RoyceSoftware

VPS and Dedicated Servers are being revamped. Stay tuned for great deals!

All quiet on the western front.

A Reminder about Name Servers

All shared hosting customers with domain names hosted and managed by us, will now see four (instead of two) name servers listed.

• NS1.RoyceSoftware.Net – 202.125.47.194 – Located in Brisbane, Australia
• NS2.RoyceSoftware.Net – 220.233.235.231 – Located in Sydney, Australia
• NS3.RoyceSoftware.Net – 98.143.155.196 – Located in Dallas/Texas, United States
• NS4.RoyceSoftware.Net – 58.96.27.174 – Located in Sydney, Australia.

Resellers are welcome to rebrand any of the above IP Addresses. If your domain name is not managed by RoyceSoftware, but your website is hosted by RoyceSoftware, than you will have to make the name server changes yourself. This is not absolutely necessary. If you simply have NS1 and NS2, that will suffice. However having the additional NS3 and NS4, will ensure your domain remains live in the event one of the other Name Servers go down.

If you require support with rebranding or adding the additional name servers to your domain name, please feel free to contact us for assistance.

Dedicated Servers

We are in the final stages of deliberation over our new dedicated server hardware line. We expect to be able to take orders in the early weeks of June, in time for the end of the financial year.

Stay up To Date!

Use RSS? We do! Keep apprised of news updates like this by subscribing to our RSS feeds:

• http://www.roycesoftware.com/feed/
• https://www.roycesoftware.com/clients/rssAnnouncements.php

Use Twitter? We Do! Follows us on Twitter:

• http://twitter.com/RoyceSoftware

Business Hours Availability

Just a reminder of our sales and support availability times.

Monday to Friday, 9am to 9pm

Sales and Support available via Telephone and Support Ticket Interface.

Saturday and Sunday

Support available via Support Ticket Interface

All quiet on the western front.

Additional Name Servers

Remember last month we informed you of an additional name server you can use to keep your hosted domains live, should any of our servers or connections to our primary data centre go down? Well, just so you all know, it’s not an automated service! In other words, if you want to take advantage of the additional reliability provided by using additional name servers in your domain name, than you either need to do this yourself, or submit a support ticket and request assistance to get this setup! We’ve queried the domain names pointing to our servers and network, and only a small percentage of you (especially resellers) are taking advantage of this! There is no extra cost involved and you get to have peace of mind knowing that in the event the server or network connection to your server goes down, your domain names(s) will remain active and be immediately accessible again, the second the network connection or server is back up and running.

VPS Hosting

VPS Hosting has been totally revamped and you can now enjoy any or all of four different variants of VPS including, cPanel VPS, DirectAdmin VPS, Webmin VPS or Just VPS. For more information about our VPS variants and available plans, please visit: http://www.roycesoftware.com/hosting-plans/vps-hosting/
We can’t ‘convert’ existing VPS customers, however, if you are interested, we can offer a discounted upgrade and bring all your data from your existing VPS to your new VPS. Discounts will be individual to each customer, depending on the current account length and type, so please submit a support ticket for more information.

Dedicated Servers

Our current stock of dedicated hardware is officially empty. If you are interested in purchasing a dedicated server, please bare with us while we acquire a new line of hardware. These things take time, and contain a lot of variables that we need to confirm before we go ahead. Details of new dedicated server combinations available for purchase will be available next month.

Business Hours Availability

Just a reminder of our sales and support availability times.

Monday to Friday, 9am to 9pm. Sales and Support available via Telephone and Support Ticket Interface.

Saturday and Sunday. Support available via Support Ticket Interface

Don’t forget, you can follow us on Twitter! (http://twitter.com/RoyceSoftware). Stay up to date and be informed of discounts, special deals, server and network outages and more!

All quiet on the western front

Stay up to date with RoyceSoftware

Want to stay up to date with RoyceSoftware news? As well as our RSS feed, you can now follow us on Twitter! Visit the sidebar link on our website. You’ll also find the link to subscribe to our RSS feed there as well. We are aiming to avoid adding to the amount of email, junk or not, sent around the internet, so as of this news update, you will no longer receive email news updates of any kind, so please, especially those of you who like to be aprised of service outages the second they happen, subscribe to our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter to receive our updates straight away.

Changes to Backup Schemes

There has been a growing trend in the backup system being used as a time machine. In other words, most clients are only after data they may have lost or deleted very recently. With this in mind, Shared Hosting, Reseller Hosting and VPS customers should be aware that only DAILY backups are now being kept. We are using a 3 day retention system, so you if you are lucky, you may be able to get lost or shadow copies of your data that is up to 3 days old. You WILL however be able to get data lost or changed within the last 24 hours of the last backup. Backups begin at 1am Australian Eastern Standard Time EVERY night. While it is not against the terms and conditions to store large amounts of data and files (if your quota allows it), it is pointless keeping weekly and even monthly backups of downloadable content (podcasters for example) that never changes.

The backup schemes in place for dedicated server customers remains unchanged.  

