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Planned Anti-spam Platform Maintenance - Tuesday 30th October 1:00am-Tuesday 6th November 6:00pm
Posted on: Wednesday 24 October 2007, 20:28
Maintenance Window:-
Tuesday 30th October 1:00am-Tuesday 6th November 6:00pm.
Service Affected:-
Email.
Duration of expected customer impact:-
Approximately 7 days.
Detailed description of work to be performed:-
We will be re-deploying the Critical Path anti-spam appliances in front of our customer facing mail platform. This will form part of a trial that is expected to last at least three weeks if successful.
The majority of problems we encounter with email stem from the sheer amount of (often junk) email our mail servers have to process and deliver. The intention behind the deployment of the Critical Path appliances is to help take this processing load away from our servers and also assume the responsibility of dealing with the DNS look-ups as mentioned in a recent Service Status update:-
http://usertools.plus.net/status/archive/1193148905.htm
We will initially apply the changes to a single mail delivery server, at which point the platform will be closely monitored for any sign of problems. If all success criteria are met and no problems are encountered then we will introduce a second server on Wednesday, a third server on Thursday and a fourth server on Friday.
Once we have reached this point, a decision will be made regarding our deployment to the remaining servers the following week (there are 22 servers in total). No more servers will be added over the weekend and there will be a dedicated resource monitoring the platform throughout this time. A Critical Path employee will also be on site during the roll-out.
Expected customer impact:-
Customers' email will be sent via the Critical Path boxes before being handed over to our existing mail servers. As this will be done in a phased approach, customers will initially see some email passed through the Critical Path appliances and some email routed as normal directly through our mail platform. The Critical Path boxes will be responsible for:
* Identifying spam - Any email that the Critical Path boxes identify as spam will be handled in accordance with customers' existing anti-spam preferences. It will be either deleted at source, tagged as [-SPAM-] and delivered to customers' mailboxes, tagged as [-SPAM-] and delivered to customers' 'Spam' folders or not tagged at all. Customers can check their anti-spam preferences using the 'Manage My Mail' tool found in the Member Centre:-
https://portal.plus.net/my.html?action=myemail
* Delivering email - The headers of some customers' email will show that it has been sent to our mail servers via the Critical Path appliances:-
http://www.plus.net/support/email/email_troubleshooting/email_troubleshooting.shtml
* Performing sender-verify checks - sender-verify is currently the duty of the sunmxcores. It involves checking the envelope sender address of each email that is received and ensuring that there are valid mail exchanger records associated with that domain. If none are found then the email is rejected. Exactly the same process is already carried out on our existing mail platform.
/The main difference that should be noticed if any, is the improved spam detection rate once the Critical Path boxes are in place. We have been trialling Critical Path on our internal mail platform for some time now with a reasonable degree of success when compared to our customer facing anti-spam filters (which will remain in place throughout this trial)./
Other Notes:-
In addition to the Critical Path trial, we are also continuing to look at alternative/additional solutions to help combat spam. It's important to note that whilst this may become a permanent solution, it does not mean we are bound to exclusively using Critical Path for our spam protection. Neither does it deter us from the work we're doing elsewhere.
Some customers may be aware that we have attempted deployment of a similar solution in the past, with some negative repercussions that led to the loss of some customers' emails:-
http://community.plus.net/comms/2007/08/30/email-incident-report/
We would like to reassure customers that since then we have been working very closely with Critical Path's Senior platform architects and both parties are confident that the all the previously encountered issues have been fully resolved. Last week, we performed a full stress-test on a single server in a test environment during which time no problems were encountered.
Further details regarding the roll-back plan we have in place and the precautions we will be taking, can be found in recently published blog post on our Community Site:-
http://community.plus.net/comms/2007/10/24/spam-critical-path-learning/
Any questions, feedback or concerns regarding this work are welcomed over on our Community Site discussion forums:-
http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,2435.0.html
Kind Regards,
Bob Pullen
Customer Support
Tuesday 30th October 1:00am-Tuesday 6th November 6:00pm.
Service Affected:-
Email.
Duration of expected customer impact:-
Approximately 7 days.
Detailed description of work to be performed:-
We will be re-deploying the Critical Path anti-spam appliances in front of our customer facing mail platform. This will form part of a trial that is expected to last at least three weeks if successful.
The majority of problems we encounter with email stem from the sheer amount of (often junk) email our mail servers have to process and deliver. The intention behind the deployment of the Critical Path appliances is to help take this processing load away from our servers and also assume the responsibility of dealing with the DNS look-ups as mentioned in a recent Service Status update:-
http://usertools.plus.net/status/archive/1193148905.htm
We will initially apply the changes to a single mail delivery server, at which point the platform will be closely monitored for any sign of problems. If all success criteria are met and no problems are encountered then we will introduce a second server on Wednesday, a third server on Thursday and a fourth server on Friday.
Once we have reached this point, a decision will be made regarding our deployment to the remaining servers the following week (there are 22 servers in total). No more servers will be added over the weekend and there will be a dedicated resource monitoring the platform throughout this time. A Critical Path employee will also be on site during the roll-out.
Expected customer impact:-
Customers' email will be sent via the Critical Path boxes before being handed over to our existing mail servers. As this will be done in a phased approach, customers will initially see some email passed through the Critical Path appliances and some email routed as normal directly through our mail platform. The Critical Path boxes will be responsible for:
* Identifying spam - Any email that the Critical Path boxes identify as spam will be handled in accordance with customers' existing anti-spam preferences. It will be either deleted at source, tagged as [-SPAM-] and delivered to customers' mailboxes, tagged as [-SPAM-] and delivered to customers' 'Spam' folders or not tagged at all. Customers can check their anti-spam preferences using the 'Manage My Mail' tool found in the Member Centre:-
https://portal.plus.net/my.html?action=myemail
* Delivering email - The headers of some customers' email will show that it has been sent to our mail servers via the Critical Path appliances:-
http://www.plus.net/support/email/email_troubleshooting/email_troubleshooting.shtml
* Performing sender-verify checks - sender-verify is currently the duty of the sunmxcores. It involves checking the envelope sender address of each email that is received and ensuring that there are valid mail exchanger records associated with that domain. If none are found then the email is rejected. Exactly the same process is already carried out on our existing mail platform.
/The main difference that should be noticed if any, is the improved spam detection rate once the Critical Path boxes are in place. We have been trialling Critical Path on our internal mail platform for some time now with a reasonable degree of success when compared to our customer facing anti-spam filters (which will remain in place throughout this trial)./
Other Notes:-
In addition to the Critical Path trial, we are also continuing to look at alternative/additional solutions to help combat spam. It's important to note that whilst this may become a permanent solution, it does not mean we are bound to exclusively using Critical Path for our spam protection. Neither does it deter us from the work we're doing elsewhere.
Some customers may be aware that we have attempted deployment of a similar solution in the past, with some negative repercussions that led to the loss of some customers' emails:-
http://community.plus.net/comms/2007/08/30/email-incident-report/
We would like to reassure customers that since then we have been working very closely with Critical Path's Senior platform architects and both parties are confident that the all the previously encountered issues have been fully resolved. Last week, we performed a full stress-test on a single server in a test environment during which time no problems were encountered.
Further details regarding the roll-back plan we have in place and the precautions we will be taking, can be found in recently published blog post on our Community Site:-
http://community.plus.net/comms/2007/10/24/spam-critical-path-learning/
Any questions, feedback or concerns regarding this work are welcomed over on our Community Site discussion forums:-
http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,2435.0.html
Kind Regards,
Bob Pullen
Customer Support