POSTED HERE THAT IT IS), YOU WILL
NEED TO RESEND THOSE MESSAGES.
____________________________
5/27/09
UPDATE 10:45AM-CDT
Valley TechNologies experienced a failure with our main mail
server this morning,
starting at approximately 1:30am until approximately 9:30am.
During this time most
outside mail traffic was deferred to be delivered later. As
a result of this deferred
mail, we are experiencing extremely large amounts of mail
to be processed. This is
causing all incoming and outgoing messages to move through
the system slower than usual.
Please bear with us as we have moved all mail traffic to
our backup server to clear this
backlog. We expect things to slowly clear up through
the day.
You may also experience an increase in spam - this is only
temporary until our main mail
server is back online. The spam filters on the backup
system are not as robust as our
main mail server.
We apologize for the inconvenience, and appreciate your patience.
____________________________
5/27/09
UPDATE 10:05AM-CDT
OUTGOING
E-MAIL APPEARS TO BE RESOLVED, INCOMING IS MOVING SLOWLY DUE
TO THE BACKLOG OF INCOMING MESSAGES.
DUE
TO THE ISSUES WITH SETTINGS ON THE NEW OUTGOING E-MAIL SERVICE,
WE HAVE TEMPORARILY ROLLED BACK THE SMTP PROCESS TO OUR PREVIOUS
SERVICE, AND WILL WORK OVERNIGHT TONIGHT TO RE-TEST THE SETTINGS
ON THE NEW SERVICE.
THANK
YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE!
____________________________
5/27/09
UPDATE 8:05AM-CDT
WE
ARE EXPERIENCING SOME ISSUES WITH THE E-MAIL SETTINGS ON THE
SERVER (BOTH INCOMING AND OUTGOING), AND THE SERVER TEAM IS
INVESTIGATING AND WORKING ON A FIX. THIS MAY INCLUDE RE-BOOTING
THE SERVER, IN WHICH CASE THE WEB PAGES MAY BE DOWN FOR A
FEW MINUTES AS WELL.
____________________________
5/26/09 UPDATE 2:40PM
THE SERVER UPGRADE OVER THE WEEKEND WENT EXCEPTIONALLY WELL.
WE ARE HOWEVER EXPERIENCING SOME MINOR DELAYS IN E-MAIL PROCESSING
AS WE TWEAK THE SYSTEM FOR OPTIMUM PERFORMANCE.
WE ANTICIPATE THAT THESE DELAYS WILL OCCUR INTERMITTANTLY
THROUGHOUT THE DAY TODAY AS WE MAKE THE ADJUSTMENTS.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE!
____________________________
5/13/09
UPDATE 7:30AM-CDT
THE
SERVER HAS BEEM REBOOTED TO RESOLVE AN INDEXING ISSUE IN THE
E-MAIL PROCESSING.. ALL FUNCTIONS SHOULD BE BACK AND OPERATIONAL
SHORTLY. THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE.
____________________________
4/30/09
UPDATE 2:45PM-CDT
E-MAIL
SMTP (OUTGOING) ISSUE IS UNDER CONTROL, BUT STILL NOT WHERE
WE WANT TO BE. WE ARE CONTINUING TO MONITOR THE SITUATION
AND ARE WORKING ON BUILDING THE SPEED FOR THE SMTP PROCESSES.
____________________________
4/29/09
UPDATE 3:05PM-CDT
E-MAIL
SMTP (OUTGOING) SERVICE IS WORKING, HOWEVER INTERMITTANT STOPS
ARE HOLDING MESSAGES IN THE OUTGOING E-MAIL QUEUE FOR UP TO
20 MINUTES. WE ARE WORKING TO GET THIS DOWN TO THE NORMAL
10 SECOND QUEUE PROCESSING TIME.
____________________________
4/29/09
UPDATE 1:25PM-CDT
E-MAIL
SMTP (OUTGOING) SERVICE INTERRUPTIONS ARE BEING MONITORED
FOR POTENTIAL ISSUES. E-MAIL FROM VALLEY TECHNOLOGIES
SMTP SERVICE, AS WELL AS OUTGOING E-MAILS FROM WEBMAIL MAY
BE AFFECTED, BUT CURRENTLY ARE INTERMITTANT AND VERY SHORT-TERM.
CHECK BACK HERE FOR UPDATES ON THIS ISSUE.
____________________________
4/15/09
UPDATE: 4:42PM-CDT
E-MAIL
ISSUES HAVE NOW BEEN RESOLVED, AND THE OUTGOING E-MAIL QUEUE
HAS BEEN COMPLETELY PROCESSED.
TO
AVOID SIMILAR OCCURANCES IN THE FUTURE, WE HAVE INCREASED
OUR SMTP OUTPUT CAPABILITIES BY 10X THE PREVIOUS AMOUNT.
THANK
YOU ALL FOR YOUR PATIENCE!
YOUR
SUPPORT TEAM AT VALLEY TECHNOLOGIES
____________________________
4/15/09 UPDATE:
WHILE WE ARE CORRECTING THE E-MAIL ISSUE BELOW:
1. IF E-MAILS ARE NOT GETTING THROUGH TO THE RECIPIENTS, PLEASE
BE PATIENT. THE OUTGOING MAIL QUEUE FILLED UP, AND IS SLOWLY
PROCESSING THE E-MAILS THAT ARE BACKED UP IN THAT QUEUE.
2. IF YOU RECEIVE A "BOUNCE" MESSAGE THAT THE RECIPIENT IS
INVALID, SEND THE MESSAGE AGAIN (PREFERABLY AFTER WE ARE SURE
THAT THE ISSUES HAVE BEEN RESOLVED) ALONG WITH A NOTE THAT
WE HAVE BEEN EXPERIENCING SOME ISSUES ON OUR E-MAIL SERVER,
AND THAT THEY MAY RECEIVE YOUR MESSAGE TWICE.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE!
YOUR SUPPORT TEAM AT VALLEY TECHNOLOGIES
____________________________
4/15/09 NOTICE:
WE HAVE BEEN EXPERIENCING SOME TEMPORARY ISSUES WITH OUT-GOING
E-MAILS FROM OUR SERVER. WE ARE WORKING DILIGENTLY ON CORRECTING
THE ISSUE. E-MAIL FROM VALLEY TECHNOLOGIES SMTP SERVICE, AS
WELL AS OUTGOING E-MAILS FROM WEBMAIL MAY BE AFFECTED. CHECK
BACK HERE FOR UPDATES ON THIS ISSUE.
THANK YOU!
YOUR SUPPORT TEAM AT VALLEY TECHNOLOGIES
____________________________
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