About us
August 16, 2008
We're pleased to announce that our new, unique service called UltraLoad™ is now live.
Load balancing is something that has been the preserve of larger organisations due to the large costs and complexity involved.
Our unique take on this has been to decimate costs, by providing access to shared load balancers, eliminating the need for costly dedicated hardware, when only a fraction of its resources are being used.
Furthermore, a friendly web interface allows customers to make the initial setup, and add/edit/remove hosts from a cluster, without having to visit a command line.
We believe this service is unique within the industry, and shows Melbourne's commitment to reducing costs and complexity associated with hosted services.
Full details of the service, which is available to dedicated server and colocation customers alike, are available at http://www.melbourne.co.uk/dedicated-servers-high-availability-clusters.htm or by contacting our sales team.
Load balancing is something that has been the preserve of larger organisations due to the large costs and complexity involved.
Our unique take on this has been to decimate costs, by providing access to shared load balancers, eliminating the need for costly dedicated hardware, when only a fraction of its resources are being used.
Furthermore, a friendly web interface allows customers to make the initial setup, and add/edit/remove hosts from a cluster, without having to visit a command line.
We believe this service is unique within the industry, and shows Melbourne's commitment to reducing costs and complexity associated with hosted services.
Full details of the service, which is available to dedicated server and colocation customers alike, are available at http://www.melbourne.co.uk/dedicated-servers-high-availability-clusters.htm or by contacting our sales team.
August 16, 2008
Acting on customer feedback in our recent customer survey, I'm pleased to announce that we've overhauled our charging structure for our "helping hands" (on-site support) service.
The principal changes are as follows:
- Reduction in "office hours" rate from £35 to £25 per half-hour.
- Fixed charge of £15 to attach KVM over IP to a machine, with 30 minutes
guaranteed KVM time (during office hours only).
- Tapered charging structure for "out-of-hours" callouts, so
weekday evening callouts until 22:00 are charged at £50 instead
of £75 per 30 minutes.
An updated support guide can be found at http://www.melbourne.co.uk/supportlevels.htm. This also includes a definition of "helping hands".
Please note that operating system support and advanced configuration is not helping hands, and is covered by a separate charge.
I am also pleased to confirm that we are trialling extended office-hours for support, so that engineers are available for routine support tasks from 08:00 to 18:00 (obviously emergency cover 24/7 still continues as normal). This is in trial over the next four weeks, and once the feasibility has been assessed and finalised, we will send out a separate email to confirm that this is in-place.
The principal changes are as follows:
- Reduction in "office hours" rate from £35 to £25 per half-hour.
- Fixed charge of £15 to attach KVM over IP to a machine, with 30 minutes
guaranteed KVM time (during office hours only).
- Tapered charging structure for "out-of-hours" callouts, so
weekday evening callouts until 22:00 are charged at £50 instead
of £75 per 30 minutes.
An updated support guide can be found at http://www.melbourne.co.uk/supportlevels.htm. This also includes a definition of "helping hands".
Please note that operating system support and advanced configuration is not helping hands, and is covered by a separate charge.
I am also pleased to confirm that we are trialling extended office-hours for support, so that engineers are available for routine support tasks from 08:00 to 18:00 (obviously emergency cover 24/7 still continues as normal). This is in trial over the next four weeks, and once the feasibility has been assessed and finalised, we will send out a separate email to confirm that this is in-place.
August 16, 2008
Today sees us launch our new support site at http://support.melbourne.co.uk. This is the first release and part of a long-term project to centralise all aspects of managing your service and account with Melbourne.
Cosmetically you will notice some minor changes, but the main improvements at this stage are with the underlying database technology, and backend access for our staff, which will enable us to find your services in a much quicker and better organised manner, ultimately meaning we can provide a quicker and more accurate level of service to you.
We advise all customers to log in and become familiar with all aspects of the system, in particular remotely power-cycling servers, rather than waiting until it is needed in an emergency! If you do not have your logins to hand, please submit a support ticket by emailing support@melbourne.co.uk. It is important that all customers are familiar with the operation of the system in order to obtain support.
In future we hope to integrate the following aspects of account management into the site:
- integrated bandwidth, power and VLAN graphs
- self-managed server monitoring
- managing all aspects of billing
- viewing previous tickets and work requests
- forward and reverse dns management
- ordering new services
- ordering domain names and SSL certs automatically
- re-provisioning servers automatically
We welcome any feedback you may have at this stage, both with the current release and the planned improvements.
