Webland: Outage at Swiss web host for two weeks
The outage of a major web host for over two weeks is causing hectic activity, stress, and loss of earnings for many companies and private individuals.
Emergency in the data center
(Image: vchal/Shutterstock.com)
At Webland, one of the larger web hosting and mail providers in Switzerland, various problems have been occurring for a good two weeks. Customers are complaining about outages in web services and email. The company still has some of the problems under control.
On the evening of November 19th, Webland experienced a major system outage. Several services and servers were inaccessible, the company informed, citing a failure of a storage system (storage cluster) as the cause. Later that night, the provider announced that the "faulty component" had been located and a replacement initiated. However, the problems persisted, even multiplied, and all efforts had not yielded a stable solution by Friday.
No own structures
In recent weeks, Amazon Web Services and other providers have made headlines with extensive outages. The problems at hosting provider Webland in the canton of Basel-Landschaft have now been ongoing for significantly longer.
Webland does not operate its own data center but uses the external data center of IWB (Industrielle Werke Basel). IWB primarily supplies the population and companies with electricity, water, and district heating, as well as telecommunications services like internet and landline, but also offers colocation and server housing.
According to Webland, it also has a backup data center operated by the Swiss energy provider Primeo Energie. This data center in MĂĽnchenstein is "connected to the productive data center via multiple redundant 10-Gigabit fiber optic connections," Webland states on its homepage.
Back and forth on the status page
After the outage, there have been continuous updates on the status page day and night: a new NAS system is coming, data migration to new systems is progressing slowly, a hardware controller is overheating.
Initial websites and databases are now back online. In parallel, the provider continues to work on restoring the database servers and mail services. The messages on the status website are similar day after day. Webland repeatedly emphasizes that it is a hardware defect and not a "security incident."
No emails, no website
According to Webland, most customer websites have now been restored. On Saturday morning, the provider reported that some mail servers are back online, but delivery delays continue. FTP services are also said to be running again.
According to Swiss media, hundreds of Swiss companies and organizations are affected by the outages at Webland. Small business owners report massive problems due to the lack of email traffic and web presence. For some, the situation is existential, especially now at the end of the year with high sales.
Meanwhile, numerous customers are moving their websites to other hosts and looking for other mail providers. Experts warn that even small businesses should take more responsibility for their own web services, databases, and email, and have a "Plan B" ready.
Webland belongs to Miss Group
Webland, which it states is managed by "15 highly qualified employees," describes itself as "one of the leading Internet Service Providers in Switzerland." According to its own figures, Webland manages 75,000 domains for its customers. The company does not disclose the number of customers.
For Webland, the problems are an existential crisis, according to many observers. An outage of websites and mail for over two weeks is extremely unusual for a hosting provider and damages trust in the long term. And this at a time when the parent company is apparently to be sold.
Webland, founded in 1998, was sold in December 2021 to an international provider of digital solutions and web hosting services based in Stockholm, the Miss Group. It was founded by Swedish entrepreneur Mattias Kaneteg, who lives in Dubai.
Shortly thereafter, the group acquired another Swiss web host, Hoststar, with approximately 80,000 customers according to its own figures. Following the acquisition of Webland and the announced takeover of Hoststar, Miss Group announced a total of 100,000 Swiss customers.
Videos by heise
Meanwhile, Miss Group itself has been majority acquired by Perwyn, a British private equity investor. Kaneteg is only a shareholder at Webland and has nothing to do with daily operations, as he told heise online. However, he is still listed in the commercial register as Chairman of the Board of Directors at Webland.
Kaneteg refers to the Group's COO, Jimmie Eriksson. He says about the total outage roughly what can already be read on Webland's status page. Telephone and email inquiries to Webland itself remain unanswered.
Miss Group is preparing for sale
In the international web hosting industry, Miss Group is known for its dominant expansion policy. Miss Group has developed into one of the largest hosting players in Europe through "rapid growth and numerous acquisitions," analyzed a web hosting trade magazine in January: with over 30 brands in several markets serving more than 700,000 customers worldwide.
According to the report, Miss Group is currently preparing for a possible sale, "which would be a significant event in the hosting industry." When asked by heise online, Miss Group founder Kaneteg replies somewhat unclearly that the company remains owned by Perwyn as the majority owner.
(nie)
