ParaFX.com NetOPS staff will be performing an number of upgrades to our SMARTMAIL services infrastructure. This will require a maintenance window to be scheduled for Sunday August 06 2017 at 12:01am - 4:00am EST.

ParaFX.com will be upgrading the storage systems that are used by our email services. As such we will be migrating all email data and users onto a new storage infrastructure that will offer larger capacity for the system and provide various performance enhancements.

In order to ensure that data is migrated smoothly and to ensure that data can be fully verified, we will require to suspend all email services for the duration of the maintenance window. This means that email services will not be accessible for the duration of the maintenance window.

Emails will not be lost in this process as the email systems will hold all incoming email for delivery until services are resumed. Clients who leave their email on the server or use IMAP will not be able to access existing emails during the maintenance window.

At this time, email services will be suspended in order to perform the various upgrades and ensure data integrity is maintained. 

At the start of the window, our NetOPS staff will be disabling access to email services completely. This includes checking for new or existing email or sending email. It will also include suspending access to Webmail. We will have incoming emails pended / queued during this time.

Our admins can then begin the process performing the upgrades and system changes. In addition a portion of our maintenance window is devoted to testing and follow-up tasks required. We will continue to provide updates on our system status page and twitter feed (@ParaFXcomStatus )

Upon completion and successful testing, we will resume all mail services and pended emails will begin to deliver.

There will be no changes to your email settings or setup. Services will simply resume as they were. 

This upgrade is essential as it is expected to enhance email services and performance. Although this upgrade is largely a back end enhancement, it will boost performance and efficiency of mail services in general.

The new storage system allows higher capacity of space so we in turn can provide larger mail storage space for our clients. In addition, the new hardware will also be able to more efficiently manage and serve email data to applications.

Most importantly, this scheduled maintenance and upgrade is so that we can provide greater capacity of individual mailboxes to our clients. Some of our longer standing clients have been asking to upgrade their mailbox storage, however as a result of this upgrade, all mailboxes on the system will automatically be upgraded free of charge. The upgrade will expand all mailboxes from their previous capacity of 1000 MB (1 GB) to 2000 MB (2 GB). All mailboxes will double in their capacity. The upgrade will be performed seamlessly for all clients after the maintenance is complete. It will take effect upon your first received email after our maintenance window.

In addition, we expect that there will be a significant performance enhancement for those users who have a large amount of email on the server and use WebMail.

This upgraded capacity will apply to all clients / all mailboxes that reside on our system. If you have an email address in your hosting manager that has been set to forward to another address such as Gmail, the upgrade does not apply as in the case of forwarded addresses, all mail is forwarded elsewhere and does not have a mailbox on our system to be expanded.

Your upgraded capacity is free of charge for all accounts, and is our way of thanking you for your continued business and support.