Cosmetically you will notice some minor changes, but the main improvements at this stage are with the underlying database technology, and backend access for our staff, which will enable us to find your services in a much quicker and better organised manner, ultimately meaning we can provide a quicker and more accurate level of service to you.
We advise all customers to log in and become familiar with all aspects of the system, in particular remotely power-cycling servers, rather than waiting until it is needed in an emergency! If you do not have your logins to hand, please submit a support ticket by emailing support@melbourne.co.uk. It is important that all customers are familiar with the operation of the system in order to obtain support.
In future we hope to integrate the following aspects of account management into the site:
- integrated bandwidth, power and VLAN graphs
- self-managed server monitoring
- managing all aspects of billing
- viewing previous tickets and work requests
- forward and reverse dns management
- ordering new services
- ordering domain names and SSL certs automatically
- re-provisioning servers automatically
We welcome any feedback you may have at this stage, both with the current release and the planned improvements.
July 12, 2008
With increased bandwidth charges and other associated overheads incurred with high data flow, HTTP compression may help you out a bit, especially if you have a powerful server which has plenty CPU cycles to spare.
Check if YOUR website is using compression or not, and see how much you could save if you enable it.
http://www.port80software.com/support/p80tools
You can expect anything between a 50% - 80% cut in HTTP traffic if you enable HTTP conpression... and here's how.
1. Select the "Web Sites" node in your IIS admin MMC, right click and select Properties.
2. Select the Service tab and tick both the "Compress application files" and "Compress static files" tick boxes. You must have both boxes ticked in order for application files to be compressed, although you will not be prompted with this information.
3. Once the Compress static files box is ticked the "Temporary directory field" should become active.
Enter the directory in which you would like IIS to store your temporary compressed static files. The default value is %windir%\IIS Temporary Compressed Files, but you can set it to whatever you like.
If management of hard drive space is an issue for you, you can set the "Maximum temporary directory size" value by selecting the Limited to (in megabytes) radio button and then setting your specified value in the text field provided. If you have this option set then once the limit is reached older cached files are purged to allow new ones to be created.
4. Select the "Web service extensions" node, right click and select the "Add a new web service extension..." item from the menu. You should now be presented with a "New web service extension" dialogue box.
Place the name you wish to call the extension (this name will appear in the web service extensions list) in the Extension name text field.
In the Required files section click on the Add button and you should be presented with an Add file box. Browse to the gzip.dll file which should be located in X:\Windows\system32\inetsrv (where X is your system drive). Once you have found the file, select it and then click the OK. You should now see the full path to the gzip.dll file listed. Tick the box "Set extension status" to allowed so that this extension is allowed. Without setting this the extension will not work and compression will not be enabled. Click the OK button to apply the settings
5. Select the SERVER node at the top of the tree in your IIS Admin MMC (where SERVER is the name of your computer), right click it and then select the Properties menu item. Tick the "Enable direct metabase edit" tick box, and then click OK to apply the changes. What this does is allow you to edit and save your metabase.xml file, as otherwise it is locked when IIS is running. Be sure that you have backed up your IIS6 metabase.xml file.
Open your favourite text editor, and then open your metabase.xml which is located in X:\Windows\system32\inetsrv (where X is your system drive). Do a search for;
This should bring up two results. One for deflate and one for gzip
Search for the following tag in both the deflate and gzip sections;
HcScriptFileExtensions
Add the php extension under these tags taking careful note to follow the correct syntax. Use the existing syntax for an example if unsure. You might also like to add extensions for any other script extensions while you are here such as aspx and asmx. Dynamic content is never cached by IIS like static content is, and is compressed each time that dynamic content is requested. This means compression of dynamic will consume significantly higher memory and CPU resources which you will need to take into consideration
Search for the following tag in both the deflate and gzip sections;
HcDynamicCompressionLevel
This is set to 0 by default, which isn't going to give us much compression. 0 is the lowest value with 10 being the highest. However, from what I have read 9 seems to be the sweet spot as setting it to 10 consumes a lot more CPU resources without delivering much more compression. I would recommend setting this value to 9.
