Two scenarios
1. you use Westnet Webmail soley for you email, and you store all your contact, email etc etc on there
2. you've been on hols for two weeks, come back power up the PC, and expect a deluge of mail ...

In both cases you find no mail when you "connect"

You call support, and are told "Our email server crashed" we

a. are in process of restoring all emails and it will take several days till we are back online fully
b. might be able to go back thru our logs and find any emails sent to you in last few days, we'll charge you $88/hr to do this
c. don't backup our servers, so you are out of luck

and your choice is ?

Hello houser

I'm not entirely sure what you are asking here. Did one of our Technical Support team tell you that our mail server crashed? I can confirm that this hasn't happened.

If you were expecting some email to come through, is there any chance that either nobody sent you anything, or that you may have an email program set up on one of your computers? If this is the case, there's a chance you may find your email on that computer.

Alternatively, did you check your email using an email client while you were away? If you were at an internet kiosk and used an email client to check your email, this may explain your empy mailbox.

In any case, if you are sure that no mail client has ever been set up using your details, we can have this looked into for you. As you've mentioned, if you choose this option there would be a charge of $88 per hour, with a minimum charge of one hour.

If you'd like this investigated further, please feel free to contact our Technical Support team on 1300 786 068 at any time.

Brent

I'm not suggesting that there has been an email server crash.

I'm simply asking does westnet backup mailboxes on its mail servers ?

I offer two scnearios where this would be an important requirement.

My understanding from talking ot tech support is that Westnet does NOT backup its mailservers.

The best that can be done by westnet is to recover email recived in last several days at the rate of $88/hr

So if there was an email server crash

- the user who relies on westnet for their webmail access will loose everything.

- the user who has been on holidays for two weeks will loose everything except last two days.

Westnet don't make this clear to users.

houser writes...

- the user who relies on westnet for their webmail access will loose everything.

- the user who has been on holidays for two weeks will loose everything except last two days.

In both of these situations, I would suggest setting up a secondary email account (Gmail etc) and set them to forward a copy of everything to the Gmail account. You can never have enough backups.

From my understanding, Westnet do backup email in some form, just how long I am not sure. It may have been that the Support operator you spoke to was not aware of the backup policy.

houser writes...

My understanding from talking ot tech support is that Westnet does NOT backup its mailservers.

Technical Support is wrong. And when you say "email server" you're meaning "file server" crash, because the webmail servers & POP servers aren't the same machines as the file servers. Westnet absolutely takes snapshots of their mail storage system, FYI.

houser writes...

So if there was an email server crash

Apologies if this is really blunt, but email [file] servers don't just 'crash' - there's RAID'ed disk arrays, file system snapshots and redundancy. You don't just lose all your data because a few blades have issues.

gmail is a good suggestion.

fileserver/maileserver whatever .. I mean the place where the physical contents of the mailbox of a given user are stored.

if what you are syaing about raided was true then we'd not need tpaes any more !!

servers can crash due to software problems, physical destruction of server, mistakes by admins, I could go on an on

the bottom line from tech support is if I paid them $88/hr they'd recover from their logs whaver mail I'd recoved last few days. this is NOT a backup system.

I came across this because when I tried to change the password of my daughters email account the mailbox was deleted. I pretty sure I selected "change password" etc, but suddenly it was gone. She has lost 5 years of her life. no amount of effort at $88/hr will get the five years history contained in her webmail account .
back.

Westnet don't back up the contents of their webservers either so it seems consistent that they dont backup any mailboxes either. Before you tell me I'm worng I know this from personal experience and now still use Westent hosting but do all my own backups. Gives me peace of mind. yeah yeah they never crash , right ...

ok HOUSER - so let's work through this ...

i would expect most ISPs do keep a backup of their email systems (heck, even the small no-name ones do).

but your problem is different,
you (the user) accidentally deleted a mailbox - thus removing all email associated with it.
from my understanding (via westnet's T&C's) - when a mailbox is deleted, all email is also deleted and cannot be recovered.

how long after deleting the email box was it before you contacted westnet & tried to recover the emails? ... as that may help as to whether there may be backups or not.

don't go outright blaming westnet, when surely some of the blame should be placed on you (for accidentally deleting it).

[EDIT] : and as to your post about not backing up their web hosting ... if you were to look on westnet's website, you will notice - even with the most basic web hosting package, THEY DO BACKUPS on a day-to-day basis, but it will cost money to retrieve data.

ConstableCare writes...

i would expect most ISPs do keep a backup of their email systems (heck, even the small no-name ones do).

lol dont say that to soon i know 3 mobile do not do it well i lost all mine at one time due to some issue there

Hi houser,

Hopefully I can clear things up for you.
We keep a weeks worth of bi-hourly snapshots of all mailboxes. Obviously keeping several terabytes of customer mail for longer periods of time would be extremely difficult.

In the time I've been a mail admin at Westnet, I have never restored a mailbox that has been deleted due to Westnet error (server crash, admin error, etc). The $88p/hr is a 'data retrieval and investigation' charge. Basically this means, we retreive the data and investigate why the data was lost in the first place, if it is customer error (eg. accidently retrieved mail via POP3 session or deleted through webmail), there is a charge for the admins time.

Please let me know if you have further questions.

Regards,
Drew.

Think you might find the 'data retrieval and investigation' charge is actually $80 per hours there dude

see www.westnet.com.au/inter...additional/other

Woops, Sorry! :)

-Drew

[edit: + 10% GST - Thanks Matt]

houser writes...

She has lost 5 years of her life.

dont mean to be rude, but if 5 years of her life was lost by losing some emails, perhaps it wasnt really anything of importance.
Perhaps she should go out and actually live life and take some photos, gather some memories... the real kind, no a digital version.

I understand losing some emails is annoyingd, but seriously... lost 5 years of her life?? lol.

the bottom line from tech support is if I paid them $88/hr they'd recover from their logs whaver mail I'd recoved last few days. this is NOT a backup system.

Hi Houser,

I know Andrew Bell has already answered your question. I thought I would re-iterate what Andrew has said.

As the Systems Supervisor of our Email and Web hosting product I can 100% guarantee you that Westnet's hosting systems are Highly Available and recoverable from most catastrophic events. By most, a total destruction of Perth may result in the total loss of your data.

You are right though. We offer two services to you. Log Searching and Data Restore. Both of these are two totally separate services. Log searching will show you what emails were sent to you. You can use that as an accurate method to distinguish missing email.

Data Restoration will restore your mailbox (on our system) to a particular point in time. Of course depending on what emails have been deleted prior to the point in time may mean not all your email is restored - for obvious reasons.

She has lost 5 years of her life. no amount of effort at $88/hr will get the five years history contained in her webmail account .

Actually with little effort we can quite easily restore this data (at $80/hour). If your daughter keeps her email on our systems (that is she doesn't download it to her computer) then I'd expect a high success rate in having all the data restored within the 1 hour window.

Westnet don't back up the contents of their webservers either so it seems consistent that they dont backup any mailboxes either. Before you tell me I'm worng

You are wrong. Westnet Web Hosting and Mail Hosting platforms are definitely backed up. In fact Westnet's Web Hosting infrastructure has one of the longest rotation schedule for its backups.

houser writes...

if what you are syaing about raided was true then we'd not need tpaes any more !!

You're right. No single system is 100% reliable. During my long time within Westnet I have seen Raid fails. However due to our highly available redundant systems we can quite easily suffer a single raid failure and still have the data to tell the story.

If you disagree with anything I have said or have further questions I am happy to answer them personally.

Thanks,

Jonathon