What's up with Hosting Direct?

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#656351 16-Jul-2012 11:00

nobody: Yeah, but literally no prior warning to hosting customers. WTF?!

HD sent out 3-4 emails to all those with IP's in the affected ranges begining of this month or before. One of them included ...

--snip--

Following on from my email to you regarding your new IP Range late
    last night, I have secured all old IP (60.234.*.*) addresses until 22
        July 2012 11PM this is now the secured date that they
    will stop working...

    I have arranged this to take the pressure off customers who require
    more time to change A records and DNS accordingly and in an orderly
    fashion.

--snip--

Assuming ths is correct the agreement that was reached was not carried through to the date as it was suggested it would be.

Zeon

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#656376 16-Jul-2012 11:43

I don't think Hosting Direct and Orcon have a very good relationship - look at the back and forth on Twitter when Orcon had their big network wide outage a few weeks ago.

Probably for the best it is ending.

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chchrob

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#659018 20-Jul-2012 12:41

As of today Hosting Direct web hosting, reseller hosting and domains are a part of OpenHost.

http://hostingdirect.co.nz/

None of this Orcon vs. HD stuff has anything to do with us, just cleaning up the mess.

COO @ Digiweb Group / Web Drive

networkn

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#659022 20-Jul-2012 12:44

chchrob: As of today Hosting Direct web hosting, reseller hosting and domains are a part of OpenHost.

http://hostingdirect.co.nz/

None of this Orcon vs. HD stuff has anything to do with us, just cleaning up the mess.

Interesting way to phrase it....

1080p

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#659057 20-Jul-2012 13:28

Just got the (badly formatted) e-mail:

As you may be aware Internet Services Group Ltd has acquired the web hosting, reseller hosting and domain name business of Hosting Direct, which moving forward will be operating under the OpenHost brand. First and foremost we would like to welcome to you OpenHost, and secondly we would like to confirm that your web hosting services and pricing will not change under the new ownership.
If you aren't familiar with OpenHost, we are a-part of Web Drive; New Zealand's largest web host with more than 100,000 domain names under management and 25,000 customers including many of New Zealand's most popular web sites. We are 100% New Zealand owned and operated - based on the North Shore in Auckland.
The team here is excited about working with the more than 4,000 new customers we have on board and are committed to providing the best possible web hosting services. We have 45 staff including a large team of Systems Engineers and Systems Administrators to ensure that as well as receiving fast customer service, we are pro-actively maintaining systems, resolving issues and that above all - providing web hosting and systems that are reliable and perform well.
Overnight all Hosting Direct servers were migrated to our data-centre, so you can expect no further disruption to your services as a result of this change in ownership. We also understand there have been a number of issues in the past weeks with HD, which we would like to assure you are no longer able to affect your services.
Important Payment Information:
If you currently have an unpaid invoice with Hosting Direct Ltd, please do not pay it. Shortly after this message we will issue the same invoice from Internet Services Group Ltd, with our payment details. No further payments should be made to Hosting Direct Ltd, and any payment made will result in delays processing it.
Account Access & Support:
Your URL for logging into your account is now:
http://my.hostingdirect.co.nz
For customer support, please open a ticket via your account or email support@hostingdirect.co.nz.
You can also call us on 0800 820 017.
For links to all of the above, please visit: www.hostingdirect.co.nz.
We would like to thank you for your business and we look forward to working with you in the coming weeks, months and years. If you have any major concerns about this change, please feel free to email me directly - robin@webdrive.co.nz or tweet us @chchrob.
Best Regards,
Robin Dickie
General Manager,
Internet Services Group & Web Drive

networkn

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#659062 20-Jul-2012 13:31

The prior communication in this thread by OH and the one from Robin Dickie hardly instill confidence.

They need to seriously work on their presentation and communication skills.

Perhaps they should hire a marketing person to help protect their investment :)

chchrob

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#659072 20-Jul-2012 13:48

Tough crowd :)

1080p: Just got the (badly formatted) e-mail:

We all received an HTML formatted email, not sure what went wrong for you. We inherited the system today..obviously a few kinks to work out.

We are focused on working with customers, securing services and tidying up. Many of our team, myself included haven't left the office since yesterday to achieve this.

I just saw this thread and pitched in with a quick answer.

COO @ Digiweb Group / Web Drive

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mgr

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#660621 23-Jul-2012 20:43

Did anyone receive any notification that Hosting Direct was off loading it's web / domain / dns hosting customers to OpenHost prior to it happening?