Save the file and then exit your editor
Restart IIS
The final step needed to be taken is for the IIS services to be restarted so that your changes are put into effect.
Select the SERVER node at the top of the tree in your IIS Admin MMC (where SERVER is the name of your computer), right click it, select the All tasks menu and then select the Restart IIS menu item.
In the Stop/start/restart window, select the Restart Internet services on SERVER (where SERVER is the name of your computer) option as shown below in figure 9
Congratulation! You should now have IIS compression... check to make sure it's working by going back to
the online compression checking tool at http://www.port80software.com/support/p80tools
Check if YOUR website is using compression or not, and see how much you could save if you enable it.
http://www.port80software.com/support/p80tools
You can expect anything between a 50% - 80% cut in HTTP traffic if you enable HTTP conpression... and here's how.
1. Select the "Web Sites" node in your IIS admin MMC, right click and select Properties.
2. Select the Service tab and tick both the "Compress application files" and "Compress static files" tick boxes. You must have both boxes ticked in order for application files to be compressed, although you will not be prompted with this information.
3. Once the Compress static files box is ticked the "Temporary directory field" should become active.
Enter the directory in which you would like IIS to store your temporary compressed static files. The default value is %windir%\IIS Temporary Compressed Files, but you can set it to whatever you like.
If management of hard drive space is an issue for you, you can set the "Maximum temporary directory size" value by selecting the Limited to (in megabytes) radio button and then setting your specified value in the text field provided. If you have this option set then once the limit is reached older cached files are purged to allow new ones to be created.
4. Select the "Web service extensions" node, right click and select the "Add a new web service extension..." item from the menu. You should now be presented with a "New web service extension" dialogue box.
Place the name you wish to call the extension (this name will appear in the web service extensions list) in the Extension name text field.
In the Required files section click on the Add button and you should be presented with an Add file box. Browse to the gzip.dll file which should be located in X:\Windows\system32\inetsrv (where X is your system drive). Once you have found the file, select it and then click the OK. You should now see the full path to the gzip.dll file listed. Tick the box "Set extension status" to allowed so that this extension is allowed. Without setting this the extension will not work and compression will not be enabled. Click the OK button to apply the settings
5. Select the SERVER node at the top of the tree in your IIS Admin MMC (where SERVER is the name of your computer), right click it and then select the Properties menu item. Tick the "Enable direct metabase edit" tick box, and then click OK to apply the changes. What this does is allow you to edit and save your metabase.xml file, as otherwise it is locked when IIS is running. Be sure that you have backed up your IIS6 metabase.xml file.
Open your favourite text editor, and then open your metabase.xml which is located in X:\Windows\system32\inetsrv (where X is your system drive). Do a search for;
This should bring up two results. One for deflate and one for gzip
Search for the following tag in both the deflate and gzip sections;
HcScriptFileExtensions
Add the php extension under these tags taking careful note to follow the correct syntax. Use the existing syntax for an example if unsure. You might also like to add extensions for any other script extensions while you are here such as aspx and asmx. Dynamic content is never cached by IIS like static content is, and is compressed each time that dynamic content is requested. This means compression of dynamic will consume significantly higher memory and CPU resources which you will need to take into consideration
Search for the following tag in both the deflate and gzip sections;
HcDynamicCompressionLevel
This is set to 0 by default, which isn't going to give us much compression. 0 is the lowest value with 10 being the highest. However, from what I have read 9 seems to be the sweet spot as setting it to 10 consumes a lot more CPU resources without delivering much more compression. I would recommend setting this value to 9.
Save the file and then exit your editor
Restart IIS
The final step needed to be taken is for the IIS services to be restarted so that your changes are put into effect.
Select the SERVER node at the top of the tree in your IIS Admin MMC (where SERVER is the name of your computer), right click it, select the All tasks menu and then select the Restart IIS menu item.
In the Stop/start/restart window, select the Restart Internet services on SERVER (where SERVER is the name of your computer) option as shown below in figure 9
Congratulation! You should now have IIS compression... check to make sure it's working by going back to
the online compression checking tool at http://www.port80software.com/support/p80tools
March 8, 2008
[This position has been filled - however we are always on the lookout for enthusiastic technicians - please send in your CV if you'd like us to keep it on-file].
