Blogs

BT Flood in Paddington Exchange

Below is a history based on the most recent 3 updates we have received:

BT last night, advised they expected the water to have been completely
pumped out from the exchange by approximately 00:00 with power being
restored to the exchange in logical phases, the coupling of the
generators is estimated to have been completed by 00:30 as the
preparatory work for this activity has been conducted in parallel to
the pumping activity. Power will be restored to the individual area's
in priority order with blue light services being the initial focus.

BT, at 06:30 today confirmed they have started restoring power with the
majority of traffic still remaining down, the site is being restored in
a pre-planned methodical pattern with priority blue light services
identified earlier as main focus.

BT as of 09:00 today, advised that 57 of the affected 60 racks have
power restored and are in the process of restoring the remaining 3 with
an expected completion time of 1 hour.  BT also advised that although
power will be restored this will not guarantee service restoration as
kit and configuration will need to be checked after power up.  BT has
also confirmed that all possible re-routes have been completed.  Any
circuits remaining that have not been rerouted are not able to be.

This issue has affected:

- All PSTN lines terminating at Paddington and some nearby exchanges.
- All IP Stream ADSL circuits terminating at Paddington.
- IP Stream ASDL circuits at other exchanges nationwide, where the ATM
backhaul path is to Paddington.
- Around 35000 ADSL Datastream customers nationwide due to
multiple backhaul circuits having been affected.

We will provide further updates as we receive them.


Postal Workers' Strike

Solis support the current action being taken by postal workers.

We will not apply any penalty for late payments caused by invoices or cheques being delayed during the course of this dispute.

Furthermore, Solis will not move our postal business away from Royal Mail, however for environmental reasons we prefer to send invoices via email, and for security reasons we prefer to be paid via BACS.

 

Sorry Mr Mandleson, but you're wrong, plain wrong.  The postal service cannot be looked at in a purely commercial sense.  It is a vital part of our community infrastructure and acts as a safety device for all of us.  Selling off the most profitable parts and planning to break up Royal Mail will have a direct and negative effect on every elderly, vulnerable person in the country.

A Management who do not listen to their workers and customers is destined to fail.  A Management who get in to bed with Mandleson, well, as the old saying goes, if you sleep with dogs...

Support your 'Postie', you never know, they may save yout life one day - or the life of someone you care about.

Martyn


Web Hosting Backup Schedule

With immediate effect, we have improved the schedule for shared hosting offsite data backups as follows:

  • All MySQL Databases are backed up daily. 
    We keep daily, weekly, monthly and annual backups of all shared hosting MySQL Databases both locally and offsite. 
  • vSites on DC1 and DC2 are backed-up on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.
    All tarballs of backups are kept locally and offsite and are subject to retention of 6 months*.
  • vSites on DC3, Bunker and SNAC are backed-up daily.
    All tarballs of backups are kept locally and offsite and are subject to retention of 12 months*.
  • All backups run between 02.00 and 07.00hrs.
  • Backup images and tarballs are FULL, not differential or incremental.

* In reality, we store backups indefinitely on archive drives, however it is not possible to access or verify the integrity this data easily, as they're locked away offsite and offline.

Please note: This schedule applies to shared Unix/Linux/BSD hosting platform and fully managed servers only.  Co-lo, racks and datacages are not our responsibility :-)

 


New Solis Website Launch!

That's launch, not lunch :-)

From our early roots providing 1200baud dial-up via banks of Hayes smartmodems, UUCP and very basic Linux hosting to our current range of high-speed, high quality access and hosting solutions, we've always attempted to offer a robust range of products and services, uncomplicated and uncluttered with unnecessary features, jargon, bells or whistles. Our website has always attempted to reflect this methodology and we hope that this latest incarnation of our site, predominantly text based, enables you to quickly find all you need to know about who we are, and what we sell.

Our previous site served us well (excuse the pun) and lasted around 9 or 10 years (well done Gareth, fine work) but we decided that times move on, and we should get ourselves a bit of a makeover.  This new site offers a lot more functionality (once you're Registered), and is designed to be fully accessible to W3C standards, (click the logo below to find out more).

Once registered, please feel free to add your comments below and let us all know what you think about our new site.

If the technobabble in the first paragraph means little to you, don't worry.  We're here to shield you from the techie stuff, allowing you to do whatever it is you do best.

 

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