OVH founder Octave Klabe has shared more information about what happened at the burnt down Strasbourg data centre. There are strong indications that the fire started at a faulty uninterruptible power supply.
In a video uploaded to OVH’s website, Klabe apologises for the incident. He also explains what might have caused the fire.
UPS had just been serviced
The fire brigade used infrared cameras to take pictures of the data centre. These showed how two UPSes were on fire. This is striking, because one of those UPSes had just been serviced that morning. A lot of parts had been replaced. When it was restarted, nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary. A few hours later, however, the entire data centre had burned down.
Klabe also says that there were several security cameras in the data centre. OVH is still in the process of collecting information from them and investigating the exact cause of the fire. Klabe promises that the company will take steps to prevent such situations from happening again.
Datacenter completely burned down
Wednesday, a fire broke out in a data centre of the French hosting company OVHcloud. It concerns a data centre in Strasbourg. The company has four data centres in the city. Of these, SBG2 has completely burned down. SBG1 has suffered considerable damage, and SBG3 and 4 are unharmed. Currently, all four data centres are offline.
Neighbouring data centres offline for at least another week
OVH has posted an extensive update on its website with information for affected users. The hosting company says that the network infrastructure of SBG1 remained unaffected. OVH expects to restore power to its data centres on 15 March and cautiously restart servers in the following days. SBG3 and SBG4 should be back online by week 12.
In the short term, OVH customers can switch to the company’s data centres in Roubaix and Gravelines. OVH plans to produce 10,000 new servers in the coming weeks. Customers can also refer to an FAQ, which includes a guide to checking where their servers are located.
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