OVH data centre fire shows backups should be standard, founder says

The founder of OVH, which owns the French data centre that perished in a fire last week, has mentioned the incident highlights a necessity for the data centre {industry} to supply backups as a regular for all clients.

Octave Klaba mentioned his firm will begin offering safe backups for its data centre clients by default fairly than as a further paid service.

Klaba mentioned that the fire at OVH’s data centre web site in Strasbourg earlier this month, that destroyed one constructing and partially broken one other, should function an industry-wide wakeup name.

“This incident will change our manner of delivering these providers, however, additionally, I consider it’ll change the {industry}, which can improve the securities of backups by default, with none fee,” Kalaba mentioned in a video. “This will be our technique, our reply to this incident.”

Several OVH clients affected by the fire had been unable to carry their functions again on-line as a result of an absence of backups. Klaba advised there was some confusion over service phrases and that a few of its clients hadn’t absolutely understood what they’d introduced from OVH. The French cloud agency did provide 500GB of free backup storage with each devoted server and clients may pay to ramp that as much as 10TB.

“It appears that globally, the purchasers… perceive what we’re delivering, however some clients, they do not perceive what precisely they purchased,” Klaba mentioned within the video.

The CEO added that he would submit one other video on Friday 19 March with an replace on the continued investigation into the reason for the fire. Thermal pictures utilized by firefighters advised the constructing’s uninterruptible energy provide (UPS) system was a attainable trigger. Klaba mentioned that investigators had taken the UPS models and all its batteries and fuses – together with video footage – for evaluation.