Secure Your Passwords!

We have been quite relaxed on the low complexity of passwords you are allowed to have. As such, the growing trends seems to be something like this:

1. Account gets hacked
2. Password gets changed
3. Damage and suspicious activity occurs
4. Account gets Auto-Suspended
5. Angry client calls (or emails) asking why their account has been suspended when it was up and functioning fine the night before.

If this trend continues, we may have to charge a password and account rescue fee, to discourage the use of simple passwords (like your dog’s name, your last name, dictionary words etc). Our suggestion? Either use the complex password generated for you when you began your account, or pick your favourite 8 letter word (or more) and replace some of the letters with similiar looking numbers, and alternate the remaining letters with upper and lower case type. The security and reliability of your data is ultimately your responsbility, NOT OURS!

New Business Hours

RoyceSoftware business operating hours have changed and are now as follows:

Monday to Friday, 9am to 9pm. Sales and Techsupport Available via Telephone and Support Ticket Interface.

Monday to Friday, 9pm to 9am. Techsupport Available via Support Ticket Interface.

Saturday and Sunday. Techsupport Available via Support Ticket Interface

This new scheme applies to Shared, Reseller and VPS hosting customers. Dedicated Server customers will continue to receive the same around the clock support as required from data center technicians. Please be patient with us. We do receive a lot of tickets and telephone calls. If you don’t get a response within seconds of submitting your issue or placing your call, please wait a few minutes, we are not ignoring you!

Additional Name Server

Reseller and Shared hosting customers can now take advantage of an additional name server external to our primary data centre. Shared hosting customers will automatically have NS3.RoyceSoftware.Net added to their accounts. If you manage your name servers at your domain name registrar, than you will need to add NS3.RoyceSoftware.Net as either your secondary (2) or tertiary (3) Name Server to take advantage of the additional functionality. Please submit a support ticket if you are unsure of how of what or how to do this. Resellers are also welcome to rebrand the Name Server IP Address as one of their own if you wish. All our Reseller servers have already had NS3.RoyceSoftware.Net clustered with them. If you are a VPS or Dedicated Server customer, and would like your server or VPS to be clustered with NS3.RoyceSoftware.Net please login and submit a support ticket so that we can set this up for you.

This additional name server will allow you some redundancy, should your website or server become unailable or ‘offline’ for long periods of time. Your domain name and subdomains etc, will remain live and active, and will also be accessible the moment any sort of outage has been resolved. We have begun a project to add further redundancy measures for all our clients at no additional cost. We will keep you aprised of these changes here on this website, and what you can do to take advanatge of them, so be sure to subscribe and stay up to date!

All quiet on the western front!

All shared hosting account upgrades and modifications have been completed without issue! All major hardware shipping and moves have been completed and all related services are back online! All operations are back to normal!

All products and services are now available on servers within Australia, or within the U.S.

oh yeah and ‘all quiet on the western front’!

After careful thought and much deliberation, it has been decided that RoyceSoftware will continue to keeps it’s existing and well known company name. We will however been updating our business structure and continuing to improve our services to the benefit of all of our customers. While our new website and client access system is still a short time away, as promised in November, we certainly do have some New Years Specials!

All shared hosting has been doubled! Double the space and double the bandwidth! The special? No price change! Existing customers should also see their limits doubling automataically within the next couple of days, if not already.

But wait, there’s more! Signup before the end of January for any VPS or Semi-Dedicated hosting account, and receive the first six months FREE!

So what are you waiting for? Enjoy the New Years Specials here at RoyceSoftware – End to End Internet Solutions.

We have now begun moving shared hosting accounts to new servers. U.S. based customers will continue to remain on U.S. based servers, while Australian customers will finally by moved to the new fleet of Australian servers located in Brisbane, Queensland. Those of you who are moving, have been contacted and notified. Please follow the instructions in the email to minimise any possible downtime. If you are an Australian customer, and you haven’t been notified or you didn’t receive an email about this move, your account probably already exists on an Australian server! Please contact support to find out if you are unsure.

U.S. Economy continues to effect our inbound and outbound bandwidth costs. We are continuing to absorb the cost differences at an acceptable rate. We will keep you posted and inform you of any changes to hosting prices well before passing on any additional costs.

On a separate note. Through our continuing efforts to improve our services, customers and clients alike will see RoyceSoftware become a new company with a new name and face. This will also include new localised servers and the final removal of U.S. based bandwidth providers. While the particulars are still being deliberated upon, existing clients can rest assured that they will continue to receive the same great service, with no change in monthly or yearly dues.

If you are considering purchasing services from RoyceSoftware, it might just be worth your while to wait until January 1st 2009 for some new years opening specials! You might be pleasantly surprised!

U.S. Economy drop is directly effecting our inbound and outbound bandwidth costs. While we will attempt to absorb the cost differences, it is possible that some clients may experience an increase in monthly dues. We will keep you posted and inform you of any changes to hosting prices well before passing on any additional costs.

Nothing to report. All systems are go. All Quiet on the Western Front…