I was just wondering, who here reads the newsletters, critical updates, maintenance alerts, etc.. they receive from companies whenever they sign up for a service?
I ask this because we recently migrated several services over to a newer, more-powerful dual-Xeon server we'd picked up and it's just really been an eye-opener for me. I just want to get a feel for whether or not I'm wasting my time with this or perhaps there's a better way of doing this. Personally, I usually read this kind of stuff, especially things regarding network maintenance and the like. I guess I like to be informed.
Anyways, on Sunday I sent out an email to everybody marked "IMPORTANT" in the subject regarding the scheduled database migration for late Tuesday evening. It mentioned a simple change that needed to be made in order to prepare a site for the migration. Change the database connection hostname. That was it. With that, I could "carry over" sites to the new server with absolutely no downtime. Afterwards, they could change it back to a more personalized and easier-to-remember subdomain I'd setup for each domain.
So, Tuesday evening comes and the MySQL migration goes as planned. No data is lost and I actually get done a half hour ahead of schedule. So, I go ahead and bump the special hostname I'd setup over to the new IP and halt the MySQL service on the old server.
Once again, I send out another email to notify everybody that the migration was a success and to remind them of the changes they need to make.
Much to my dismay, I started cycling through some of the sites I host and was very disappointed by what I saw. I could only manage to find 2 sites I knew used MySQL that didn't display an error. That's right, only 2 people out of roughly 60 customers took the time to read an email I'd sent out marked "IMPORTANT."
It wasn't my responsibility to fix everybody's site. I gave ample notice (they knew it was going to be moved and to watch for the instructions at least a week in advance). So I just waited to see what would happen. It's about 2 days later and, in all, I have received 2 phone calls (one from California), 6 emails, and about 8 PMs telling me that there are "problems with MySQL." The first thing I ask these people is "did you read the newsletter" and, of course, the response is always "no." I remind them of the neccessary change, they make the adjustment and..presto...things work again.
Anyways, the point of my post was just to find out what the general consensus is with email material sent from service providers. Do you usually read it? Also, is there some kind of better way of sending out announcements? I don't plan on making any additonal major changes any time soon, but this has really made me wonder how I'm supposed to handle things should customer intervention be required in the future.
