As you may be aware of, we are experiencing some downtime on our Hong Kong windows server. We are considering reinstalling the whole server tomorrow and then restoring clients backups. We apologize for any inconvenience caused.
We will be launching in June our reseller hosting plans. Structured for web designers looking to host their own clients by providing them separate access details, internet-related companies planning to add hosting to their service offerings, and large firms with a high number of websites that need to be managed by different teams, our cPanel reseller hosting plans will come in three packages of 20GB, 35GB and 50GB respectively, with anonymous dns, unlimited domain names, emails, mysql databases, sub-domains etc., and priced from RMB3,000/year. Please check back our site soon.
We have been advised by our Chinese datacenter that server with IP 61.147.124.150 has a website with contents forbidden by Chinese law. According to the local regulations, they have shut down this server pending further investigation. We are working with them in order to have the site removed and the server back online. However there is no specific timeline on how this will be done.
For clients who wish to do so we are currently restoring the latest available backup to another server. Please open a support ticket through our website if you are on this server and wants us to do that. Uploading and restoring a backup can take 1~4h depending of the size of your website. If you have your own backup, however, you can require from us to set up a new account and restore the backup by yourself, the new account set up can be done within 15mn.
While we apologize for the downtime occurred, there is nothing much we can do as this is part of how datacenters operate in mainland China.
One of the US datacenters we use is reallocating IP addresses to their servers and proceeding to needed migrations. If you notice that you cannot upload to your site through FTP, it might be that your IP has changed. Please open a support ticket immediately to obtain your new IP information. Sorry for any inconvenience caused. As this was done with short notice, we have not been able to inform each client individually.
The Management
Starting from April 1, we will introduce new changes in both our international web hosting packages (US/UK/Singapore/Hong Kong) and email hosting packages.
While pricing will match the China hosting plans, the international web hosting packages will have more resources (disk space, monthly allocated bandwidth etc.) than before.
In regard to email packages, we will update them to match current corporate email requirements, with larger allocated disk space. Prices would be higher but we believe this would meet better the needs of our clients.
Existing clients would not be affected by these changes. Renewals will be done at their current prices, and we will not force them to move to the new packages. For those however who wants to enjoy the new resource limits, we can give a free upgrade and they will start to be billed for the new prices only when they renew.
The Management
Chinese domain names registration is now restricted to local Chinese companies. Foreign registrars which used to resell .cn domains are now prevented to do so, and Chinese registrars do not accept foreign applicants for these domains.
The law that prevented individuals to register .cn has been somewhat waived on February 8th. However, it appears applicants, who must be Chinese citizens, must show up in person with the ID card and photo, to the CNNIC office or their service provider for “authentication” before they are able to register their domains.
In order to improve the reliability of our Windows offering in Hong Kong, we will be launching later this month a new server which with an English-based control panel (our current server is Chinese-based). Existing clients will be contacted when new server is ready and migrated for free.
The Management
CPanel, which runs on all our Linux servers, and is used by 97% of our clients, have a built in backup utility which allows users to do a full backup of their sites within a few minutes and save it to their computers. We recommend clients to do backups regularly to be able to restore their sites in case of emergencies. Although most of our servers have a weekly backup system or have a RAID configuration, the reality is backups can fail. By following this quick guide you will be able to backup your site when you want.
The backup process as below:
1-Log into your control panel, with your username and password. Access url would probably be www.yourdomainname.com/cpanel
2-Under the “Files” category, click on “Backups”
3-Choose the first option, Full Backup (“Download or Generate a Full Website Backup)
4-Choose “Home Directory” as Backup Destination. You can also input an email address to be notified when the backup is completed.
5-You finally click on “Generate a Backup”. CPanel will start preparing a full backup of your site.
Once the backup is completed, you can come back to click on the download link. Choose a location on your hard drive and click OK. Depending of the size of your site and your internet speed, it can take some time for the download to complete.
In case of server emergency, you will simply need to provide this backup to our admins and the backup will be restored to the new server within half an hour on average. This would include all the site contents, e-mails etc.
Another way to do the backup would be to download directly the home directory files (second option on point 3 of the above guide) and the databases if any. In this case the site can only be restored manually and not by our admins automatically.
How often should you do a backup? This would depends of whether your site is dynamic or static. The more often your site contents are updated the shorter the period between backups. We recommend at least one backup per month for static sites and one per week for dynamic sites.
Finally, a full backup can be useful when you prepare to do some advanced changes to your site, or have a third party work on it. In case anything goes awry, you will can always have your site restored to its initial form by providing us with the full backup.
We have new openings at our Shanghai office:
-Linux server admin, full-time, knowledgeable in CentOS server administration and WHM/CPanel
-Helpdesk Support Staff, part-time or intern, for helping in sales but also basic client support.
For details on job description and requirements, please check our China web hosting jobs page.
Due to a decision by our registrar, we are temporarily suspending dot cn domain name registration. This is a consequence of the tougher restrictions and registration process that were enabled by the CNNIC last month. We hope that restrictions will be somewhat relaxed after the Chinese New Year holiday or later in the year. Sorry for the inconvenience caused.
The Management
www.sinohosting.net
