Posted on August 13, 2012 at 3:04 pm, by Varial | 5 Comments|
On Saturday, August 18, 2012 we will begin to migrate all customers hosted on our Apollo server to a temporary server in order to upgrade its operating system as previously announced.
On this day we suggest that customers refrain from updating their websites and resellers adding new domains until this work is complete. We expect the migration process to take the better part of a day to complete and we will update this blog post with our progress.
For the majority of users, no downtime or action will be required and the transition will be fully automated. For users who are using a 3rd party DNS service instead of using our name servers, you will need to update your DNS service to point your domains to the IP 108.163.173.34 when the migration is complete.
Once all customers are migrated off of Apollo we will wipe the server and reinstall the operating system and cPanel. After the server is configured and secured again, we will proceed with the gradual migration of clients back to Apollo.
While this method involves a great deal of work for our staff, we feel that it is better to eliminate downtime by migrating clients rather than taking the server offline for a number of hours to perform the work. Once the transition is completed, customers will benefit from the increased performance, stability, and security that the new CloudLinux operating system provides.
Posted on June 26, 2012 at 2:48 pm, by Varial | 2 Comments|
We are pleased to announce that Varial Hosting was recently recognized as one of the 2012 Top Pick Web Hosts by WebHostingSearch.com for providing the Best Web Hosting Services in Canada.
We are excited to receive this recognition and to celebrate we are extending our hugely successful 9 year anniversary 50% off sale for another month!
Thank you to our customers for their strong support and to Web Hosting Search for this glowing accolade!
Posted on June 8, 2012 at 4:08 pm, by Varial | No Comments|
cPanel has announced that extended support for the CentOS 4 operating system will be discontinued on August 31, 2012 and after that time no additional updates or security patches for the operating system will be provided.
Apollo, the oldest server in our fleet, is our only server left running this operating system and will be upgraded to CloudLinux 5 prior to this date to ensure our customers are safe and secure.
Unfortunately it is not possible to simply upgrade the server’s operating system and we must instead wipe the server and install a fresh copy of the CloudLinux 5 operating system.
Rather than taking the server offline for a number of hours to perform this work, we have opted to temporarily migrate all customers on Apollo to other servers in order to have the least impact on our clients.
We will begin to gradually migrate clients off of Apollo beginning next week. For the majority of users, no downtime or action will be required and the transition will be automated. For users with advanced hosting configurations, our Support department will contact you with additional information. Once all customers are migrated off of Apollo we will wipe the server and reinstall the operating system and cPanel. After the server is configured and secured again, we will proceed with the gradual migration of clients back to this server.
While this method involves a great deal of work for our staff, we feel that it is better to eliminate downtime by migrating clients rather than taking the server offline for a number of hours to perform the work. Once the transition is completed, customers will benefit from the increased performance, stability, and security that CloudLinux 5 provides.
Posted on May 30, 2012 at 2:45 pm, by Varial | No Comments|
The Two Twenty, an arts and technology co-working hub where the Varial offices are located in, has been selected as a finalist for the 2012 BDC Young Entrepreneur Award which has a grand prize of $100,000 for business innovation.
The fate of the winner will be in the hands of the public so please vote for The Two Twenty to win this prestigious award to help The Two Twenty grow into a world-class co-working space inspired by some of the most notable workspaces on the continent.
Posted on May 24, 2012 at 1:24 pm, by Varial | No Comments|
We are pleased to announce that we have partnered with CloudFlare to provide their free content delivery network (CDN) and website optimization and security features to our hosting customers.
CloudFlare can be activated from your cPanel and does not require any changes to be made to your website’s code.
Watch the video below to learn how CloudFlare can supercharge your website!
Posted on May 23, 2012 at 1:35 pm, by Varial | 1 Comment|
For advanced users wishing to use the Google Apps email service in conjunction with your web hosting account, we now offer a wizard available in your cPanel that will automate the domain setup and DNS record modifications.
Please note that switching to Google Apps will replace your existing email service with Varial Hosting.
Posted on May 22, 2012 at 12:26 pm, by Varial | 4 Comments|
We are pleased to announce that we have partnered with Attracta to provide their industry leading search engine optimization (SEO) tools to our hosting customers to help you easily expand your website’s traffic and exposure.
Located in your cPanel, Attracta’s free SEO tools guarantee inclusion in Google, Yahoo, and Bing by generating a sitemap of your website’s pages and submitting it directly to the search engines. Also included is Google blacklist and malware scanning and a wealth of SEO tips and videos.
Activate Attracta to increase your search engine rankings today!
Posted on April 30, 2012 at 1:04 pm, by Varial | 1 Comment|
This is a reminder that we will be removing PHP 4 from our servers this evening as this discontinued version of PHP will no longer be supported by cPanel effective May 1, 2012.
Posted on April 20, 2012 at 2:40 pm, by Varial | 1 Comment|
We have installed and are currently testing LiteSpeed Web Server on our Ares, Luna, and Poseidon servers in order to evaluate any performance benefits it may offer our customers in a variety of server environments.
LiteSpeed is the leading high-performance, high-availability web server that boasts being up to 9 times faster than Apache when serving static content, 3 times faster than Apache in SSL, and more than 50% faster than Apache when serving dynamic PHP content.
LiteSpeed is completely Apache interchangeable, meaning your websites will continue to work and function as they always have, but will hopefully load even faster! If you encounter any issues please feel free to contact our Support department. We’d also love to hear if you’ve noticed any performance improvements with your website since switching to LiteSpeed in the comments below.
We’ll post an update after our evaluation period if we decide to permanently switch to LiteSpeed and deploy it to the rest of our servers.
Posted on April 17, 2012 at 1:08 pm, by Varial | No Comments|
If you ever find yourself blocked by our firewall due to repeated login failures or other technical issues, it is now possible to unblock your IP without needing to contact our support department.
To do this, simply log into your client area account and click on the My Products and Services menu heading and then on the View Details button next to the domain you are having problems connecting to. At the bottom of the page you’ll find the following form where you can unblock your own IP or the IP of one of your visitors.
If unblocking your IP does not resolve the issue for you, please contact our support department so we may look into the issue for you.
For advanced users wishing to use the 
