Power was lost for approximately 55 milliseconds, however, all of our gear was powered down. We have redundant UPS systems, however, we are now aware that they are wired in parallel and therefore vulnerable to power surges originating within our datacenter (we must concede that we had not anticipated this type of failure).

The majority of our systems were up within minutes of the power failure, though others took significantly longer to complete file system integrity checks.

New circuits are being deployed to our racks to ensure that we are on fully independent UPS systems wherever possible. Our provider will be adding additional independent UPS systems to connect to the racks shortly.

We may require some maintenance windows over the coming weeks to a very small subset of our customer base – all maintenance notifications will be sent with 48 hours’ notice per our policy.

Often when an outage of this magnitude occurs we find flaws in other systems and procedures: our primary sites were unavailable over the course of the outage as our failover sites had not been implemented, however, our Twitter stream remained active and in use to supply status updates.

We strive to learn from our mistakes and improve our platform – we will take this incident’s lessons and ensure that our Seattle power infrastructure is no longer vulnerable to neighboring networks’ activities.

We are approaching a holiday weekend with reduced staffing, however, if you have any questions, comments, or concerns regarding this incident (or if you would like to claim a Service Level Agreement credit) please let us know – we look forward to hearing from you and we will make every effort to address your concerns in a timely fashion.

We welcome discussion on the Spry Forums and, if you are not already subscribed, please take this opportunity to subscribe to the Spry Hosting Twitter Feed.

AJAXTerm

The AJAXTerm application provides a web-based interface to SSH and, all in all, we believe it will be a welcome alternative to the Java applet at the My.Spry.com Control Center.

You are welcome to continue using the legacy Java applet if you prefer it, however, we will be transitioning web-based console support to the new interface once AJAXTerm moves from its beta status.

Looking for the best deal on VPS Hosting?

Look no further – we have two 50% coupons good for your first month at Spry when you sign up for one of our new Dedicated-Disk VPS and Dedicated-Node VPS plans or opt for any new virtual private server at our New York City datacenter.

We’ve re-engineered our top-tier plans with increased memory allocations, brand-new Dell hardware, and dedicated resources which remove the potential for disk contention from busy virtual private servers on the same hardware node.

Coupon Code: PREMIUM50

Our 4096 Dedicated-Disk VPS provides you with your own RAID-1 disk array for reliable performance and redundant stability while our 8192 Dedicated-Node VPS consists of a virtual server running on its own dedicated hardware node (think “dedicated server” without the potential for a botched configuration locking you out for good).

Coupon Code: NYC50

Our New York City datacenter has been up and running for several weeks’ worth of testing and we’re convinced that it will meet the high expectations you’d have for any Spry service. We’re offering 50% off your first month on any of our standard plans – we’re limited to the space on-hand out in NYC (we’ll do everything we can to keep ahead of demand with new hardware in the racks) so find the VPS Hosting plan that suits your budget and save 50% when you sign up before 10/1/2009.

We’ve been working around the clock to get everything polished up and ready for you to use and the next time you log in you’ll be sure to notice that My.Spry.com has some new controls – and a new look – to make managing your domains, shared hosting, and dedicated or virtual private server more convenient.

Among some of the new features:

• VPS Power Controls – Start, stop, and reboot
• VPS Password Management – Easily change your password
• Web SSH Applet – Securely access your VPS from your browser
• Advanced Bandwidth Reporting – Track bandwidth usage by package or IP

Ready to check it out? Log in at https://my.spry.com/ and take a look at the My.Spry.com Documentation to get the most out of your service at Spry!

VPSLink Winter Forecast Calls For Sale

The winter forecast is often glumly predictable: clouds, rain, snow, sleet, and – inevitably – plenty of time spent to indoors to avoid the weather. We decided (perhaps in response to the gloomy weather or being cooped up indoors for too long) that it was time to brighten things up with a winter sale.

We’ve reduced the pricing on our most popular VPS hosting plans, with savings of up to 25% on the Link-3.

What does this mean for you?

• You can host your next LAMP or Ruby on Rails project on your own virtual private server for less than $20 per month with a Link-3
• WHM / cPanel VPS hosting for resellers on the Link-4 plan just became even more affordable at VPSLink at less than $30 per month before licensing fees on the Link-4 when you prepay for one year
• Our sale pricing (cumulative with any existing – *ahem* referral program *ahem* – discounts) offers the best pricing you’ll find at any reputable VPS hosting provider

If nothing else, we are hoping that this sale will brighten your day and give you something to stave off winter boredom and cabin fever (it may already be too late for us) when you sign up for a new virtual private server or upgrade your existing service’s plan or billing cycle to take advantage of our winning prices.

Compare VPS plans to find the hosting bargain that’s right for you, but don’t sweat it if you would like to take your time deciding – like most forecasts ours isn’t set in stone, but you can count on these sale prices through March 31st April!

