I posted a few days back on several technical list asking if anyone hosted on AIT was having issues. As a follow up on that I thought I would give you my 2 cents on what happened and the end results in case anybody ever thinks of hosting with AIT. As background for the non-techie AIT is a Domain and Web Hosting Provider where you setup your website and email. They typically only sell through resellers so you may pay HostSource for your website but they in turn buy or rent services from AIT and there is nothing keeping the average user from becoming a "reseller" even if it’s just for their own website.
Sometime Friday or Saturday AIT started doing some updates. They admit they did updates although they won’t say what.
AIT System Status Page: Announcements
IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT:� AIT is currently undergoing an upgrade to most fully managed shared and dedicated web hosting systems.� The upgrade is being scheduled and operated to be non-service affecting.� The upgrade includes new IBM and EMC equipment.� During the upgrade, there could be times of increased latency.� While we anticipate this latency being minor, we want to inform our customers to be aware of potential changes to their service.� If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at 1-877-209-5184.
AIT runs Redhat and Redhat released an update to Bind which reset all DNS servers to caching only thus screwing anyone who runs their own internal DNS servers, AIT or any hosting provider please raise your hands. Come Saturday to Tuesday sites started reporting missing websites and emails. Checks of email showed email was being delivered but was never making it into the POP boxes. The problem mirrors exactly the type of errors one would expect if AIT did install the Redhat update and did not catch the DNS reset. After upwards of 5 days AIT appears to have got a handle on this and email is flowing, websites are back HOWEVER any email sent during the down period has been lost, not bounced but it’s gone and AIT says cannot be retrieved! That’s up to 5 days of emails!!!
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/18/1210257&from=rss
"Red Hat’s response to update bind through RHN, patching the DNS hole, made a fatal error which will revert all name servers to caching only servers. This meant that anyone running their own DNS service promptly lost all of their DNS records for which they were acting as primary or secondary name servers.
If you would like to get AIT’s take on what really happened email their CEO. If you get a response that explains what they did any better than what I think they did please comment back. (If your looking for a replacement provider please let me know.)
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