Network Presence Blog

Network Presence customers who pay us over $20/month for their VPS are now able to get a free or gratis Web Proxy/Load Balancer VPS that’s automatically configured (when requested in our VPS Management web pages) to send web traffic to the customer’s main VPS.

The Web Proxy service is available through our web-based VPS Management pages when logged in with your normal VPS user (click on the “Web Proxy” button once logged in) and the automatic setup process will email you the access and usage details of your Web Proxy. The main information you need is how to upload your SSL Certificate files for the https:// protocol to present your site’s SSL Certificate to end-user browsers accessing your site through the Web Proxy.

To start using your Web Proxy you need to FTP or SFTP login to your Web Proxy VPS on its listed IP address with the username and password supplied in the initial “Web Proxy Provisioning Report and Usage Information” email that’s sent after your Web Proxy VPS is all setup and running from when you click on the ‘Web Proxy’ button in the VPS Management web pages. We recommend the “FileZilla” FTP/SFTP client software to upload your Certificate (certname.crt), Key (certname.key) and any “CA Bundle” (certname.ca-bundle) files to your Web Proxy VPS. Once any of the above files are uploaded (see the provisioning email for more details) they’re configured into the Web Proxy software within a minute from upload.

As mentioned, these “provided for free” or gratis Web Proxy servers are available for any Network Presence VPS customer who pays us over $20/month. This determination is made by the VPS Management system and some customers pay us via other means or have custom orders or other payment arrangements which could mean that the VPS Management system may not be able to automatically ascertain this information for your main VPS service, in which case please just contact Admin (email admin AT networkpresence.com.au) with your VPS details (IP Address or order # or payment information) and we’ll check the payment amount and provision your free Web Proxy for you promptly from there.

You can use these Web Proxies as “front-line” web servers to your sites, where your main web server(s) can be available for the Internet to use just through the Web Proxy (by updating your DNS so that your website’s URL points to the Web Proxy VPS rather an your main webserver VPS) and this can provide some security and other capabilities for your website eg: our Web Proxies can enable security based filtering of traffic to your web server and more front-end web features, please contact Admin for more details and information about your Web Proxy’s use and capabilities. eg: it can also proxy your web sessions to multiple back-end servers (across the Internet) and can do other web server functions for our sites.

If you don’t see the ‘Web Proxy’ button in your VPS Management login, please recheck in a few days, as this new feature is being progressively rolled out for our VPS customers in April 2022.

Enjoy this free value-add service for your Network Presence VPS, regards,
Richard.

During the weekend of Friday late afternoon & evening April 8th and 9th we will be performing upgrades to selected hosting server platforms & one of our network uplinks of Network Presence in Sydney, Australia.

Customers with services (VPS) on the hosting platforms to be upgraded may be emailed advisory notices, and this is a general notice related to other ancillary upgrades and Infrastructure Maintenance being performed during this scheduled window of time.

This Maintenance Window starts from 5pm on the Friday afternoon, through to 6am Sydney time on the morning of Saturday April 9th 2022, and I’ll be personally contactable by phone & online during and after these works in-case there’s any issues that arise.

During this Maintenance Window, selected network or server equipment will be worked on, upgraded and restarted. Works will be completed as quickly as possible (and where possible, timing information will be in emails to affected customers) and restarts are short service interruptions only, while upgrades may incur longer service interruptions.

This will incur outages to selected hosting services of Network Presence in Sydney, Australia during this off-peak scheduled works period.

In addition, there may be some impact (short 5-10 minute periods) to the general Internet Connectivity of portions of Network Presence in Sydney during these works, though redundant routing will be utilised during these works.

Our Adelaide POP is unaffected by this Maintenance Notice and works.

Progress updates leading up to and during the works will be posted to our Operations Twitter Feed at https://twitter.com/netpresops

FYI and regards,
Richard.

During the weekend of Saturday afternoon and evening December 18th and 19th we will be performing upgrades to selected hosting server platforms & one of our network uplinks of Network Presence in Sydney, Australia.