Melbourne is currently recruiting for a full-time datacentre technician position, based in our Hulme, Manchester datacentre.
This position will focus around day-to-day datacentre tasks, including the following:
Running CAT5 cabling in accordance with relevant standards
Racking and installing servers and other equipment
Performing "helping hands" requests for customers; i.e. diagnosing basic faults
Dealing with customer support tickets
Installing hardware upgrades to servers
Melbourne is committed to providing the best standards of customer service to our clients, hence your communication and professionalism skills being paramount.
Required Skills and Qualifications
A minimum of GCSE Mathematics and English or equivalent.
A basic understanding of the workings of a PC, and an ability to diagnose and swap out failed hardware
No specific industry qualifications is required, but would be beneficial
A basic understanding of Windows and Linux operating systems, and the ability to perform basic troubleshooting for our clients.
You will have the confidence of being backed by an excellent technical team, and the right candidate will be able to progress within our expanding company to support technician level.
In the course of their duties the Technician may be made aware of sensitive and confidential information that must, at all times, be handled in a professional manner. The successful candidate will be expected to develop excellent working relationships with all customers and suppliers. All staff are required to sign a nondisclosure agreement.
This 35 hour per week position will have a starting salary of £13-14k dependent on qualifications. Melbourne is working towards having 24-hour on-call cover, so some flexibility regarding working hours will be required; although the starting hours will be 9am - 5pm.
No on-call duty will be required for this position.
Send your cv to inbox [at] melbourne.co.uk.
Melbourne is currently recruiting for a full-time datacentre technician position, based in our Hulme, Manchester datacentre.
This position will focus around day-to-day datacentre tasks, including the following:
Running CAT5 cabling in accordance with relevant standards
Racking and installing servers and other equipment
Performing "helping hands" requests for customers; i.e. diagnosing basic faults
Dealing with customer support tickets
Installing hardware upgrades to servers
Melbourne is committed to providing the best standards of customer service to our clients, hence your communication and professionalism skills being paramount.
Required Skills and Qualifications
A minimum of GCSE Mathematics and English or equivalent.
A basic understanding of the workings of a PC, and an ability to diagnose and swap out failed hardware
No specific industry qualifications is required, but would be beneficial
A basic understanding of Windows and Linux operating systems, and the ability to perform basic troubleshooting for our clients.
You will have the confidence of being backed by an excellent technical team, and the right candidate will be able to progress within our expanding company to support technician level.
In the course of their duties the Technician may be made aware of sensitive and confidential information that must, at all times, be handled in a professional manner. The successful candidate will be expected to develop excellent working relationships with all customers and suppliers. All staff are required to sign a nondisclosure agreement.
This 35 hour per week position will have a starting salary of £13-14k dependent on qualifications. Melbourne is working towards having 24-hour on-call cover, so some flexibility regarding working hours will be required; although the starting hours will be 9am - 5pm.
No on-call duty will be required for this position.
Send your cv to inbox [at] melbourne.co.uk.
March 8, 2008
Melbourne is currently looking for a technical director to head our support, development and provisioning team.
Responsible for the future technical growth and direction of the company, and for day-to-day smooth running, the Technical Director will report directly to the MD.
This challenging and rewarding role requires a wealth of experience, knowledge and inter-personal skills, as team management will be integral to the role.
You will have a strong background in both Windows and Linux systems administration, as well as a thorough understanding of networking and routing protocols and technologies.
Melbourne is a small but rapidly expanding company with great opportunities for career enhancement. Our values centre around providing the best possible level of service to our customers, who principally comprise small- and medium-sized companies.
Certification and Qualifications:
Must have broad, enterprise-class technical knowledge in areas of software application development, networking/telecom, technical operations, engineering collaboration tools, information security, and business process architecture.
Experience managing 24x7 complex operations and managing demanding requirements for after-hours project work.
BS degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or related field. Position requires minimum of 5 years related professional experience..
Strong communication and people management skills.
Excellent vendor management & contract negotiation skills.
Familiarity with hardware and software platforms, focusing on Linux, Windows, hardware, databases, storage and applications from well-known enterprise vendors including Dell, Cisco.
Prior experience at a technology company essential; Application Service Provider experience highly desirable.
Ability to lead on documentation and process standards.
