Announcements

Invoicing and Billing Nightmare – Lessons Learned!

Dear Customer,

Re: Black Monday 25th Feb 2013

We are very sorry with regards to the invoicing issue we have experienced today.

We have today launched a new Billing System which straight off sent out several thousand invoices for domains that are no longer required by their owners!

Our traditional domain renewal method is to assume the domain is no longer required 28 days after expiry. The new system today sent out invoices going back up to 90 days after expiry of UK domains as in fact these domains are still renewable up to this time.

We have already cancelled all invoices ranging from 499903 to 500127 and so no further reminders will be sent for these domains.

We are very sorry for this mishap today and hope it did not cause too much distress.

Kind Regards,

Billing Team @ UK Cheapest

PS. We promise it will be worth it once we’ve ironed out the issues!

Parallels Plesk Panel Lifecycle Policy

Parallels Plesk Panel Versions

The currently supported Parallels Plesk Panel versions are:

  • Parallels Plesk Panel 11
  • Parallels Plesk Panel 10
  • Parallels Plesk Panel 9

Lifecycle Policy:

  • A major version is defined as any change in the first number of the version number. For example, Plesk 9 and Plesk 10 are different major versions whereas Plesk 10.2 and 10.3 are not different major versions.
  • Parallels will always provide software patches and accept technical support requests for the latest Parallels Plesk Panel major version and the immediately preceding major version.
  • Each major version will be fully supported for at least a period of four (4) years after release.
    • Extended Support: After this 4 year period, the product will no longer be available for new purchases and will continue to receive patches only for critical issues. This will last for a period of six (6) months.
    • End-of-Life: Once the Extended Support period is over, the product will no longer receive further development and technical support requests will no longer be accepted.
  • In order to ensure stable operation, it is required to be on the latest update / patch within a major version. For example, this means the latest 9.5.x version in the Plesk 9 series, the latest 10.4.x in the Plesk 10 series, or the latest 11.0.x in the Plesk 11 series.
  • Support for a particular instance is also dependent on using a currently supported operating system. This policy is described in the relevant section below.
  • Even for unsupported instances, Parallels will continue to accept technical support requests that are related to updating to a supported version or environment.

The below tables describe when specific versions of Parallels Plesk Panel will enter the Extended Support phase and when patches / support will no longer be available for them. If affected by one of the below dates, customers are encouraged to upgrade to a supported Parallels Plesk Panel version.

Version Lifecycle Dates:

Product Released Extended Support End of Life & Support
Parallels Plesk Panel 11 June 13, 2012 June 13, 2016 December 13, 2016
Parallels Plesk Panel 10 November 3, 2010 November 3, 2014 May 3, 2015
Parallels Plesk Panel 9 December 9, 2008 December 9, 2012 June 9, 2013
Parallels Plesk Panel 8 September 20, 2006 March 1, 2012 September 1, 2012
Parallels Small Business Panel* November 3, 2009 August 1, 2011 July 1, 2012
Parallels Plesk Panel 7 and earlier February 10, 2004 n/a January 1, 2012

 

MICROLITE4 IP Switchover (Migration)

Re: Network Migration of MICROLITE4 Server

We will be moving the MICROLITE4 hardware to a new higher performance network which will require a physical relocation and a number of IP address changes to the servers. This process will be completed automatically and no action from yourself is required. Apart from IP changes there will be no data configuration changes on the server.

The migration will take place on 2nd September 2012 between the hours 0900 – 1600

Unfortunately this means that there will be disruption to services during the migration, especially during the physical hardware relocation. We do apologise for this unavoidable disruption to services. We promise to keep the disruption period as short as possible.

Thank you for your patience during this mandatory migration period.

Network Support Team

Parked Domain Services – Infrastructure Upgrades (18th/19th August 2012)

We are shortly commencing the upgrades of all hardware and infrastructure related to the parked domain name services. This will improve security, performance and reliability of all related domain services including:

  • DNS Management
  • Email forwarding
  • Web Forwarding
  • Parked Mailboxes
  • Domain Homepages

These upgrades only concern parked domain name customers and not any hosting accounts will be affected. If your domain name is using name servers other than ns.microlite1.com then this upgrade will not  concern any of your services.

The hardware will be installed and tested by 1st August and migration testing will begin 7th August. We anticipate final completion of the migration to commence weekend 18th/19th August. The entire process will be complete by midnight on Sunday 19th August.

We will disable the Domain Control Panel at 0300 Saturday 18th and it will be re-enabled 0300 Monday 20th. During this period there may be intermittent outages or propagation issues which we endeavour to keep to a minimum. Our priority will be to have the services 100% active by 0300 Monday 20th August.

For information purposes (you do not need to do anything) the parked domain name servers host names will remain the same however the IP addresses will change as follows:

  • ns.microlite1.com -> currently 66.98.136.44 -> changes to 109.75.164.106
  • ns2.microlite1.com -> currently 66.98.137.170 -> changes to 109.75.164.107

This will mean that there will be a propagation delay between changes however this should cause minimal disruption as both sets of IP addresses will remain active during this period.

Thank you for your patience and support during this time. If you have any questions do not hesitate to contact us.