Internet is in Trouble, OVH's Data Center Burned Down
Today morning in Europe, a fire broke out at the Strasbourg branch of OVH, which hosts 140,000 servers, as a result of which the entire SBG2 data centre and part of SBG1 burned down. Fortunately, there were no casualties.
- At approximately 4:00 am CEST, a fire broke out at the Strasbourg branch of OVH;
- The fire consumed servers in data centre SBG2 and part of SBG1;
- Fortunately there were no staff casualties.
At around 4:00 am CEST on Tuesday, March 10, a fire broke out at the OVH branch in Strasbourg (northeastern France), completely destroying the SBG2 data center built in 2013. The fire also consumed some of the 50,000 servers of SBG1 (built a year earlier). SBG3 and SBG4 data centers remained unscathed. Losses are currently being analyzed. Firefighters are also trying to determine the cause of the fire.
It was thanks to their quick response that casualties were avoided - or at least that was the message posted on Twitter by the company's founder and CEO, Octave Klaba. The CEO reported on the incident almost immediately. According to his words, the fire was so big that firefighters were unable to prevent it from engulfing the SBG2 center. They focused on protecting other parts of the site instead.
As a result of the fire, many of OVH's customers are now finding it difficult or impossible to use the Internet. Klaba said he hopes to be able to get SBG3 and SBG4 up and running by the end of the day. He also encouraged all customers of the company to activate Disaster Recovery Plans.
Some companies were also affected by the incident. The server crash caused by the fire hampered the websites of many businesses, online shops, and football clubs.
OVH (an acronym for " On Vous Héberge" or "We host you") is a company that provides one of the world's largest cloud computing platforms, alongside such companies as Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services. The company was founded in 1999 by Octave Klaba. The reason was unusual - no service provider was able to meet the expectations of the then twenty-four-year-old Klaba. Although the company is based in France, its servers are also located in Poland, Canada, Australia, and Singapore. Klaba is still working on the development of his company - he plans to establish data centers in the USA, Germany, and Great Britain, among other locations.