A knowledge of BGP and internal routing protocols
A knowledge of PHP, MySQL and an ability to lead internal development projects
The right candidate will be offered a salary between £35-40k dependant on experience and suitability to the role, and will be based in our Manchester Technopark location.
Send your cv to inbox [at] melbourne.co.uk, preferably in PDF or Word format.
Responsible for the future technical growth and direction of the company, and for day-to-day smooth running, the Technical Director will report directly to the MD.
This challenging and rewarding role requires a wealth of experience, knowledge and inter-personal skills, as team management will be integral to the role.
You will have a strong background in both Windows and Linux systems administration, as well as a thorough understanding of networking and routing protocols and technologies.
Melbourne is a small but rapidly expanding company with great opportunities for career enhancement. Our values centre around providing the best possible level of service to our customers, who principally comprise small- and medium-sized companies.
Certification and Qualifications:
Must have broad, enterprise-class technical knowledge in areas of software application development, networking/telecom, technical operations, engineering collaboration tools, information security, and business process architecture.
Experience managing 24x7 complex operations and managing demanding requirements for after-hours project work.
BS degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or related field. Position requires minimum of 5 years related professional experience..
Strong communication and people management skills.
Excellent vendor management & contract negotiation skills.
Familiarity with hardware and software platforms, focusing on Linux, Windows, hardware, databases, storage and applications from well-known enterprise vendors including Dell, Cisco.
Prior experience at a technology company essential; Application Service Provider experience highly desirable.
Ability to lead on documentation and process standards.
A knowledge of BGP and internal routing protocols
A knowledge of PHP, MySQL and an ability to lead internal development projects
The right candidate will be offered a salary between £35-40k dependant on experience and suitability to the role, and will be based in our Manchester Technopark location.
Send your cv to inbox [at] melbourne.co.uk, preferably in PDF or Word format.
February 13, 2008
It has come to our attention via various security-related online publications, that there is a new local exploit in the wild for Linux kernel 2.6.17 and above. This threat is quite serious and can quite quickly turn any regular user account into a privileged superuser account within a couple of seconds. When it fails on unpatched kernels, it causes a kernel panic and renders the machine useless until rebooted. More information can be found at the following URLs:
http://secunia.com/advisories/28835/
An excerpt from the above URL is pasted below:
"Some vulnerabilities have been reported in the Linux Kernel, which can be exploited by malicious, local users to cause a DoS (Denial of Service), disclose potentially sensitive information, and gain escalated privileges.
The vulnerabilities are caused due to the missing verification of parameters within the "vmsplice_to_user()", "copy_from_user_mmap_sem()", and "get_iovec_page_array()" functions in fs/splice.c before using them to perform certain memory operations. This can be exploited to e.g. read or write to arbitrary kernel memory via a specially crafted "vmsplice()" system call.
Successful exploitation allows attackers to e.g. gain "root" privileges."
Issue
-----
In the past we have had several customers create test accounts with usernames and passwords such as test/test and username/password. Having accounts such as these present is a severe security risk. Having experianced this sort of occurance on more than a few occasions before, we consider threats such as these to be high. Below is an example of how easily exploits such as this one can be used to gain superuser access to your machine:
[user@test tmp]$ uname -a
Linux testbox 2.6.24.1 #1 Mon Feb 11 17:22:31 EST 2008 i686 unknown
[user@test tmp]$ ./vms
-----------------------------------
Linux vmsplice Local Root Exploit
By qaaz
-----------------------------------
[+] mmap: 0x0 .. 0x1000
[+] page: 0x0
[+] page: 0x20
[+] mmap: 0x4000 .. 0x5000
[+] page: 0x4000
[+] page: 0x4020
[+] mmap: 0x1000 .. 0x2000
[+] page: 0x1000
[+] mmap: 0xb7f56000 .. 0xb7f88000
[+] root
[root@test tmp]#
[root@test tmp]# id
uid=0(root) gid=0(root) groups=2011(user)
[root@test tmp]# uname -a
Linux testbox 2.6.24.1 #1 Mon Feb 11 17:23:00 EST 2008 i686 unknown
Fix
---
Please upgrade the systems kernel to the latest available using your package manager. For Debian/Ubuntu machines, use the apt package management tool. For RedHat/Fedora/CentOS systems, use the yum package management system. All vendors are now reporting that they have deployed fixed kernels onto their repositories. It also is sensible to carry out a password audit using a tool such as John The Ripper. This will test the security of all user account passwords on the the machine, and flag any weak passwords that the software can guess easily.
http://secunia.com/advisories/28835/
An excerpt from the above URL is pasted below:
"Some vulnerabilities have been reported in the Linux Kernel, which can be exploited by malicious, local users to cause a DoS (Denial of Service), disclose potentially sensitive information, and gain escalated privileges.
