The Road Ahead

We haven’t disappeared, we’re still here. The computer gods have just not being favouring us for the last couple of days.

One of our web servers, NENE, has been offline for nearly 48 hours due to events that are beyond our control. As this issue is not likely to be fixed before Friday (at the earliest), we have temporarily moved all affected websites including our own to a different server.

Our standard mail service have not been affected and are working as normal. We intentionally split our Web hosting and mail services exactly for this kind of situation.

So, what happened?

Over the past few weeks, our NENE web server has been misbehaving for no apparent reason. This behaviour was not apparent to our customers or visitors, but noticeable to us via our daily checking and monitoring.

As any investigation could cause service interruption, we held off until last weekend. Unfortunately, despite many hours of work we couldn’t trace the problem and we suspected that Windows itself may have been corrupted beyond easy repair.

As NENE is actually a virtual server, the quickest and easiest solution was to replace it with a brand new virtual machine (we had backed up all data prior to taking the server offline). With virtual servers, the process of installing and configuration is typically quicker than with physical hardware so we aimed only to be offline for a couple of hours.

So we provisioned a new virtual machine, a process that typically takes a few minutes. It didn’t. It took over six hours for our service provider to provision a new server. Once available, the new virtual server was far from healthy, with one of its’ more apparent problems being its’ inability to restart without hanging/crashing.

We’re currently sitting in a very frustrating limbo as our service provider attempts to find a fix. They’ve managed to independently replicate the problem but have yet to discover a cure.

Update 17:00, 4^th September

The latest update we have from our service provider is that they have managed to replicate the problem in their test environment and are currently investigating the underlying cause.

Update 15:30, 5^th September

Our service provider has traced the issue. However, as the fix requires some changes to their infrastructure that are unlikely to be completed before Friday (7^th September).

GDPR day has arrived. Rejoice.

Update Privacy Policy and other legal documents and agreements.

To meet the requirements and standards of GDPR, we've updated our Privacy Policy, Terms and Conditions and other legal documents. These updated policies, documents and agreements took effect from the 22nd May 2018. If you are a Calzada Media customer or a visitor to our website, please take a moment to review these important documents.

• Privacy Policy
• Terms and Conditions
• Website Terms of Use
• More legal documents and agreements

Will any services change because of GDPR?

Any purchased services or products will continue as before. We've only had had to make one small modification to our web hosting service management tools as part of our GDPR compliance.

Will I still receive messages from Calzada Media?

If you are a Calzada Media customer with an ongoing service or product, then yes. You will continue to receive messages from us regarding the product or service you have purchased. These messages include renewal notifications, billing information or advanced warning of service maintenance or upgrade. We will send these message to you as part of our legitimate business interest and to satisfy the contractual agreement between us and our customers.

Will you be sending out marketing messages?

We will only send out marketing messages to people who have explicitly consented to receive them.

Questions?

If you have any questions, please do get in touch via the support helpdesk.

In accordance with our Privacy Policy and our GDPR compliance, we have disabled direct remote access to our MariaDB servers. Access to MariaDB databases will still be available via the MariaDB Web Management tools:

Why?

For the last couple of months, we've been testing SSL connections for MariaDB using our in-house test servers. Regrettably these tests have demonstrated some inconsistencies and performance concerns with the various applications and services that use MariaDB when using SSL connections. We are still investigating this and hope to be able to enable SSL connections as soon as possible.

In our Privay Policy, we state that all connections to our websites and services are protected by SSL / HTTPS. As we are unable to deliver this protection, we are disabling this connection until such time we are able to protect it.

How do I manage my MariaDB database?

You can still manage your MariaDB databases using the Adminer tool available on your web hosting server (see links below). Connections to Adminer are protected by SSL / HTTPS.

Adminer on AVON

Adminer on SEVERN

What happens if I have a large query?

If you have a substantial query, please contact us via the Support Helpdesk as we may be able to run the query manually. Please note that this service is discretionary and we cannot provide assistance with debugging queries.

As we've mentioned before, the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) takes effect on 25th May 2018. GDPR replaces the Data Protection Act and applies more stringent requirements on how we gather, store and process data. Furthermore, GDPR provides more rights to those we hold data - customers and website visitors.

To meet the requirements and standards of GDPR, we've updated our Privacy Policy, Terms and Conditions and other legal documents. These updated policies, documents and agreements will take effect from the 22nd May 2018. If you are a Calzada Media customer or a visitor to our website, please take a moment to review these important documents.

• Privacy Policy
• Terms and Conditions
• Website Terms of Use

Customer Details & Consent

We have contacted individual customers in the last couple of weeks to confirm details we hold and request consent to store data where applicable. If any customer has a questions about the data we hold, please contact us via the support helpdesk

Improvements to Data Management

We've upgraded our customer portal, MyAccount, to simplify and enable customers to manage their account information, privacy and communication preferences.

After a little while away, the TaxiOffice demo website is now back up and running. The demo is running the latest version of TaxiOffice that incorporates a number of reliability, performance and stability improvements.

Try out the demo today