Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Service-Impacting System Maintenance - Sunday, May 18 10pm CST

On Sunday May 18 starting at 10pm CST, Point North Networks (KickAssVPS.com) will be upgrading our border firewalls to a new High Availability firewall cluster in the Dallas, TX data center. The maintenance will start at 10pm and will be completed by 11:59pm CST. During this time you will see brief connectivity issues to the hosted customer server infrastructure.

Thursday, January 30, 2014

Minneapolis Network Issues 1-30-14

Internal network switch issue, some connectivity lost. We are replacing it now.

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Dallas Network Issue - 1/16/13

The Dallas issue has been resolved. All services have been restored. The outage was related to power. We will post an official RFO once all details are received.

We are aware of a networking issue out of our Dallas facility. We are working with the team there to determine the cause. We do not have an ETA at this time. We will be posting updates once received.


Thursday, November 1, 2012

Minneapolis Conectivity Issues - 11/1/12 - UPDATE

Dear KickAssVPS.com Customers:

As you may be aware, a network fiber cut was experienced at our Minneapolis data center Yesterday, 11/1/2012.

At 01:30 AM CDT, Engineers, after testing the repaired fiber link, believes the network to be fully redundant, optimized, and operational.

We sincerely apologize for any issues this may have caused.

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Based on updated information provided by the repair team and upstream provider, the work to repair the damaged fiber cable is estimated to be completed by 02:00 AM CDT on Friday, November 2nd.

At 15:04 PM CDT, Engineers monitored a connectivity drop at the Minneapolis Data Center facility. Network traffic immediately and automatically re-routed affected traffic through redundant links. Some customers may have noticed a brief interruption of service as the network reconverged.

At the time of the cut, Engineers immediately engaged with the upstream provider to determine a cause and begin remediation. By 16:00 CDT, engineers determined the cause of the drop as a fiber-optic cable cut. A repair team was dispatched to locate and repair the damaged cable. At this time, Engineers believe the repair will be complete by 20:00 CDT.

Our support staff will continue to monitor the circuit and work with the provider as progress is made. Some customers may notice routing intermittency, especially in OUTBOUND traffic, until this repair is complete. We will provide updates when any significant information is made available.

Best Regards,

KickAssVPS.com

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Service Imacting Network Maintenance - Sunday, May 8 4am-5am CST

Dear Customer,

On Sunday, May 8 at 4am CST, KickAssVPS technicians will be performing maintenance on the border firewalls conducting firmware updates. During this time customers will experience intermittent connectivity while the upgrades are performed. Planned maintenance window is for one hour, ending at 5am CST Sunday morning.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Resolution of Network Event - 12/2/2010

KickAssVPS.com monitored a service-impacting network event beginning at 12:43 PM CST and continuing until approximately 1:37 PM CST. During this period, customers may have experienced intermittent periods of packet loss and high latency.

This period of intermittency was caused by a massively-distributed denial-of-service attack originating from multiple networks in Asia. Engineers immediately began a detailed forensic investigation, identified the vector of attack, and were able to reduce and then eliminate the effects of this attack.

We apologize for the impact and inconvenience that this has had on your business.

Network Issues - 12-2-10

The KickAssVPS.com network is experiencing high latency issues, affecting traffic to the network. We are awaiting status for the data center. Will post updates soon.

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Resolution of Network Event - 10/21/2010

Dear KickAssVPS.com Customer:

The Network Operations Center of our upstream provider monitored a service impacting network event at 10:49AM CDT. During the event, periods of packet loss and high latency were experienced while core BGP routers at our hosting facility were impacted by excessively high volumes of network traffic causing high router CPU utilization. After real-time forensic analysis of traffic patterns, it was determined that a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) was occurring. Thousands of rouge network hosts in China were identified targeting various IP addresses at our upstream hosting facility. Engineers constructed an access control list (ACL) to match and block the source traffic. At approximately 11:25AM, all services returned to normal after the attack was successfully stopped.

We apologize for the impact and inconvenience that this has had on your business.

Best Regards,
KickAssVPS.com

Network Outage - Update

KickAssVPS.com network has stabilized. We will be posting a full report shortly.

BGP Routing Issue affecting all incoming traffic

We have been informed of a global routing issue affecting all traffic to the KickAssVPS.com network. We are awaiting resolution from our ISP.

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Nationwide XO Bandwidth Issue

Our bandwidth provider XO communications is having a nationwide routing issue. We are awaiting an ETA to correct the intermittent connectivity issues.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Denial of Service - 11/5/09 8:55pm CST

Dear Customer,

On Thursday, 11/5/09 at approximately 8:55pm CST, alerts were generated indicating a degradation in connectivity. It was discovered that a denial of service attack was being carried out against some IP addresses on our network, causing extreme bandwidth spikes choking out legitimate traffic. We were able to determine the source of the attacks and take preventive action. The network was functioning normally again at approximately 9:15pm CST.

We take these issues very seriously and are working twards preventing these issues going forward.