The vulnerabilities are caused due to the missing verification of parameters within the "vmsplice_to_user()", "copy_from_user_mmap_sem()", and "get_iovec_page_array()" functions in fs/splice.c before using them to perform certain memory operations. This can be exploited to e.g. read or write to arbitrary kernel memory via a specially crafted "vmsplice()" system call.
Successful exploitation allows attackers to e.g. gain "root" privileges."
Issue
-----
In the past we have had several customers create test accounts with usernames and passwords such as test/test and username/password. Having accounts such as these present is a severe security risk. Having experianced this sort of occurance on more than a few occasions before, we consider threats such as these to be high. Below is an example of how easily exploits such as this one can be used to gain superuser access to your machine:
[user@test tmp]$ uname -a
Linux testbox 2.6.24.1 #1 Mon Feb 11 17:22:31 EST 2008 i686 unknown
[user@test tmp]$ ./vms
-----------------------------------
Linux vmsplice Local Root Exploit
By qaaz
-----------------------------------
[+] mmap: 0x0 .. 0x1000
[+] page: 0x0
[+] page: 0x20
[+] mmap: 0x4000 .. 0x5000
[+] page: 0x4000
[+] page: 0x4020
[+] mmap: 0x1000 .. 0x2000
[+] page: 0x1000
[+] mmap: 0xb7f56000 .. 0xb7f88000
[+] root
[root@test tmp]#
[root@test tmp]# id
uid=0(root) gid=0(root) groups=2011(user)
[root@test tmp]# uname -a
Linux testbox 2.6.24.1 #1 Mon Feb 11 17:23:00 EST 2008 i686 unknown
Fix
---
Please upgrade the systems kernel to the latest available using your package manager. For Debian/Ubuntu machines, use the apt package management tool. For RedHat/Fedora/CentOS systems, use the yum package management system. All vendors are now reporting that they have deployed fixed kernels onto their repositories. It also is sensible to carry out a password audit using a tool such as John The Ripper. This will test the security of all user account passwords on the the machine, and flag any weak passwords that the software can guess easily.
February 10, 2008
We moved to Turing House on the Manchester Technopark in August last year to be closer to our Reynolds House datacentre. Given our exceptional growth in 2007, we've now more than doubled the size of our suite, to create an impressive facility for our technical staff, including a training and development facility.
After a short period of distruption in February, we look forward to greeting customers in our new office suite. If you'd like to visit us, and take a tour of our datacentre, please click here to arrange a tour!
After a short period of distruption in February, we look forward to greeting customers in our new office suite. If you'd like to visit us, and take a tour of our datacentre, please click here to arrange a tour!
February 10, 2008
Ever keen to keep as green as possible, Melbourne has switched to using Dell's new PowerEdge R200 rackmount servers. Released in January, they use approximately 30% less power than their predecessor, not only meaning a substantial improvement to their environmental impact, but also meaning we've been able to pass on a cost saving to our customers given the reduced energy costs.
Visit our dedicated servers section to view the new Core2Duo and Dual Core Xeon servers on offer, starting from just £69 per month!
As usual these servers come with our complete business-class SLAs, including 4 hour hardware swapout guarantee, 100% Power SLA and 99.95% Network SLA.
Visit our dedicated servers section to view the new Core2Duo and Dual Core Xeon servers on offer, starting from just £69 per month!
As usual these servers come with our complete business-class SLAs, including 4 hour hardware swapout guarantee, 100% Power SLA and 99.95% Network SLA.
February 10, 2008
This week we've added a new transit provider to our network, Entanet, giving us improved routes to other UK ISPs.
This additional 1Gbps connection gives us additional capacity and redundancy, giving us a total of six connections to the Internet.
This additional 1Gbps connection gives us additional capacity and redundancy, giving us a total of six connections to the Internet.
