Lengthy Downtime Due to Affinity-Hostway Migration

Dedicated hosting customers of Affinity Internet's ValueWeb and Gate.com brands reported lengthy downtime as a planned outage for a data center migration extended well beyond the scheduled 12 to 15 hour maintenance window. The server move between Affinity's Miami, Fla. data center and a Hostway facility about 270 miles away in Tampa, Fla. began Friday night at 8 pm, but late Sunday night many customers reported that their sites remained offline, with some saying their server outages were nearing 48 hours.

Hostway acquired Affinity Internet in April a deal that combined two hosting services focused on the business market. The U.S. hosting market has been undergoing an active period of consolidation, with WebSite Pros buying Web.com and Endurance International merging with IPower in other deals.

The main pages for both Hostway and ValueWeb remained online throughout, as only dedicated hosting customers appear to have been affected. A forum post by a Gate.com manager indicates that all servers had been connected and powered on in the new location by 2 pm Sunday, but acknowledged that servers remained offline.