KickAssVPS.com

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Notification of Windows 2008 VPS Maintenance - 9/6/09 12:01am

Dear Windows 2008 VPS Customers,

Starting at 12:01 am CST on Sunday, September 6th, KickAssVPS.com will be performing maintenance on the Windows 2008 server environments. The maintenance will last until approximately 2am CST Saturday morning.

During this period, customers on the Windows 2008 server platform will experience intermittent connectivity.

This maintenance window is necessary for security updates, as well as physical rack placement for an optimized environment.

This maintenance period will ONLY affect Windows 2008 VPS customers.

A notification will be sent once the maintenance has been completed.

Thank You,
KickAssVPS.com

Notification of SQL Maintenance - 9/5/09 12:01am CST

Dear Customer,

Starting at 12:01 am CST on Saturday, September 5th, KickAssVPS.comwill be performing maintenance on the shared SQL server environments.

The maintenance will last until approximately 2am CST Saturday morning.

During this period, all shared SQL services will be unavailable, including Microsoft and MySQL database services.

This maintenance window is necessary for security updates, as well as physical rack placement for an optimized environment.

A notification will be sent once the maintenance has been completed.

Thank You,
KickAssVPS.com

Saturday, May 9, 2009

Network Upgrade Completed

Dear Valued Customer,

KickAssVPS and our Data Center partner Atomic performed planned network maintenance beginning Saturday, May 9, 2009 at 12:00 AM CDT. The initial maintenance window was planned to last until 6:00AM CDT Saturday May 9, 2009.

This maintenance window was extended until Saturday, May 9, 2009 at 1 PM CDT due to some additional routing work that needed to be performed.

During the maintenance window, the distribution switches at the Edina Data Center has been upgraded to the Cisco 7606 WS-SUP720-3BXL platform. Additionally, the Managed Firewall products have been upgraded to handle additional network capacity. Together these upgrades will improve overall reliability and speed of the KickAssVPS.com Network, enhance existing products and services, and provide the capacity for important additional offerings now and for the future.

As planned, during the maintenance window, all Network Services and Products requiring access through the KickAssVPS.com Network did experience service interruptions to varying degrees.

Engineers have been on site at the Edina Data Center, closely monitoring the network post maintenance.

All services have been restored, tested, and are operating at desired levels. The upgrades have fully expanded all of the KickAssVPS.com offerings to the highest enterprise levels offered!

We appreciate and value your business and look forward to serving you in the future.

Sincerely,

KickAssVPS.com

Network Upgrade Status

1:00pm CST. Routing issues should be resolved, all systems are functioning normally.

Network Upgrade Status

12:01pm CST - There are still some minor routing issues with some ISPs causing intermittent connectivity issues. ETA of having the routing issues solved is 1pm CST.

Thursday, May 7, 2009

Network Maintenance - Saturday, May 9, 2009

Dear Valued Customer,

KickAssVPS.com will have planned network maintenance beginning Saturday, May 9, 2009 at 12:00 AM CDT. This maintenance window will last until Saturday, May 9, 2009 at 6:00 AM CDT.

Distribution switches at the Edina data center will be upgraded to the Cisco 7606 WS-SUP720-3BXL platform. Additionally, the Managed Firewall products will be upgraded for additional network capacity. These upgrades will improve overall reliability and speed of the network, enhance existing products and services, and provide the capacity for important additional offerings now and for the future.

During this maintenance window, all network services will experience service interruptions to varying degrees. This will include all VPS servers, dedicated, and co-location customers.

Engineers will be on-site at the Edina data center, working diligently during the maintenance window to keep service downtime to a minimum.

If you have any questions regarding this maintenance, please contact us at support@kickassvps.com. We appreciate and value your business and look forward to serving you in the future.

Sincerely,

KickAssVPS.com

Monday, March 23, 2009

DoS Directed at KickAssVPS.com

Dear Valued Customer:

At approximately 11:14 AM CDT this morning, customers on the KickAssVPS.com network began experiencing high latency, packet loss, and partial to complete loss of internet connectivity. This disruption was caused by a two-stage denial-of-service attack.

The first stage was a distributed attack involving hundreds of compromised systems from outside the KickAssVPS.com network. Within 15 minutes, engineers identified and neutralized the initial attack vector, which revealed a secondary attack.

The second stage consisted almost entirely of one primary source from China, generating as much as 300 mbps of garbage UDP traffic. Engineers identified and were able to neutralize this vector soon afterwards. All services returned to normal function by 11:54 AM CDT.

Our network partner, Atomic Data Centers, takes this event very seriously and is taking proactive steps to eliminate any future possibility of service disruption. Atomic is now in the final stages of implementing a $1 million upgrade of it's core routing systems, which will provide an array of anti-DoS attack mechanisms. This will allow us to continue to provide the exceptional service, uptime, and support you expect from KickAssVPS.com.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Sincerely,


KickAssVPS.com

Sunday, December 28, 2008

Re: Notification of Network Maintenance - 12/28/2008

Re: Firewall Upgrade

Dear Customer,

Unexpected connectivity problems persisted past the maintenance window. As a result, the firewall maintenance scheduled for this morning was backed out and reverted to the original configuration.

A new notification for the next scheduled maintenance date will be communicated.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

KickAssVPS.com