Customers with services (VPS) on the hosting platforms to be upgraded may be emailed advisory notices, and this is a general notice related to other ancillary upgrades and Infrastructure Maintenance being performed during this scheduled window of time.

This Maintenance Window starts from 3pm on the Saturday afternoon, through to 6am Sydney time on the morning of Sunday December 19th 2021, and I’ll be personally contactable by phone & online during and after these works in-case there’s any issues that arise.

During this Maintenance Window, selected network or server equipment will be worked on, upgraded and restarted. Works will be completed as quickly as possible (and where possible, timing information will be in emails to affected customers) and restarts are short service interruptions only, while upgrades may incur longer service interruptions.

This will incur outages to selected hosting services of Network Presence in Sydney, Australia during this off-peak scheduled works period.

In addition, there may be some impact (short 5-10 minute periods) to the general Internet Connectivity of portions of Network Presence in Sydney during these works, though redundant routing will be utilised during these works.

Our Adelaide POP is unaffected by this Maintenance Notice and works.

Progress updates during the works will be posted to our Operations Twitter Feed at https://twitter.com/netpresops

FYI and regards,
Richard.

During the weekend of Friday evening and Saturday December 3rd and 4th we will be performing upgrades to selected hosting server platforms & one of our network uplinks of Network Presence in Sydney, Australia.

Customers with services (VPS) on the hosting platforms to be upgraded may be emailed advisory notices, and this is a general notice related to other ancillary upgrades and Infrastructure Maintenance being performed during this scheduled window of time.

This Maintenance Window starts from 5pm on the Friday afternoon, through to 1pm Sydney time on the afternoon of Saturday December 4th 2021, and I’ll be personally contactable by phone & online during and after these works in-case there’s any issues that arise.

During this Maintenance Window, selected network or server equipment will be worked on, upgraded and restarted. Works will be completed as quickly as possible (and where possible, timing information will be in emails to affected customers) and restarts are short service interruptions only, while upgrades may incur longer service interruptions.

This will incur outages to selected hosting services of Network Presence in Sydney, Australia during this off-peak scheduled works period.

In addition, there may be some impact (short 5-10 minute periods) to the general Internet Connectivity of portions of Network Presence in Sydney during these works, though redundant routing will be utilised during these works.

Our Adelaide POP is unaffected by this Maintenance Notice and works.

Progress updates during the works will be posted to our Operations Twitter Feed at https://twitter.com/netpresops

FYI and regards,
Richard.

During both Saturdays on September 4th and 11th 2021 between 8am to 6pm, we will be performing upgrades to selected hosting server platforms & one of our network uplinks of Network Presence in Adelaide, Australia.

Customers with services (VPS) on the hosting platforms to be upgraded may be emailed advisory notices, and this is a general notice related to other ancillary upgrades and Infrastructure Maintenance being performed during this scheduled window of time.

This Maintenance Window starts from 8am on the Saturday morning, through to 6pm Adelaide time on each Saturday and I’ll be personally contactable by phone & online during and after these works in-case there’s any issues that arise.

During this Maintenance Window, selected network or server equipment will be worked on, upgraded and restarted. Works will be completed as quickly as possible (and where possible, timing information will be in emails to affected customers) and restarts are short service interruptions only, while upgrades may incur longer service interruptions.

This will incur outages to selected hosting services of Network Presence in Adelaide, South Australia during this off-peak scheduled works period.
In addition, there may be some impact (short 5-10 minute periods) to the general Internet Connectivity of portions of Network Presence in Adelaide during these works, though redundant routing will be utilised as available.

Our Sydney POP is unaffected by this Maintenance Notice and works.

Progress updates during the works will be posted to our Operations Twitter Feed at https://twitter.com/netpresops

FYI and regards,
Richard.

We’ve been advised by our Sydney Data Centre (Equinix) that unavoidable critical urgent works are required on our rack power feeds on the Wednesday mornings between 7am and 11am on the two days of Wednesday July 28th and August 4th 2021.

