It certainly wasn’t as seamless as we wanted, but the server move has been completed.

Most of our servers have been moved but we are maintaining some networking gear and a backup server in the original space.

Although we had a lot of trouble with bringing an Exchange server online, our legacy email was operational within two hours.  This included moving locations and changing our database structure from clustered to replicated.  So that part went well.

What didn’t go well was Exchange panicking over some active directory work we decided to do within our scheduled downtime.  That was a mistake — we shouldn’t have tried to get too much accomplished within the maintenance window.  The result was too many variables which made for difficult troubleshooting.

Another mistake that we made was focusing all of our attention on this Exchange problem.  We should’ve taken a break from this and bring other services online.  It took only thirty minutes to bring legacy flat web pages online, but this process wasn’t started until we had turned the corner on our Exchange problem.  We hadn’t prepared a triage plan, which was a mistake.

Back to the good news:

The cooling in the new space is much better.

This server was in a stubborn hot spot with our old room.  Notice the end of daily temperature fluctuations — our old system relied on building air circulation which was shut off at night.  The new system uses chilled water and the temperature control is much tighter.  With our climate the chilled water system will get ‘free cooling’ in the winter which means lower electricity use which is good for everyone!

Saskaweb is pleased to announce the launch of our new support ticketing system! The system is email based and will generate a new ticket ID for each support request. Additional information can be appended to each ticket by replying to the relevant ticket (instructions enclosed with each ticket request).

We now encourage our users to submit their requests to: helpdesk@saskaweb.com.

We chose osticket (http://osticket.com) because it was very simple and fulfilled our current requirements.

For companies wishing to deploy their own trouble ticket systems, I’d encourage you to have a look at osticket.com. If you are a current Saskaweb hosting client, we’d be happy to set up a demo for you.

Saskaweb can host your support ticket system:  Current hosting clients can have a ticket system like osticket hosted for no additional monthly charge!  The only charge would be the initial setup fee ($75/hour). For requests please contact (you guessed it): helpdesk@saskaweb.com

After a year or so offering Microsoft products through their Service Provider Licensing Agreement (SPLA) we’ve been frustrated to the point of doing what we should’ve done from the beginning:  We will be offering an open source alternative for every Microsoft product that we host.

That means open source alternatives to Exchange, Dynamics, and terminal services. 

We will continue to provide our current range of Microsoft hosted products.