OVH opens less flammable datacenter at site of 2021 fire
(2022/09/13)
- Reference: 1663052288
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/09/13/ovh_sbg5_opens/
- Source link:
OVHCloud has opened a datacenter in Strasbourg, on the site of a [1]2021 fire that destroyed two such facilities.
Preliminary findings of an [2]investigation into that fire suggest water leaking onto an inverter kicked things off, before the lack of an automatic fire extinguisher system, delayed cutoff of electricity, and overall building design all contributed to SBG1 being deemed unrecoverable and the destruction of SBG2.
This time around, in the new SBG5, OVH has separated the datacenter's halls from their supporting infrastructure.
[3]
Fire-rated shipping containers house batteries outside the datacenter. Also outdoors are "energy rooms" housing transformers and other sparky kit.
[4]
[5]
The two rooms holding the telco kit that connects SBG5 to the world have been placed at either end of the building – a design that physically segregates the two routes that reach the facility.
Network rooms are also distanced from the main building.
[6]
All facilities have been built with walls rated to withstand fire for two hours, and the entire facility is surrounded by two such barriers. All internal spaces are equipped with a pair of Very Early Smoke Detection Apparatuses. Sprinklers and inert gas are both available to suppress fires.
[7]OVH outlines three-point 'hyper resilience' plan after Strasbourg fire
[8]Keep expectations low and you won't be disappointed: OVH manages 6 per cent increase on its IPO debut
[9]OVH services still not fully restored as boss rates ongoing recovery efforts a 'real nightmare'
[10]OVHcloud datacenter 'lacked' automatic fire extinguishers, electrical cutoff
Despite liquids being suspected as the cause of the 2021 fire, OVH is still using water cooling for its servers. It claims doing so imbues SBG5 with a power usage efficiency (PUE) score of 1.1 to 1.2. PUE measures the amount of energy coming into a datacenter to the amount consumed to run kit. PUEs closer to 1.0 signal high efficiency datacenters that don't need to use much energy on cooling and other operational chores.
OVH chose the launch of SBG5 to announce a cold storage service the company will house in four mini-datacenters across France – each at least 200km distant from the others.
It expects to launch the storage service in November 2022, called Cold Archive – a hyper-resilient solution at a very competitive price. This service will allow businesses to store so-called "cold data" for the long run, while benefiting from maximum security and reliability.
Another initiative on the OVH roadmap is a datacenter dedicated to snapshots of customers' cloudy rigs. The facility will first be offered to French customers and will eventually be able to protect all the company's customers and handle data and VMs used across all its services.
[11]
OVH founder and board chair Octave Klaba tweeted the following after the launch of SBG5. The Register fancies it might be an internal shot of SBG5 – and perhaps not the world's neatest cabling? ®
This is [12]@Shadow_France [13]pic.twitter.com/M1fBOLieoK — Octave Klaba (@olesovhcom) [14]September 12, 2022
Get our [15]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/10/ovh_strasbourg_fire/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/10/ovhcloud_datacenter_fire_last_year/
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YyBUuRwovgk2@iAY8@CERgAAAIM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YyBUuRwovgk2@iAY8@CERgAAAIM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YyBUuRwovgk2@iAY8@CERgAAAIM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YyBUuRwovgk2@iAY8@CERgAAAIM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/06/ovh_outlines_threepoint_hyper_resiliance/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/15/ovh_ipo_increase/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/14/ovh_restoration_update/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/22/ovhcloud_fire_datacenter_report/
[11] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YyBUuRwovgk2@iAY8@CERgAAAIM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[12] https://twitter.com/Shadow_France?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[13] https://t.co/M1fBOLieoK
[14] https://twitter.com/olesovhcom/status/1569311645251371011?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[15] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Preliminary findings of an [2]investigation into that fire suggest water leaking onto an inverter kicked things off, before the lack of an automatic fire extinguisher system, delayed cutoff of electricity, and overall building design all contributed to SBG1 being deemed unrecoverable and the destruction of SBG2.
This time around, in the new SBG5, OVH has separated the datacenter's halls from their supporting infrastructure.