We’ve discussed the terrible timing of these works forced upon us by the Data Centre but in speaking to their National Operations Manager he’s explained the precarious situation they have with these power feeds (an imminently failing non-redundant component in each power feed) and we understand how this work has to be done with such short notice and at such a time.

On our side most of our VPS Hosting Servers have redundant/dual power-supplies, but some do not and will be affected by this power work by the Data Centre. Accordingly we’ll be performing clean shutdowns of some VPS Hosting platforms (we call them “Nodes”) at Network Presence’s Sydney POP close to the 7am start time of these power works on each Wednesday morning.
Updates will be provided on our Operations Twitter Feed at https://twitter.com/netpresops during these times.

Going forward (see updates below) we’ll be re-engineering the affected VPS Hosting Nodes with power feed redundancy as soon as possible in 2021 so that such works by the Data Centre in the future won’t have such an impact on our operations (equipping these remaining single power fed Hosting Nodes with dual power feeds).

It’s worth noting that this is the first such event by Equinix in Sydney like this in over 15 years, so we’ve had a very good run wrt their reliability for power in this Data Centre of theirs and as mentioned, we’re deploying further infrastructure to be able to better weather such events going forward & in conjunction with these Data Centre works and timing.

Our Adelaide POP is unaffected by these Sydney Data Centre power works.

I’ll be available on +61 414 882 225 during this outage event should customer need to contact us and we’ll post updates on our Operations Twitter Feed at https://twitter.com/netpresops around each of these outage events.

UPDATE: We’ve been in further contact with Equinix and we’re working with them to bring forward our own Infrastructure Upgrades to be able to survive such outages in the future (two more dual power feed ATS) and we’ll be having these ATS installed & cutover to during these power works of Equinix on each of the coming Wednesday mornings from 7am.

UPDATE Wed 28th July: All went well this morning and there was a ~1hr outage for some VPS customers as we moved them over to the 1st ATS in Sydney. We look forward to the completion of these power works by Equinix next Wednesday now.

UPDATE Ready for Wed Aug 4th 7am: We’re ready to have our Secondary power feed worked on by Equinix when they do so on this coming Wednesday morning of August 4th 2021 from 7am Sydney time. Only a few of our VPS Hosting Nodes will be affected and we’ll have them back online ASAP on Wednesday morning.

FINAL UPDATE: All went well during these 2 x power outage events for us in Sydney, with the Equinix Tech Staff helping us greatly a few times when we needed it, often in the early hours of the morning. This is why we pay the costs of being in an Equinix (the largest global Data Centre provider) Data Centre in Sydney.

FYI and regards,
Richard.

During both Saturdays on July 10th and 17th 2021 between 8am to 6pm, we will be performing upgrades to selected hosting server platforms & one of our network uplinks of Network Presence in Adelaide, Australia.

Customers with services (VPS) on the hosting platforms to be upgraded may be emailed advisory notices, and this is a general notice related to other ancillary upgrades and Infrastructure Maintenance being performed during this scheduled window of time.

This Maintenance Window starts from 8am on the Saturday morning, through to 6pm Adelaide time on each Saturday and I’ll be personally contactable by phone & online during and after these works in-case there’s any issues that arise.

During this Maintenance Window, selected network or server equipment will be worked on, upgraded and restarted. Works will be completed as quickly as possible (and where possible, timing information will be in emails to affected customers) and restarts are short service interruptions only, while upgrades may incur longer service interruptions.

This will incur outages to selected hosting services of Network Presence in Adelaide, South Australia during this off-peak scheduled works period.
In addition, there may be some impact (short 5-10 minute periods) to the general Internet Connectivity of portions of Network Presence in Adelaide during these works, though redundant routing will be utilised as available.

Our Sydney POP is unaffected by this Maintenance Notice and works.

Progress updates during the works will be posted to our Operations Twitter Feed at https://twitter.com/netpresops

FYI and regards,
Richard.