If this coupon’s awesome savings does not speak for itself, consider some of advantages built-in to every Spry VPS Hosting plan:

• Top Quality Hosting – We use purpose-built server hardware and our commercial datacenter is backed by 24/7 support
• No Setup Fees – Your VPS is up and running in a matter of minutes and, whether you’re starting up a new hosting project or upgrading from a basic reseller setup you will save money at Spry from day one
• Control Panel Included – Get cPanel or Plesk to simplify the hosting experience for yourself and your hosting clients
• Latest Versions – We are proud to offer cPanel 11.23 and Plesk 8.6, the latest editions of the tried-and-tested control panels which have served web hosting resellers for years

Visit our cPanel VPS Hosting and Plesk VPS Hosting pages to find out more.

Need some time to decide? Our 25OFFVPS08 25% Off coupon is active until January 1st, 2009 – and remember: our service is backed by a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Our Starter, Intermediate, Advanced, and eCommerce hosting plans have a wide range of capabilities – there’s a plan for your next project, whether you are just starting out or looking to upgrade from your present cPanel hosting:

1 E-mail Account

1 Hosted Domain

Disk:

1000 MB

Bandwidth:

5000 MB

Cost:

$25 / year

Made for parking a domain or serving a small site, the Starter plan offers everything you need to grow an idea into a successful website with the convenience of the cPanel hosting control panel.

Full Description >>

Unlimited

Unlimited

1 MySQL DB

Disk:

5000 MB

Bandwidth:

5 GB

Cost:

$3.95 / mo

Starting up a blog, wiki, or forum? This plan was made to suit the needs of your dynamic, database-driven site on the proven Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP framework and we’ve made it ultimately affordable.

Full Description >>

Unlimited

Unlimited

Unlimited

Disk:

10 GB

Bandwidth:

100 GB

Cost:

$5.95 / mo

Looking for a solution to host multiple projects?

Get unlimited domain hosting, unlimited MySQL databases, unlimited e-mail accounts, and a dedicated IP address with 10 GB of space to host everything (with room to spare!)

Full Description >>

Unlimited

Unlimited

Unlimited

Disk:

50 GB

Bandwidth:

500 GB

Cost:

$14.95 / mo

You know that customers demand the security of SSL-secured shopping and you’ll need as much space as you can get to grow your business.

Get the right tool for the job with our SSL-ready eCommerce shared hosting plan.

Full Description >>

Visit our Shared Hosting page to find out more about the innovations in hosting (and pricing) arriving at Spry.

These two templates replace our CentOS 5, Fedora 8, and Ubuntu 7.10 lighttpd/Ruby on Rails templates. While we have curtailed the range of preconfigured operating systems, the option to install Ruby on Rails is never more than a few commands away – VPSLink provides full root access to install Ruby on Rails on any hosted Linux VPS.

If you are a fan of Debian, we’ve done all the work for you. Simply select the Debian 4.0 “Etch” – RoR w/ Apache + Mongrel or Debian 4.0 “Etch” – RoR w/ Nginx + Mongrel template from the My.VPSLink.com Server Control Center, click Change OS, and get a full-featured Ruby on Rails VPS with:

• nginx (a light-weight webserver) ”or” Apache (the ever-popular HTTP powerhouse)
• MySQL
• Mongrel
• Ruby 1.8.7
• RubyGems 1.1.1
• Rails 2.1.0
• ActionPack 2.1.0
• ActiveRecord 2.1.0
• ActionMailer 2.1.0
• Rake 0.8.1

Starting a new Rails-powered project? Choose Ruby on Rails VPS Hosting at VPSLink and have your virtual private server working in minutes.

Why the change?

Spry’s focus has always centered on providing top-quality shared web hosting and reseller VPS hosting with strong support. All of our hosting offerings – including our cPanel shared hosting, cPanel VPS hosting, and Plesk VPS hosting plans – cater to the needs of individuals and businesses who need website hosting (as conveniently, securely, and quickly as possible).

We’ve found that Webmin VPS users were right at home with Spry hosting, though they rarely needed the added benefit of a 24/7 support department and were often quite comfortable installing, upgrading, and tweaking Webmin on their own. Webmin’s flexibility allowed it to be used for a variety of applications aside from web hosting (which, in turn, inspired us to offer some new hosting options for advanced Linux users).

Enter VPSLink – the new addition to Spry’s brand – with unmanaged VPS hosting that fits the bill for Webmin installations with an even greater variety of popular Linux operating systems.

Over the last two years we have watched interest in the Webmin VPS at Spry shift towards the VPSLink service, and we would like to take this opportunity to give Webmin users the fully-configurable virtual private servers they’ve been looking for at VPSLink while re-dedicating the Spry brand to website hosting and web hosting reseller VPS solutions and the support you’ve come to expect from our diligent support team of technicians.

Please see the Debian and Debian-based Distribution Security Notice posted on the VPSLink forums and the SSL Keys entry at the Debian Wiki for more information regarding this vulnerability and recommended actions to address the potential security issues which may result from weak SSL keys.