[Maintenance] Mail Server Upgrade

UPDATE Jan 9, 2011 10:34PM CST – These upgrades have been completed and all servers are operating normally now.

UPDATE Jan 9, 2011 9:50PM CST – These upgrades are commencing now.

We will be performing a mail server upgrade on our servers:

liquid1.wznoc.com
server.avdns4.com
server.wznoc.com

Tonight, January 9th between the hours of 8PM and 2AM (January 10th) CST. The actual upgrade should only take 30 minutes to an hour to complete, but we are setting aside this 6 hour maintenance window meaning that the work will be done sometime during these 6 hours. During the actual upgrade process SMTP, POP3, and IMAP services will be shut off on the server, so users on the affected server will not be able to send out mail or check their mail. No mail will be lost during this process.

This upgrade will consist of changing the POP3 and IMAP services to a more up-to-date and faster system. We have tested this system with other servers and found the new system to be superior. This upgrade will provide this system for these servers.

With this upgrade, some users may experience some issues detailed below:

• Users who have their IMAP account set up to automatically purge their trash may notice issues with this with the new mail server software.
  
• Users who use the POP protocol to check their mail, but leave a copy of the messages on the server, may see all of their mail downloaded into their e-mail program once again.
  
• Users must use either email@domain.com or email+domain.com as the username when checking e-mail. We did identify an issue where the old mail server software allowed you to use a colon (:) to separate your email from your domain name in your username, but this will not work with the new software.

However it has been our experience that MOST users will not be affected by this. The only individuals that would be affected by any of these potential issues would be users who have their accounts set up with advanced settings.

To see if your webhosting account is affected by this, use our Server Identification Tool:

http://www.amshelp.com/identify.php

If this says either liquid1.wznoc.com, server.avdns4.com, or server.wznoc.com then your webhosting account will be affected by this.

Steven