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Fire declared in OVH SBG2 datacentre building

travaux.ovh.net

461–470 of 613 posts

Re: Fire declared in OVH SBG2 datacentre building

#461
post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is quite a significant revision to your previous statement that there’s nothing about a data center that makes it more secure than your house. This attitude that your data isn’t very important, so it’s fine to not be very concerned about it’s security, while not entirely uncommon, is something most organisations try to avoid when choosing vendors. It’s something consumers are generally unconcerned about, until a…

> This is quite a significant revision to your previous statement that there’s nothing about a data center that makes it more secure than your house. I said there was nothing magical about data centers security, a point I stand with. It's all about proper storage (encryption) and physical security. Obviously, the physical security of an AWS data center will be tighter that your typical SME but in a way which is of no…

> It's that storing it encrypted in a sensible place (and to be clear by that I just mean not lying around - a drawer in an office or your server room seems perfectly adequate to me) is secure enough.

In the SME space some things are "different", and if you've not worked there it can be hard to get one's head around it:

A client of mine was burgled some years ago.

Typical small business, offices on an industrial estate with no residential housing anywhere nearby. Busy in the daytime, quiet as the grave during the night. The attackers came in the wee small hours, broke through the front door (the locks held, the door frame didn't), which must have made quite a bit of noise. The alarm system was faulty and didn't go off (later determined to be a 3rd party alarm installer error...)

All internal doors were unlocked, PCs and laptops were all in plain sight, servers in the "comms room" - that wasn't locked either.

The attacker(s) made a cursory search at every desk, and the only thing that was taken at all was a light commercial vehicle which was parked at the side of the property, its keys had been kept in the top drawer of one of the desks.

The guy who looked after the vehicle - and who'd lost "his" ride - was extremely cross, everyone else (from the MD on downwards) felt like they'd dodged a bullet.

Physical security duly got budget thrown at it - stable doors and horses, the way the world usually turns.

Re: Fire declared in OVH SBG2 datacentre building

#462

in case there were not posted before, here are pictures of SBG2 in flames taken by the firemen. https://twitter.com/xgarreau/status/1369559995491172354 This puts an image on the sentence "SBG2 is destroyed". Do not expect any recovery from SBG2.

Holy hell. Are these "datacenters" really just shipping containers? That's what it looks like.

Re: Fire declared in OVH SBG2 datacentre building

#463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it sucks to catch fire and I care for the employees and the firemen, but if their status page is a lie then I have a whole lot less sympathy for the business. That's shady business and they should feel bad. I can appreciate an honest mistake though, like the status page server cron is hosted in the same cluster that caught fire and hence it burnt down and can't update the page anymore.

Is the status page relevant though? At the very least, OVH immediately made a status announcement on their support page and they've been active on Twitter. I don't see anything shady here. From their support page: > The whole site has been isolated, which impacts all our services on SBG1, SBG2, SBG3 and SBG4. If your production is in Strasbourg, we recommend to activate your Disaster Recovery Plan What more could you…

To have a status page that reflects actual statuses? To know that I'm not being lied to or taken advantage of? To know that my SLA is being honored?

Re: Fire declared in OVH SBG2 datacentre building

#464
post #460

I don't know whether my 10+ year side project with 225,000 users(www.webminal.org) gone forever! :( I have backup snapshots but its stored in ovh itself :( hoping for a miracle!

What was the reason of storing the backup on the same server? To allow for rollbacks in case of data corruption or some changes gone wrong?

Re: Fire declared in OVH SBG2 datacentre building

#465

in case there were not posted before, here are pictures of SBG2 in flames taken by the firemen. https://twitter.com/xgarreau/status/1369559995491172354 This puts an image on the sentence "SBG2 is destroyed". Do not expect any recovery from SBG2.

Holy hell. Are these "datacenters" really just shipping containers? That's what it looks like.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modular_data_center

Re: Fire declared in OVH SBG2 datacentre building

#466
post #464
post #460

I don't know whether my 10+ year side project with 225,000 users(www.webminal.org) gone forever! :( I have backup snapshots but its stored in ovh itself :( hoping for a miracle!

What was the reason of storing the backup on the same server? To allow for rollbacks in case of data corruption or some changes gone wrong?

I think they’re talking about the backup services provided by OVH, in which I believe they’re stored in RBX.

Re: Fire declared in OVH SBG2 datacentre building

#467
post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not done any research into it, but I always thought OVH was supposed to be a very budget VPS service primarily for personal use rather than business. Although thought it was akin to having a Raspberry Pi plugged in at home. Again, I may be completely wrong but why would you not use AWS/GCP? Even if it's complexity, Amazon have Lightsail, or if it's cost I thought DigitalOcean was one of the only reputable business-gr…

You cant imagine it yet big chunk of the independent internet runs on small vps servers. There isnt much difference between DO and OVH, Hetzner, Vultr, Linode... not sure why DO would be better. I mean its US company doing marketing right. Thats the difference. Plus ovh/hetzner have only EU locations. I think small bussinesses like smaller simple providers instead of bigclouds. Its different philosophy if you are afr…

OVH has a location in Canada, now.

Re: Fire declared in OVH SBG2 datacentre building

#468
post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OVH is one of the largest providers in the world. They run a sub brand for personal use (bare metal for $5/m, hardware replacements in 30 min or less usually). ..and they do support all of those things you just listed, not just API-backed bare metal.

Is that a typo? I only see OVH bare metal starting at >$50. How could a provider offer a bare metal server for $5?

It's not a typo. OVH runs Kimsufi, which has bare metal servers for as low as 5$. It is pretty insane.

Re: Fire declared in OVH SBG2 datacentre building

#469

I just recently started moving some services for my business to one of OVH's US-based data centers. Should I take this fire as evidence that OVH is incompetent and get out? I really don't want AWS, or the big three hyperscalers in general, to be the only option.

IMO you should take this fire as evidence, that you need to have (working!) backups wherever you host your data. AWS, GCP Azure are not fire resistant, same as OVH. I don't know if OVH is more or less competent than big three, I choose to trust no one.

I read multiple times that they didn't even have sprinklers, only smoke detectors in their EU datacenter(s). I'm 100% sure AWS, Azure and Google have better fire prevention.

Re: Fire declared in OVH SBG2 datacentre building

#470
post #464
post #460

I don't know whether my 10+ year side project with 225,000 users(www.webminal.org) gone forever! :( I have backup snapshots but its stored in ovh itself :( hoping for a miracle!

What was the reason of storing the backup on the same server? To allow for rollbacks in case of data corruption or some changes gone wrong?

Yes, I thought rollbacks will be much easier in case of data loss. :sob:
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