DETAIL: We are currently experiencing some unexpected problems with our service delivery.

RESPONSE: We are investigating this and expect to have this resolved promptly.

DURATION: We will provide an update on the cause and resolution once completed.

UPDATE: 16:20 BST (GMT +1) 15 Oct 2009

We performed a routine maintenance operation to expand the disk space, which ordinarily requires zero downtime. Unfortunately the the operation hung which caused a cascading problem. This meant we had to restart the entire service.

Because the restrart was unscheduled we took greate care to minimise risk, which added extra time to the whole process.

Ken

From around 9.15 am on Thursday 2nd July WebEden suffered its 2nd distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. This was a multiple DDoS from persistent sources. This overloaded our firewalls on our servers, slowed and then took down all WebEden websites, and our own website too.

Our engineers responded immediately to get this attack under control and return full services to all customers.

By 11.35 we managed to block what appears to have been three different types of DDoS attack. Combating the three attacks took longer than expected. All issues were resolved by 12.32 BST.

What do we do now?

The first and main thing we are doing is to introduce even more redundancy into our firewalls. By any normal measure we are hyper-protected. This event was off the scale, and as such we need to adapt our systems to that new scale.

One issue that emerged is that you, our customers, need to kept informed of what is going on. Anyone who follows us on Twitter were able to communicate with use directly, so we urge you all to follow WebEden on Twitter so you can keep up to date.

We’re in the process of setting up remotely hosted status page which will be unaffected by any attack to our systems, where we can let you know if any issues arise.