CJ Posted December 13, 2005 Share Posted December 13, 2005 After having crap galore off our previous supplier I got our IT guy to change to Zen as they had such a superb reputation. Well bugger me, just 6 weeks into the change and the servers have been down 3 times! As a business that relies on email transfer of work you can imagine how frustratinmg this is. Rant over Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
edd_t Posted December 13, 2005 Share Posted December 13, 2005 have you tried star.net ? i know a few people using them to host their e-mail and have no probs at all for years... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CJ Posted December 13, 2005 Author Share Posted December 13, 2005 have you tried star.net ? i know a few people using them to host their e-mail and have no probs at all for years... I dont really want to go through the rigmarole of changing again. Just wanted to post up to vent some anger:complain: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete Posted December 13, 2005 Share Posted December 13, 2005 You just can't send email? So their SMTP service is struggling...probably virus/spam quantity bringing them down. I try to limit the number of people sending via our services as a good virus attack can cause all sorts of headaches. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CJ Posted December 13, 2005 Author Share Posted December 13, 2005 You just can't send email? So their SMTP service is struggling...probably virus/spam quantity bringing them down. I try to limit the number of people sending via our services as a good virus attack can cause all sorts of headaches. I can't send or receive mate Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete Posted December 13, 2005 Share Posted December 13, 2005 I can't send or receive mate You have PM. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HunterJ Posted December 13, 2005 Share Posted December 13, 2005 I've never used my ISPs (currently Zen) email system (too much hassle if you need to move). I have a number of email accounts and domains with 1&1 Internet, they give you POP and IMAP, virus checking and spam filtering for £0.69 per month - their webmail is also quite good... IMHO, just use the ISP for connectivity, host websites, email, domain etc else where. Jamie Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lewis Posted December 13, 2005 Share Posted December 13, 2005 After having crap galore off our previous supplier I got our IT guy to change to Zen as they had such a superb reputation. Well bugger me, just 6 weeks into the change and the servers have been down 3 times! As a business that relies on email transfer of work you can imagine how frustratinmg this is. Rant over set up a mirror system with another supplier. With redundancy and proper ups they should never go down Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CJ Posted December 13, 2005 Author Share Posted December 13, 2005 set up a mirror system with another supplier. With redundancy and proper ups they should never go down Seeing as I am a technical numpty, you will need to explain that Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete Posted December 13, 2005 Share Posted December 13, 2005 He means having the secondary MX in the zone file for your domain point to an unrelated companies servers so in theory if the primary server is down, mail should be routed to the other mail server. I do similar for other people here. If their main internal SMTP server isn't available then the email gets stuck on a POP3 box here. At least that's how I'd do it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CJ Posted December 13, 2005 Author Share Posted December 13, 2005 He means having the secondary MX in the zone file for your domain point to an unrelated companies servers so in theory if the primary server is down, mail should be routed to the other mail server. I do similar for other people here. If their main internal SMTP server isn't available then the email gets stuck on a POP3 box here. At least that's how I'd do it. Is that an expensive hobby? My workplace has around 25 seperate email addresses Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete Posted December 13, 2005 Share Posted December 13, 2005 Is that an expensive hobby? My workplace has around 25 seperate email addresses Nah. Do you run a server where all the email comes into or seperate email configurations on each PC that collect from your ISP? You should perhaps consider your own internal mail server as this can be setup to handle most of this invisibly without horrible popups appearing on your users screens. Especially if you have a fixed IP as mail would come straight to you anyway then. You'd just require secondary MX to point to another mail server which would queue your mail somewhere until you have a connection again. I've done this for a mate where his exchange box is on an ADSL line, but goes down sometimes. If it goes down then email gets redirected to a POP box so he can get it via a dialup or from anywhere else. I guess the cheapest way is to have two ISPs with mailboxes setup for your users. When your core mailserver is unavailable mail would be routed to the other backup ISP users. You set these accounts up on all your PCs so they check both accounts. Only thing is I'm fairly sure you can only put in one outgoing SMTP server, so you'd have to change that manually in the event of failure. It's not really how it should be done, but it'd work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CJ Posted December 13, 2005 Author Share Posted December 13, 2005 Thanks Pete We currently run seperate emails on each PC for them to collect through the ISP. I will pass on your reccomendations to my IT guy and see what he wants to do next. I know one thing for sure, we are not going to have this shit happen again. It is still down and is costing us money! On average, we take between 17k and 20k worth of orders every day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete Posted December 13, 2005 Share Posted December 13, 2005 I will pass on your reccomendations to my IT guy and see what he wants to do next. I know one thing for sure, we are not going to have this shit happen again. It is still down and is costing us money! On average, we take between 17k and 20k worth of orders every day. I'd get a better IT guy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CJ Posted December 13, 2005 Author Share Posted December 13, 2005 And now the bloody Error network password box wont stop popping up!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete Posted December 13, 2005 Share Posted December 13, 2005 And now the bloody Error network password box wont stop popping up!!! Pencils and paper are what you need mate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lewis Posted December 14, 2005 Share Posted December 14, 2005 I'd get a better IT guy. Advice that CJ would be well advised to take based on my previous experince with the person. No reflection AT ALL on CJ, the IT guy isn't best informed. I would suggest CJ that you guys consider a managed service, situations like this would be avoided and you could get companies to tender for the job. Happy to help you in an advisory capacity if you wish as I would not be interested in tendering. Let me know if you would like any more advice in the area. I would say that Pete's company would be well placed to offer you a solution if you deemed it worthwhile. Lewis Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CJ Posted December 14, 2005 Author Share Posted December 14, 2005 I think my best option would be to utilise the chap we already have to do the things he is good at - fix PC / network issues and software problems and for me to talk to an outside source to see what else is on offer. Thanks for all the advice guys. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lewis Posted December 14, 2005 Share Posted December 14, 2005 As I have said, I think that would be your best course of action, that enables you to set up penalty driven SLA's with the company for responsiveness and resolution. Might well be worth you speaking to Pete (although there are of course other companies that offer similar services) to see if his company can offer what you are looking for and as before, let me know if you want any more info. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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