Update
July 23, 2019
8:45AM PT

We would like to take this opportunity to provide greater detail with respect to the fire at our Seattle data center on Friday, July 3, 2019 and how it affected Dotster and our customers.

The fire only affected one of our data centers, but we gave it our full attention. In response to the situation, we brought in additional customer support staff to field calls and emails and mobilized our entire IT operations team to work to restore service as quickly as possible. We also posted regular updates on our support pages and updated phone messaging as we learned more information.

The fire damaged the power distribution equipment in the building where our data center resides in Seattle, WA just before midnight on July 2, 2009. This interrupted the building’s power distribution to the data center that Dotster uses and interrupted normal redundant power systems so that within a few hours the power in UPS systems was depleted and our servers went offline. Other large companies who use this data center were affected as well and experienced similar outages.

As soon as we were notified of the fire, Dotster sent IT staff to the data center to prepare to bring servers back online upon restoration of the building’s power distribution system. The data center engineers quickly determined that vital systems in the electrical room were damaged and could not be immediately repaired after the Fire Marshall cleared the facility for re-entry. As a result, extra generators were brought in to ensure resources were available to power and cool the building. Much of the outage time resulted from waiting for the building power to be restored and waiting for the building to cool enough to restart servers without heat issues.

As soon as power was restored, our employees went to work bringing systems back online. Once they went to work, some systems were back online almost immediately, and nearly all services were restored within four hours.

This was an unfortunate situation, and we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience it may have caused. The outage lasted much longer than we would have liked, but thank you for bearing with us during these extraordinary circumstances.

Subject: Web Hosting and VPS Maintenance

Weekly Recurrence: Wednesday
Start Time: 2200 (10:00PM PDT)
End Time: 0200 (2:00AM PDT)
Duration: 4 hrs

Impact: During a 4 hour period, the Hosting Control Panel within your account may be unavailable. You may not be able to upload or configure your e-mail settings, and may also see intermittent downtime on your website.

Summary: Continuous Improvement of Web Hosting and VPS Services

In an effort to increase performance on our Hosting and VPS services, we will be performing a series of weekly maintenance upgrades. These maintenance upgrades will take place every Wednesday from 10:00PM PDT - 2:00AM PDT.

Domain maintenance will not be affected. You may modify and update your domains during this period.

We ask that if you need to upload any changes to your Webspaces or make any modifications to your Hosting account, to please make these changes prior to OR after the scheduled maintenance.

We will make every effort to minimize the amount of down time experienced. We apologize for any inconvenience that this may cause you.

Hosting and VPS Customer Care