Update: I just got the 4th email (21 February 2010) from Magmahost about current server issues. After migrating to a new server, my sites are working fine.


1st (16th January 2010):
We are pleased to announce that Magmahost has today been acquired by Yomura Holdings.

Magmahost will continue as a seperate operation, but will have the immediate benefit of access to Yomura's datacentres and network.

If you have any outstanding issues that have not been attended to, would you bring it to the transition team's attention at transition@magmahost.com. Please include in the email the ticket number so we can look into it directly.

We will make further announcements over the coming week.

Regards
Giles Anderson



2nd (16th January 2010):
Hi,

Following on from my email yesterday, I wanted to address the main bulk of the questions in a mail to everyone



1. Will prices remain the same?

Absolutely, we have absolutely no intention to change the pricing model at Magmahost. It works for you the customer and for us the service provider. There is no reason to change a good thing.



2. Are your sites safe?

Yes, we are experienced in operating hosting services and we are a cash positive company.



3. What changes will happen at Magmahost

Immediate changes will be the addition of servers at Yomura's datacentres. We expect this coming week in our Atlanta, San Jose and London datacentres. This will help eleviate the current loading on Magmahost's existing servers. You will be given the option to move your services to these other servers. However the existing servers will remain in place so you will not have to suddenly migrate to a new location.

We are working with our support staff to streamline and improve response times, whilst we want this to happen overnight, its not going to. We need to introduce a proper support infrastructure

We also want to hear your needs, if there is something missing or something doesn't work - tell us.



4. Do you have to change your Paypal, 2CO, Moneybookers subscription?

No, everything stays the same. Yomura has taken over the banking and merchant accounts of Magmahost. You dont need to make any changes



We'll update you as it happens, but in the interim if you want to contact the transition team please email them on transition@magmahost.com



Regards

Giles Anderson


3rd (24th January 2010):
Since acquiring Magmahost we have been working to build on the existing service, adding more capacity and the features that you have requested.

We have added additional servers in:

* London ?IP 62.18.43.1
* Frankfurt - IP 188.40.22.160
* Atlanta - IP 62.19.45.1
* San Jose - IP 66.79.184.165

We have set up the following on each of the new servers:

* cPanel
* Litespeed
* Installatron
* Softaculous
* Fantastico
* RVSiteMaker
* RVSkins
* WHMReseller



The existing servers will be left as is for now as they are overloaded, adding additional software and services will only bring further loading.

Our support staff are ready to migrate you to the new servers, you just need to open a support ticket with the city you wish to migrate to. However, we expect there to be a significant number of customers wishing to migrate so please do bear in mind that there is likely to be a delay between making the request and our staff completing it.

We will be actively monitoring performance of the servers to ensure good performance.

For users requiring more than 1 dedicated IP we recommend our London or Atlanta as we have a substantial amount of IP’s immediately available at these two sites.

Regards



Giles Anderson


4rd (21st February 2010):

Hi,

Following on from our acquisition of Magmahost, we have been working through our customers’ issues. I know some of you are still waiting for final resolution, we have not forgotten you.

Many of the tickets we are receiving are performance issues ? if you are on one of the legacy Magmahost servers SCUSA1, SCUSA3 or SCUK1 then you need to move to one of the new servers. The first action we took when acquiring Magmahost was to provide six new servers in London, Frankfurt, Paris, Atlanta and San Jose. Some of you have migrated and are enjoying the faster uncongested service others have not.

If you are on one of the old servers, now is the time to move ? open a support ticket with the subject Migrate then the city you want to migrate to. At the end of this month we will mass-migrate any customers who remain on the old servers.

As traffic on the servers in each location grows, we will simply provision an additional server. We already have servers in place in these locations to handle the Magmahost’s growth. Its now down to you to grow!

I have been monitoring the forums, something is absolutely wrong when I read that our staff are not handling your enquiries properly. That’s just not what Yomura is all about. The usual comment about companies that we have taken over is that support has improved, services are stable and positive recommendations.

So what has gone wrong? From what I am reading ? support or lack of it. I have spoken to our support staff on this matter and asked them to provide me a daily report of outstanding issues. My assistant Grace will review this Monday-Friday and she will try to resolve the issue either with support or administrative staff. She may also need to contact you to discuss the issue, please afford her courtesy even if you feel you are having to repeat yourself, she needs the story straight from you so she can ensure your issue is resolved. If you wish to contact her directly with your issue then please contact transition@magmahost.com. She works Monday ? Friday.

In addition, I have asked Grace to review all the customer accounts on Monday 6pm (London) and every account whose billing is up-to-date will have a one-month account credit added for their February services invoice. Just so it is clear, if you billing is not up-to-date then that credit will not applied. It’s a one-time gesture from us to customers who have been loyal to Magmahost and have had a problematic transition period. You do not need to email us about this, a snapshot of the account status will be taken at 6pm GMT Monday and any account in status will receive the credit by the end of the week.

I have selected a few questions that keep being asked:

Q: Why is Magmahost’s support so unresponsive and what are you doing to resolve this?

A: Bottom line, they are overwhelmed. We have added additional Magmahost support staff who will start on Monday and I have asked Yomura’s support staff to monitor the tickets as well. The support shift manager will prepare a list of open issues at the end of each shift and Grace, my assistant, will review the tickets. Any tickets that are not being resolved she will contact you to resolve the issue.

Q: Will Magmahost provide regular updates?

A: Yes at our blog site: http://blog.magmahost.com/ - its empty today but we’ll start placing information on there. Also we will try to feature any questions you may have there too.

Q: Will Magmahost be offering VPS?

A: Yes, we will make the announcement in March. Priority at the moment is to solve the current support issues and not add additional loading to support.

Q: Will Magmahost add X theme or Y addon to the new servers

A: No, the new servers will not be modified. We have preloaded virtually every regular plugin onto the servers. Adding additional addons, changes to the PHP builds or adding themes causes the boxes become individual. The way we have been able to scale our hosting operations so successfully is by central management of images and upgrades. This means we can apply one change in London and roll it out across 4 continents with next to no manual intervention. This means patches, version changes can be instantly managed.

Q: X addon is broken on the old server, why will you not fix it

A: The old servers need to be shutdown. They can barely handle the current load ? migrate ? then new servers are fast, well-connected and have every add-on working.

Q: Why does WHMReseller stop working and come up unlicensed?

A: WHMReseller historically is a mess. The licensing servers go offline and causing WHMReseller to fail its licensing check. I have personally been speaking to Deasoft about this and I believe that they have a solution to this issue now. We have rolled out their updated code and it appears to maintain its license key. We have added Zamfoo as an alternative for customers who want to use that instead.

Q: Will Magmahost offer Plesk or DirectAdmin hosting?

A: Yes, we will make the announcement in March. As with VPS, our priority is to stabilize the service and resolve these support problems.

Q: Will Magmahost offer additional locations?

A: Yes, we will offer all of Yomura’s locations to Magmahost customers, this will include all our European, US and Asian sites. As these become available we will add them to our blog and website



I am looking forward to next week and hope that the actions we have taken resolve the current support issues.

Have a good weekend

Regards

Giles Anderson