Migration Update #2
Okay! Almost done.
All drives have been loaded into the new hypevisors and have been detected by the HBA cards.
The final step is to assign IP addresses+routing, update DNS records, and boot the VMs.
Happy December everyone!
Scott and I talked recently, and it's been decided that...
We should probably make a better effort to publish some updates.
At the very least, expect a short blurb every time we load drives.
Customer drives were installed on December 2nd. No issues there.
Some of our lesser spec'd hypervisors will be decommissioned soon. In November, we communicated with a subset of users and migrated their VM + drive setups to new equipment. Everything went smoothly!
Just FYI everyone, we are still in business.
We are in the middle of revamping the website to include long-awaited management features (VNC, reboot, etc.) as well as an automatic billing system.
The goal is to keep it on the down low, until it is polished and deployed.
Yes, you can still sign-up. Visit /store.html.
The team has expanded. There are two of us working on zfs.rent now:
As always, the best way to reach out is to email support@zfs.rent.
Okay, I'm confident that the full physical migration has been completed.
It's been a very tiring day, but I will follow-up again this weekend on the software side of things.
If anyone has any issues at all, please email me and I will take care of individual issues one at a time.
Thank you everyone for your patience!
Received some emails that some customers cannot access their VMs.
Appears that some IP + DNS records have not been set correctly.
Will be resolved in the next 24 hours. Other than that, everything has been stable and customers are on the new IP blocks.
Okay! Almost done.
All drives have been loaded into the new hypevisors and have been detected by the HBA cards.
The final step is to assign IP addresses+routing, update DNS records, and boot the VMs.
All systems and drives were unloaded and safely moved out of the Sac datacenter.
New IP addresses acquired for customers. DNS will be updated soon.
Preparing the new hypervisors took longer than expected. They are almost done. I expect to have them installed by EOD Oct. 7th.
Will keep posting updates here. Once the full process is complete, I will publish a detailed post of some of the new hardware.
All users part of the migration will receive a credit as mentioned before. Once the new systems are installed, I will follow-up on the software + monitoring roadmap.
First of all, apologies for the short notice.
On Monday, October 3rd, 2022 we are terminating our contract with DataNoc (Sacramento).
DataNOC has consistently had network and power outages during our two-year term. Hurricane Electric has had zero outages in the 1+ years we have been with them.
All Sacramento hypervisors and drives will be migrated to Hurricane Electric (Fremont) where the bulk of current customers/drives reside.
We have about 50 drives in Sacramento that will be moved. All drives will be transferred in several ESD-safe drive-carrying cases.
Service will be carried on as usual. We have been growing by 3-5 new customers a month and are incredibly happy to serve our customer base.
If you would like to cancel, now is a good time. If this is the case,
we are open to purchasing your used drives to save on shipping and
handling. We can also help export your data off the drives via:
dd if=/dev/sda > clone.img
If you are on the fence, please read the section below.
The billing process will be simplified significantly. Currently, we using a mix of Shopify, Xero, and Stripe. After this migration, everyone will be on the same platform (Stripe).
Instead of pay-as-you-go data transfer, we will add the amount transferred to your invoice ($5/TB sent or received). You can set a monthly cap at which point your machine will be throttled to 5-10 mbps and an email will be sent out.
(This minimum mbps may increase in the future, depending on average network load. It should be enough for SSH, VNC, basic file transfers, etc.)
We understand that our software development has been frustratingly slow and the outages at the Sacramento location have been disappointing.
So far, our churn rate has been amazing. We have been in business for nearly two years. We have had 91 total customers with 150 unique drives.
We have only had four customer cancellations to date.
For those affected by this migration or are on the fence about canceling, we would greatly appreciate you sticking around as we improve the service during the next 30 to 45 days.
I will publish a feature roadmap on GitHub on Tuesday.
Please feel free to chime in + request features. You can also email support@zfs.rent.
We are offering all grandfathered customers:
It's been an honor offering this service.
Here's to a successful migration and the next chapter of zfs.rent!
— Ryan