I received no notification at all, though the week leading up to this shockingly unprofessional f***up off a migration I was of course without email. This being due to the whole Orcon IP debacle which appears to be part of the same mess.

sampler

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#660648 23-Jul-2012 21:58

mgr: Did anyone receive any notification that Hosting Direct was off loading it's web / domain / dns hosting customers to OpenHost prior to it happening?

I received no notification at all, though the week leading up to this shockingly unprofessional f***up off a migration I was of course without email. This being due to the whole Orcon IP debacle which appears to be part of the same mess.

Over the space of four weeks I am aware of at least three emails from HD. The Orcon range thing appeared last weekend however it would have been due this weekend just gone at the same time as the changing to Openhost/Webdrive. As a side note HD put UP their domain name charges to match openhost/webdrive six to eight weeks ago. So I assume its been on the boil for at least that long.

Did you also miss the release about their VPS offerings being told (again ?) to Rimu Hosting, that was a few weeks ago. Again at least two emails weeks ahead.

Cheers

Lee

nobody

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#660758 24-Jul-2012 08:06

mgr: Did anyone receive any notification that Hosting Direct was off loading it's web / domain / dns hosting customers to OpenHost prior to it happening?

I received no notification at all, though the week leading up to this shockingly unprofessional f***up off a migration I was of course without email. This being due to the whole Orcon IP debacle which appears to be part of the same mess.

I also received no notification of this happening.

chchrob

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#660810 24-Jul-2012 09:14

Hi All, we have posted an announcement in an attempt to answer any questions people may have.

http://my.hostingdirect.co.nz/announcements.php?id=4

ISGL:

Dear Customers,

There have been some questions raised around our acquisition of HD and all the changes being made, as such we would like to explain the process and in doing so provide some answers.

A few weeks ago we (Internet Services Group) were approached by Ben to acquire the hosting, reseller hosting and domain business of Hosting Direct. We cannot speak for Ben and his motivations, however there was some urgency as the IP ranges most of the sites ran on belong to Orcon and that contract was due to expire.

Customers were notified of this acquisition by email on the 12th of July. At this time HD had already started moving sites off Orcon ranges to their own and notifying customers.

Upon signing we provided an IP range via our Network to HD and they commenced work updating servers. This was to be a seamless transition as none of the IP changes required down time (even after moving hardware sites on their IP ranges still work).

Then Friday the 13th happened. We don't know why, however at 6pm on Friday 13th, the entire range of IP's provided by Orcon to HD dropped offline, and sometime Monday they were bought back online and are still online now. All we know for sure, is that this wasn't a technical issue. You can read more about that here.

Move forward to Thursday the 19th, at 11:30pm we moved all of Hosting Directs servers to Maxnet. For most customers this was seemless with <20 minutes downtime. However for customers on CP7 there was an extended outage overnight and some persistant issues with performance and mail, for which we apologize. You can read more about that servers issues on our announcements page.

If you are still having any problems with your web site please contact our helpdesk.

We have also setup a FAQ regarding the acquisition here:

http://my.hostingdirect.co.nz/knowledgebase.php?action=displayarticle&id=12

Best Regards,
OpenHost Team

COO @ Digiweb Group / Web Drive

richms

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#663925 30-Jul-2012 12:28

And they broke again today, about 11:30 till sometime around 12:15.

Gotta wonder really...

Richard rich.ms

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#663927 30-Jul-2012 12:33

richms: And they broke again today, about 11:30 till sometime around 12:15.

Gotta wonder really...

it's no small move....

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chchrob

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#663930 30-Jul-2012 12:38

HD had a core network outage..
https://twitter.com/hdnetnz/status/229726843677319168

The only former Hosting Direct web hosting customers that would be affected are ones that have not updated their A records to move away from the HD range (this is a very small percentage).

All the hardware and 99% of the sites are now running on our network, in our data-centre and are unaffected by anything going on at HD.

COO @ Digiweb Group / Web Drive

Talkiet

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#663945 30-Jul-2012 13:00

chchrob: HD had a core network outage..
https://twitter.com/hdnetnz/status/229726843677319168

The only former Hosting Direct web hosting customers that would be affected are ones that have not updated their A records to move away from the HD range (this is a very small percentage).

All the hardware and 99% of the sites are now running on our network, in our data-centre and are unaffected by anything going on at HD.

A lot of people won't get that. HD seem to block anyone from their twitter that has ever said anything bad about them, or has even asked completely legimate, politely phrased questions, if in fact the answers are embarassing.

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

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