Maintenance Window:-
The work will start w/c Monday 26th March and is expected to take approximately 4 weeks to complete.

Service Affected:-
Email Platform.

Duration of expected customer impact:-
Approximately 10 minutes per customer.

Detailed description of work to be performed:-
Last year a replacement storage platform was installed as part of long term plans to expand and bring additional stability and resilience to our customer facing email platform. This implementation based on Sun StorageTek equipment was unfortunately not without its problems and over recent months we have been undertaking the necessary steps required to purchase and build a more suitable and stable alternative.

We have since purchased a replacement NetApp FAS3070 system that arrived in Sheffield last Tuesday. This equipment has now been installed and configured and we're now in a good place to start moving customers' data across to the new platform.

Expected customer impact:-
Due to the fact that all customers' data is being moved this work is likely to take a number of weeks. During this time each customer will experience a short interruption in service during which they will be unable to access their email. The length of this service interruption is dependent on the size of each customers' mailboxes and will typically last no longer than 10 minutes. Some customers with very large mailboxes may find this service interruption lasts slightly longer. Every effort will be made to keep this downtime to a minimum and we will announce regular progress updates regarding when customers can expect their data to be moved where this is possible.

Other Notes:-
A comprehensive overview regarding the background surrounding this work can be found on our discussion forums where customers are welcome to ask any questions they may have concerning the upgrade:-
http://portal.plus.net/central/forums/viewtopic.php?p=413365#413365

Kind Regards,

Bob Pullen
Customer Support