Just a quick post to let you know some of the plans for our infrastructure as they stand right now.  We’re open to thoughts and comments on these plans.  We think they’re solid, but other sets of eys/thoughts may come up with something we haven’t thought of.

We’re currently in the process of building out what we call our Edge, which is a multiple server cluster of servers which will handle RBL checking.  The servers that make up this cluster are virtual instances that are part of a grid.  We will be able to automatically add/remove instances to the grid as load requires.  They will be accessed via DNS round robin to distribute load across the cluster.  Messages that pass the RBL checks will be delivered to the appropriate MailFoundry appliance for additional checks.  Messages that pass those checks will then be delivered to your mail server.

We’re also in the planning states of building out a Backup MX service, which will have MailFoundry appliances located at a separate datacenter facility and will be served by a second Edge cluster.  This will be an add-on service, likely for $20-25 per month per ServerProtect account and $2-3 per DomainProtect account.

The primary Edge is up right now and we’re doing testing on it.  We’ve still got some work to do on it, building some reporting tools for it as well as the monitoring and automatic scaling system.  We don’t have a specific release date for it yet, but we’re hoping to have it ready for customer testing within the next few weeks.  The backup Edge will be easy, since it will essentially be a duplicate of the primary with different targets for the MailFoundry appliances.

The Backup appliances and infrastructure are still being planned.  We’re researching datacenters right now.  We’re thinking it will be a couple of months before we’re ready to go with this service.

Any thoughts and ideas are welcome.

Just a quick update on the plans for overage billing.  It’s likely we’ll push this back a month or two because of a couple things:

1) We’re still developing our new billing system.  And while it will probably be ready in time for the July billing cycle, we want to make sure everything is working properly before we add another facet to the billing.

2) As most of you know, there’s an issue with the reports we receive from the MailFoundry appliances on the last day of the month.  We’re waiting on a fix from MailFoundry which is supposed to come out with the next release of the appliance software, but we don’t have a specific date on that release yet.

3) We’re making some pretty extensive changes to our infrastructure over the next couple of months.  This will change how we collect some of the reporting data and we want to make sure we have that up and running and working properly before we start billing for overages. (More on the infrastructure changes in a follow-up post).

If you have any questions, please let us know.

Last night we experienced a complete infrastructure power outage due to a problem with a power distribution unit that delivers power to our cabinet at our datacenter.  Unfortunately, it took some time to diagnose exactly what particular piece of equipment was causing the problem and then to resolve the issue.

The problem has been resolved at this time, however, we will need to schedule a short downtime in the next week or so to upgrade a piece of power hardware to reduce the chances of an outage like this happening again in the future.

By way of apology for the extended downtime, we will be issuing $10 service credits for all ServerProtect customers and $2 service credits for all DomainProtect customers.  This credit will appear in your account in the next week or so.

Ken returns!  It’s the Spamfighters Podcast, Episode 7.

 

 Spamfighters Episode 7 [4:57m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (68)

In observance of the Memorial Day holiday, Easy Antispam Support will be available on a limited, emergency basis.  If you have a critical support issue, please send an email to support@easyantispam.com.

Phone support may not be available.

Stop by and visit Easy Antispam at HostingCon 2008, July 28-30, 2008 at Navy Pier in Chicago, IL.  We’ll be in booth #712 and we’ll have lots of cool stuff to give away and a few special surprises too!

You can use our special discount code 20-222e78 to register for a discount, or click this link to register now and have the code input for your automatically.

We hope to see you there!