Some HardyNet email customers have been experiencing issues for the past two days related to a problem with our email client, Zimbra. Zimbra and our provider, NeoNova, have been trying to fix the problem related to a database corruption on one server (NeoNova has 48 mailbox servers). Not every HardyNet email customer is affected, but a significant number are.
No emails or other information has been lost. NeoNova still has all of the information. They are prepping a new server and will migrate all of the database information over time to that server.
This approach has its pluses and minuses, but it’s the quickest way to get service restored, according to NeoNova. The advantage is that affected customers should soon be able to access their email services, enabling them to send and receive email.
The disadvantage is that it will take quite a while for the new server to receive all of the database information. It involves “many, many, many terabytes” of data, according to NeoNova. While this process is ongoing, it will appear that a customer’s mailbox is empty. All information, even Contacts and other services in that mailbox, will repopulate over time. Eventually, all of the customer’s email and services, even details like what messages are Read and Unread in the Trash folder, will be restored.
Again, we stress that no emails or other information has been lost. The information just will take some time to show up on the new server. It will be a constant migration until completed, but with that much data, it’s a long process. Because of the time involved, different customers will see their full mailboxes restored at different times as the data migrates.
NeoNova can’t give a timeframe as to how long they expect the data migration to take. They will be monitoring the situation constantly to ensure that no other systems are impacted.
We apologize for this issue. We have been in contact throughout the day with NeoNova, and we have been assured that their team has been working around the clock. They tried less disruptive methods to restore the database before deciding on using an entirely clean server that must receive all of the data to repopulate mailboxes. But those methods weren’t successful.
Again, we apologize for this problem, and we will continue to urge NeoNova and Zimbra to institute this repair.