[57north-discuss] Fwd: Your BitFolk VPSes ("finzean", "garioch") need to be rebooted for critical maintenance

[Hibby]

Yeah, more than happy for them to go to ctte@ for the moment!

-- 
  Hibby
  MM3ZRZ

On Thu, 24 Oct 2019, at 9:22 AM, Robert McWilliam wrote:
> VPS hosts  will be rebooted next week so services will disappear for a bit.
> 
> I don't think anything much has been changed since last reboot so I'm 
> reasonably confident that they'll come back up OK, but if you notice 
> anything not working after this: give a shout here and someone will 
> have a look at it.
> 
> Also in my ongoing drive to get rid of responsibilities: can we point 
> the BitFolk emails at someone else?
> 
> Robert 
> ________________________________________________________
> Robert McWilliam     rmcw at allmail.net    argh.technology
> 
> What do you consider to be your median achievement?
> 
> ----- Original message -----
> From: andy at bitfolk.com
> To: Robert McWilliam <rmcw at allmail.net>
> Subject: Your BitFolk VPSes ("finzean", "garioch") need to be rebooted 
> for critical maintenance
> Date: Wednesday, 23 October 2019 21:08
> 
> Dear customer,
> 
> We've recently been made aware of some serious security issues in the
> hypervisor software that we use (Xen). Fixing these problems will
> require us to reboot our hosts and therefore all customer VPSes must
> also be rebooted (or experience suspend/restore - see below).
> 
> You do not need to respond to this email unless:
> 
> - you have questions about the process
> - you wish to request monitoring of your VPS and its services
> - you wish to have your VPS moved ahead of the scheduled time
> 
> We must apply these fixes to ensure the security and reliability both of
> your VPSes and of our infrastructure, which is why we have no choice but
> to proceed with this work in the short period of time between
> notification and the end of the embargo.
> 
> I understand that this will prove disruptive to you and that you would
> prefer much more notice. When it comes to our own maintenance we do
> generally provide more notice, but as this is an upstream security issue
> with an embargo date it does mean that we need to reboot everything
> before the embargo on the details ends (12:00Z 31 October 2019).
> 
> Your VPSes have been assigned a maintenance window during which the
> reboots will take place. The start of the maintenance window for each of
> your VPSes is listed below, in UTC time zone. Each maintenance window is
> up to 60 minutes long, though the work should be completed much sooner
> than this, typically within a few minutes (yay, SSDs!).
> 
> +-----------------+---------------+--------------------+
> | Name            | Main IPv4     | Window start (UTC) |
> +-----------------+---------------+--------------------+
> |         finzean | 85.119.82.172 | 2019-10-30 00:30   |
> |         garioch | 85.119.84.59  | 2019-10-30 01:30   |
> +-----------------+---------------+--------------------+
> 
> At some point in each maintenance window your VPS will be cleanly shut
> down. The host it is on will then be patched and rebooted, and then your
> VPS will be brought up again.
> 
> You should ensure that your VPS and all its services start up correctly
> on boot. We offer a free monitoring service which can help you to know
> if your VPS and its services are working correctly. If you have not done
> so already then you may want to get in touch with us to have this set
> up. You can do that by replying to this email and describing which
> services you would like monitored.
> 
> If you would prefer for us to attempt to suspend and restore your VPS
> to/from storage, resulting in less disruption, then you can indicate
> that preference on our web panel at:
> 
>     https://panel.bitfolk.com/account/config/#prefs
> 
> Doing so will cause us to add ping checks for your VPS so we can have a
> good chance at knowing if the restore was successful.
> 
> If the assigned maintenance window is problematic for you, we can move
> your VPS to already-patched hardware at some other time in advance of
> your assigned maintenance window. This will still require us to shutdown
> and then boot your VPS. If you'd like us to do that, please reply to
> this email to say so.
> 
> If you have any questions please reply to this email, which will open a
> support ticket. There is no need to reply to this email unless you have
> further questions, wish to request monitoring, or need your VPS moving
> before the assigned window.
> 
> Best regards,
> Andy Smith
> BitFolk Ltd
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