During the weekend of Saturday & Sunday, May 22nd and 23rd we will be performing upgrades to selected hosting server platforms & one of our network uplinks of Network Presence in Sydney, Australia.

Customers with services (VPS) on the hosting platforms to be upgraded may be emailed advisory notices, and this is a general notice related to other ancillary upgrades and Infrastructure Maintenance being performed during this scheduled window of time.

This Maintenance Window starts from 5pm on the Saturday afternoon, through to 5pm Sydney time on the afternoon of Sunday May 23rd 2021 and I’ll be personally contactable by phone & online during and after these works in-case there’s any issues that arise.

During this Maintenance Window, selected network or server equipment will be worked on, upgraded and restarted. Works will be completed as quickly as possible (and where possible, timing information will be in emails to affected customers) and restarts are short service interruptions only, while upgrades may incur longer service interruptions.

This will incur outages to selected hosting services of Network Presence in Sydney, Australia during this off-peak scheduled works period.
In addition, there may be some impact (short 5-10 minute periods) to the general Internet Connectivity of portions of Network Presence in Sydney during these works, though redundant routing will be utilised during these works.

Our Adelaide POP is unaffected by this Maintenance Notice and works.

Progress updates during the works will be posted to our Operations Twitter Feed at https://twitter.com/netpresops

FYI and regards,
Richard.

During both Saturdays on May 8th and May 15th 2021 between 8am to 6pm, we will be performing upgrades to selected hosting server platforms & one of our network uplinks of Network Presence in Adelaide, Australia.

Customers with services (VPS) on the hosting platforms to be upgraded may be emailed advisory notices, and this is a general notice related to other ancillary upgrades and Infrastructure Maintenance being performed during this scheduled window of time.

This Maintenance Window starts from 8am on the Saturday morning, through to 6pm Adelaide time on each Saturday and I’ll be personally contactable by phone & online during and after these works in-case there’s any issues that arise.

During this Maintenance Window, selected network or server equipment will be worked on, upgraded and restarted. Works will be completed as quickly as possible (and where possible, timing information will be in emails to affected customers) and restarts are short service interruptions only, while upgrades may incur longer service interruptions.

This will incur outages to selected hosting services of Network Presence in Adelaide, South Australia during this off-peak scheduled works period.
In addition, there may be some impact (short 5-10 minute periods) to the general Internet Connectivity of portions of Network Presence in Adelaide during these works, though redundant routing will be utilised as available.

Our Sydney POP is unaffected by this Maintenance Notice and works.

Progress updates during the works will be posted to our Operations Twitter Feed at https://twitter.com/netpresops

FYI and regards,
Richard.

During the weekend of Saturday & Sunday, April 24th and 25th we will be performing upgrades to selected hosting server platforms & one of our network uplinks of Network Presence in Sydney, Australia.

Customers with services (VPS) on the hosting platforms to be upgraded may be emailed advisory notices, and this is a general notice related to other ancillary upgrades and Infrastructure Maintenance being performed during this scheduled window of time.

This Maintenance Window starts from 3pm on the Saturday afternoon, through to 3pm Sydney time on the afternoon of Sunday April 25th 2021 and I’ll be personally contactable by phone & online during and after these works in-case there’s any issues that arise.

During this Maintenance Window, selected network or server equipment will be worked on, upgraded and restarted. Works will be completed as quickly as possible (and where possible, timing information will be in emails to affected customers) and restarts are short service interruptions only, while upgrades may incur longer service interruptions.

This will incur outages to selected hosting services of Network Presence in Australia during this off-peak scheduled works period.
In addition, there may be some impact (short 5-10 minute periods) to the general Internet Connectivity of portions of Network Presence in Sydney during these works, though redundant routing will be utilised during these works.
Our Adelaide POP is unaffected by this Maintenance Notice and works.

Progress updates during the works will be posted to our Operations Twitter Feed at https://twitter.com/netpresops

FYI and regards,
Richard.