[3]
Fire-rated shipping containers house batteries outside the datacenter. Also outdoors are "energy rooms" housing transformers and other sparky kit.
[4]
[5]
The two rooms holding the telco kit that connects SBG5 to the world have been placed at either end of the building – a design that physically segregates the two routes that reach the facility.
Network rooms are also distanced from the main building.
[6]
All facilities have been built with walls rated to withstand fire for two hours, and the entire facility is surrounded by two such barriers. All internal spaces are equipped with a pair of Very Early Smoke Detection Apparatuses. Sprinklers and inert gas are both available to suppress fires.
[7]OVH outlines three-point 'hyper resilience' plan after Strasbourg fire
[8]Keep expectations low and you won't be disappointed: OVH manages 6 per cent increase on its IPO debut
[9]OVH services still not fully restored as boss rates ongoing recovery efforts a 'real nightmare'
[10]OVHcloud datacenter 'lacked' automatic fire extinguishers, electrical cutoff
Despite liquids being suspected as the cause of the 2021 fire, OVH is still using water cooling for its servers. It claims doing so imbues SBG5 with a power usage efficiency (PUE) score of 1.1 to 1.2. PUE measures the amount of energy coming into a datacenter to the amount consumed to run kit. PUEs closer to 1.0 signal high efficiency datacenters that don't need to use much energy on cooling and other operational chores.
OVH chose the launch of SBG5 to announce a cold storage service the company will house in four mini-datacenters across France – each at least 200km distant from the others.
It expects to launch the storage service in November 2022, called Cold Archive – a hyper-resilient solution at a very competitive price. This service will allow businesses to store so-called "cold data" for the long run, while benefiting from maximum security and reliability.
Another initiative on the OVH roadmap is a datacenter dedicated to snapshots of customers' cloudy rigs. The facility will first be offered to French customers and will eventually be able to protect all the company's customers and handle data and VMs used across all its services.
[11]
OVH founder and board chair Octave Klaba tweeted the following after the launch of SBG5. The Register fancies it might be an internal shot of SBG5 – and perhaps not the world's neatest cabling? ®
This is [12]@Shadow_France [13]pic.twitter.com/M1fBOLieoK — Octave Klaba (@olesovhcom) [14]September 12, 2022
Get our [15]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/10/ovh_strasbourg_fire/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/10/ovhcloud_datacenter_fire_last_year/
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YyBUuRwovgk2@iAY8@CERgAAAIM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YyBUuRwovgk2@iAY8@CERgAAAIM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YyBUuRwovgk2@iAY8@CERgAAAIM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YyBUuRwovgk2@iAY8@CERgAAAIM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/06/ovh_outlines_threepoint_hyper_resiliance/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/15/ovh_ipo_increase/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/14/ovh_restoration_update/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/22/ovhcloud_fire_datacenter_report/
[11] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YyBUuRwovgk2@iAY8@CERgAAAIM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[12] https://twitter.com/Shadow_France?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[13] https://t.co/M1fBOLieoK
[14] https://twitter.com/olesovhcom/status/1569311645251371011?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[15] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: "the lack of [..] an automatic fire extinguisher system"
A Non e-mouse
I'm no data centre designer or manager, but the list of design flaws do sound very basic. Almost as if the place was designed by people who had never worked in IT.
Re: "the lack of [..] an automatic fire extinguisher system"
Richard 12
You mean it's almost like they just filled an existing office building full of kit and never hired a fire protection engineer to risk assess.
Re: "the lack of [..] an automatic fire extinguisher system"
steviebuk
That would of caused delay and money. Sod the staff there that could of died, we just need to save a bit of money.
Re: "the lack of [..] an automatic fire extinguisher system"
Ozan
That's what I thought. I worked in a lot of industrial plant construction and we always put our batteries in a completely separate building. And then we feed the plant instruments from there.
wolfetone
" Despite liquids being suspected as the cause of the 2021 fire, OVH is still using water cooling for its servers. "
So you've learned... nothing .
"the lack of [..] an automatic fire extinguisher system"
What ? They built a datacenter full of electrical equipment and they didn't have a fire extinguishing system in it ?
Well duh.