Main Website Unavailable over the weekend

by **Terry H** Fri Nov 12, 2010 2:09 pm

We apologise very sincerely for the current disruption to service.

We have suffered a major hardware failure, and on top of that the backup system that is meant to take over, has failed. Our engineers, those of our network provider, and the hardware suppliers (Sun/Oracle) are doing everything they can to rectify this situation. The servers are the latest technology and meant to be fully redundant and able to survive hardware failures, but clearly this has not been the case.

We are assured that the problem is being resolved but to do this the entire system has to be shut down and restarted. This will take some time due to the volume of data involved and it is possible our Main Website will be offline for periods over this weekend, while they continue to work on it.

We chose our network provider very carefully based upon their reputation and the reputation of the hardware and software that they use. We can only state that it is the Rolls Royce engine of the industry but, unfortunately, as has been seen recently even those are not infallible.

Please be assured that everything possible is being done to resume normal service. We are very concerned and distressed at the inconvenience and annoyance that this is causing to everyone and we are working flat out to resolve it as fast as possible.

Office: 0151 529 3232
FORUM: Open as usual

Admin