Like most things in the computer industry, change is inevitable. For our clients who use our Internet hosting services, change will soon be coming to the servers and hosting platform that we have supplied to our clients to host web site and e-mail accounts. These updates are the result of major equipment and software upgrades that are taking place with our vendors and service providers. When complete, the upgrades should result in a hosting platform with access to the latest technologies and features, with even more dependability and stability than ever before. Of course, there will be NO increase in pricing and NO decrease in the services which will be available on the new hosting platform.

Any hosting account which is maintained by Logical Operators and which was opened prior to January 13, 2010 will need to be transitioned to the new hosting platform; hosting accounts opened on or after January 13 are already on the new platform and will not need to be changed. Both Windows and Linux-based hosting accounts will be affected. Upgrades are scheduled to take place on an account-by-account basis beginning in mid-February 2010 and continuing throughout the month of March. Each of our clients will be notified individually prior to their scheduled conversion dates and will be contacted following the conversion to ensure everything is working correctly.

While Logical Operators will take every precaution to ensure that the transitions are as unobtrusive as possible, there will inevitably be some configuration changes and minor problems that will need to be addressed due to the change involved. This news article is intended to help our clients' network administrators and office managers prepare for the changes so that any business services depending upon hosting services will be minimally impacted and so that employees throughout their office will be prepared. With that in mind, please refer to the following list of expected changes that will require reconfiguration of equipment, software, and/or devices within your organization:

It is possible these details may change once the upgrade process begins. Please check back here for any last-second changes or corrections.

Web Hosting Changes

• IP addresses for web servers, FTP servers, database servers, DNS servers, etc. will change. If you (or other service providers) are referencing any of these servers by IP address, you should stop this practice and begin referencing them by name.
• Servers will be arranged in clustered, failover configurations. While you should not notice a difference in how your web site operates, you should notice an improvement in dependability and stability. If a server or server component should fail, a clustered server (an up-to-date copy of the failed server) will automatically take over and continue serving your web site or application while the failed server is repaired.
• Servers will be dedicated to specific tasks. For our accounts in a shared-hosting environment, different physical servers will handle different services (i.e.: web servers, database servers, e-mail servers, etc.) for each domain; this practice will ensure that each server is performing a dedicated task as quickly and efficiently as possible with a minimal impact on unrelated services.

E-Mail Hosting Changes

• IP addresses for e-mail servers will change. If you (or other service providers) are referencing any of these servers by IP address, you should stop this practice and begin referencing them by name.
• Mail server names will change for POP, SMTP, and Webmail interfaces. New names will follow the format pop.yourdomain.com, smtp.yourdomain.com, and webmail.yourdomain.com.
• SMTP (outgoing) mail will transmit over a diferent TCP port. All outgoing mail will transmit on TCP port 587, which is already being allowed and/or enforced by many Internet Service Providers (such as Verizon).
• Password lengths may need to be changed. The new e-mail platform generally requires passwords between 6 to 10 characters in length.
• Administrative accounts will be given a new URL for administration purposes. These will be supplied to each client individually and will provide a dedicated interface for creating and deleting e-mail accounts within each domain.

Clients having questions regarding our upgrade process or its affect on your business services should contact Logical Operators to schedule a consultation at your earliest convenience.