Hello,
The documentation for BitFolk's backups service was really in need
of an update so I rewrote it and moved it to the wiki here:
https://tools.bitfolk.com/wiki/Backups
If you use other services to backup your VPS then please feel free
to add them to the section at the end:
https://tools.bitfolk.com/wiki/Backups#Alternative_backup_strategies
If you do something more than "just use Foo service" to backup your
VPS and feel like writing up a separate article then linking to it
from there would also be welcome.
Cheers,
Andy
--
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
Hi,
A bunch of alerts were just sent out regarding backup3.bitfolk.com.
I am doing some work on this host and forgot to disable alerts.
There is no need for concern. Apologies for the confusion.
Cheers,
Andy
--
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
Hi,
There was a consultation earlier regarding what to do about
customers who do not react to the alerts we send about serious
security issues we have found during regular scans of our IP space:
http://lists.bitfolk.com/lurker/message/20161215.152008.2ee18732.en.html
Dealing with that was becoming quite a time sink and I was also
getting concerned about potentially inconsistent handling of these
issues when not working to any kind of documented process.
The consensus seemed to prefer the idea of network suspension after
21 days, so this has now been documented along with a bit more
information about the things we (or partners) scan for:
https://tools.bitfolk.com/wiki/Vulnerability_scanning
This will now allow for some more automation.
I've also updated the Terms and Conditions page:
https://bitfolk.com/policy/terms.html
with a new paragraph that points to that page:
BitFolk and its partners regularly scan BitFolk's IP space for
well-known vulnerabilities and misconfigurations, some of which
are serious enough that BitFolk will insist that The Customer
fixes them within a reasonable timescale.
Although the paragraph above that one is the usual blanket "reserve
the right to suspend service", so perhaps technically not necessary
to list particular things, it does however seem like useful info to
have there.
Normally we try to have changes to T's&C's not take effect for 30 days but I
don't see this as a change, since we have always used the "reserve
the right to suspend service" clause if necessary with things like
this. So if it is unfortunately necessary to suspend someone's
network we won't be waiting until 30+21 days to do it. And happily
there currently isn't anyone who's been receiving alerts for
anything like that long.
If you have any questions or feel the article (or process) could be
improved please let us know.
Cheers,
Andy
--
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
"The electric guitar - like making love - is much improved by a little
feedback, completely ruined by too much." — The League Against Tedium
Hi,
If you don't use BitFolk's backup service then you can ignore the
rest of this email.
For a very long time we have allowed customer backups to go past the
quota and still continue working, arranging at a later time to fix
that situation (by the customer asking for some backed up data to be
deleted or else ordering more storage for backups).
This is now changing so that backups will stop happening once the
quota is exceeded.
Nagios alerts have always been sent out as WARNING at 95% of quota
and CRITICAL at 99% of quota. There is also a Nagios check for age
of backups and that will start to fire when there has been no
successful backup for a certain amount of time¹. Those whose backups
get suspended for being over quota will start to receive that one.
So, if you are currently receiving these alerts you do need to do
something about it.
Customers who are already over their backup quota at the moment have
already been contacted via support ticket, but in future we may
leave it down to you to get in touch.
Cheers,
Andy
¹ The time scales for those alerts depend on the backup schedule in
use. For those having a backup run every 4 hours (the default)
it's a WARNING after 10 hours and CRITICAL after 24 hours.
--
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
Hi,
Rather disappointingly there's been another round of security
advisories for Xen, some of which affect the configuration in use at
BitFolk:
http://xenbits.xen.org/xsa/
So unfortunately that means another round of "patch and reboot
everything" for us.
We will send out direct emails informing you of a two hour window in
which the work affecting your VPS is going to take place, but that
won't be sent for a week or so as testing of the patches will be
necessary first.
I am going to try to get a checkbox added to the panel website so
that those of you who are brave enough to try it can indicate that
you'd prefer for your VPS to be suspended and restored rather than
shutdown and booted.
Cheers,
Andy
--
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
