Fire declared in OVH SBG2 datacentre building

They are all annexes built up over time and a victim of their own success (the site was meant to be more of a edge node in size). The container based annexes were meant to be dismantled 3 years ago but profit probably got in the way

Status shows greens across the board

http://status.ovh.com/vms/index_sbg2.html

Am I looking at the wrong thing or am I right to wonder why we still bother with public status pages if it never shows the real status?

Edit: nvm just saw another comment pointing out the same further down the thread (I randomly came across this page while looking for the physical location of another DC)

Just to clarify: trans-atlantic shipments take a week port-to-port, e.g. Newark, NJ, USA to Antwerp, Belgium. (Bangladesh to Italy via Suez-channel looks like a 2-week voyage, or 3 weeks to the US west coast. Especially the latter would probably have quite a few stops on the way along the Asian coast.) You get better economics than shipping via air-freight from one full pallet and up. Overland truck transport to and from the port is still cheaper than air freight, at least in the US and central Europe.

For these major routes, there are typically at least bi-weekly voyages scheduled, so for this kind of distance, you can expect about 11 days pretty uniformly distributed +-2 days, if you pay to get on the next ship.

This may lead to (committing to) paying for the spot on the ship when your pallet is ready for pickup at the factory, not when it arrives at the port) and use low-delay overland trucking services. Which operate e.g. in lockstep with the port processing to get your pallet on the move within half a day of the container being unloaded from the ship, ideally having containers pre-sorted at the origin to match truck routes at the destination. So they can go on a trailer directly from the ship and rotate drivers on the delivery tour, spending only a few minutes at each drop-off.

Because those can't rely on customers to be there and get you unloaded in less than 5 minutes, they need locations they can unload at with on-board equipment. They'd notify the customer with a GPS-based ETA display, so the customer can be ready and immediately move the delivery inside. Rely on 360-degree "dashcam" coverage and encourage the customer to have the drop-off point under video surveillance, just to easily handle potential disputes. Have the delivery person use some suitable high-res camera with a built-in light to get some full-surface-coverage photographic evidence of the condition it was delivered in.

I'd guess with a hydraulic lift on the trailer's back and some kind of folding manual pallet jack stuck on that (fold-up) lift, so they drive up to the location, unlock the pallet jack, un-fold the lift, lower the lift almost to the ground, detach the pallet jack to drop it the last inch/few cm to the ground, pull the jack out, lower the lift the rest of the way, drive it on to the lift, open the container, get up with the pallet jack, drive the pallets (one-by-one) for this drop-off out of the container and leave them on the ground, close and lock the container, re-arm the jack's hooks, shove it jack back under the slightly-lowered folding lift, make it hook back in, fold it up, lock the hooking mechanism (against theft at a rest stop (short meal and toilet breaks exist, but showering can be delayed for the up to 2 nights)), fold it all the way up, and go on to drive to their next drop-off point.

> They have sprinklers, with the reasoning being that the burning racks' data is gone anyway if there's a fire

I think the real problem, per that post, is this:

>> They are simple sprinklers that spray with water. It has nothing to do with very high pressure misting systems, where water evaporates instantly, and which save servers. Here, it's watering, and all the servers are dead. It's designed like that. Astonishing, isn't it?

>> Obviously, they rely above all on humans to extinguish a possible fire, unlike all conventional data centers.

(all thanks to Google Translate)

This strikes me as a terrible safety system because even if a human managed to detect the fire, they have to make a big call: is the risk of flooding the facility and destroying a ton of gear worth putting out a fire? By the time the human decides "yes, it is", it may well be too late for the sprinklers.

> and at least sprinklers don't accidentally kill the technicians.

Not a real risk with modern 1:1 argon:nitrogen systems – the goal is to pump in inert gases and reduce oxygen content to around 13%, a point where the fire is suppressed and people can survive. You wouldn't want to be in a room breathing 13% oxygen for a long time, but it won't kill you.

All in all, it looks like this was a "normal accident"[1] for a hosting company that aggressively competes on price. The data center was therefore built with less expensive safeties and carried a higher risk of catastrophic failure.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_Accidents