OVH writes off another data centre – SBG1 – and reveals new smoking battery incident OVH has written off a second data centre because of the March 10th fire that destroyed its SBG2 facility. In a Saturday update, OVH founder and CTO Octave Klaba wrote: “We don’t plan to restart SBG1. Ever.” Previous guidance on SBG1 suggested only a few racks were destroyed, while others were considered recoverable. The fire …
30 years in Scarborough (N Yorks) BT were publicising their new remote sensing option to detect domestic fires. A few days later Scarborough's main exchange, located in the centre of town, burned down; the alarm was only raised because a passerby (at 3am!) noticed smoke coming through a broken window.
If I'm not wrong, they are moving the servers from SBG1 to other datacenters, they didn't write off them all. The infrastructure is not recoverable, though, so any server that can be recovered will take some more time to be available again.
The pictures of their datacenters (before and after) are terrifying. Imagine the claustrophobia of servicing metals boxes packed full of high power electronics from a long narrow corridor. And nothing stopped or extinguished the fire at all. OVH somehow modified the containers so that flames from batteries and fire resistant plastic raced across the compartments and melted open steel plates. It's the Titanic burning like the Hindenburg blimp.
You mean you "wishful thinking" that it is part of your internal standard. SBG was obviously not built following your own standards and, at €2 million per electrical line, I think we can all guess why two centers were loaded on the same line : beancounter interference.
So, beancounters, are you happy with your "savings" ?
So, beancounters, are you happy with your "savings"
If they got a bonus for the cost cutting, they probably are. The bosses who get bonuses for cutting costs never seem to get penalized when the cost cutting comes home to roost. If they do see consequences like "we're going to take these losses out of your next few bonus checks" they'll just move on to a different job and their resume highlighting their cost cutting will get them hired somewhere else.
SBG was obviously not built following your own standards
AFAIK, SBG first DCs were built long time ago, before the aforementioned standards were put in place. That's why they didn't follow the rules.
This doesn't explain why the noncompliance was identified four years ago and not corrected for all these years.
Or more importantly "know your customers" OVH are specialists in running spam farms, if their customers really cared they would use a more expensive supplier with lots backups. They want the cheapest possible host and that's what OVH supply
Actually not all of their customers are spammers - it is more a case of being intentionally short-staffed. They don't do a lot of verification so basically anyone with a credit card can get a working server in minutes and keep it running until someone complains, which is obviously great for spammers and bots.
I have a server in SBG and it was fully restored yesterday evening. I don't exactly know which datacenter it was in and now it is listed as SBG6. This incident didn't really affect us a lot - the server load was migrated to another provider 10 minutes after the server went down and apart from some old data being inaccessible for less than 2 weeks there were no issues. Considering the severity of the damage we got lucky.
> the server load was migrated to another provider 10 minutes after the server went down
> Considering the severity of the damage we got lucky.
This isn't luck, this is competence - you'd designed your infrastructure and the implemented it in a way you only had a few minutes downtime.
One for the sysadmins -->
In a previous article I commented that they looked like shipping containers. I assume me that they only met building regulations due to the technicality of them not being used to house people working, only the occasional technician plugging and unplugging wires etc.
One property of steel is that it is a rather good conductor of heat (which is one of the reasons why saucepans are made from it). Concrete and bricks, on the other hand are not so efficient at thermal conductivity, which is why buildings are often made from them. I wonder whether the new DC will be made from steel shipping containers or concrete and brick, let me guess...
I was wondering, last week, seeing the pics, why it didn't at all look like a DC building or any building at all, despite the fact it was hard to see through the damage of the fire.
SPOILER ALERT: ain't no building there ! Was a stack of shipping containers !
If that's not a double, even triple facepalm, I don't know what is.
My town is impacted: web site down, and townhall mail down. I'm sure mail will eventually be restored, but for the web site, nothing is sure. I have yet to call the lady in charge to explain she may have to rebuild from scratch. But sure, she'll then have free backups, now.
It seems that ship containers transformed in houses are not so uncommon
See also this one
Upvote for the correctness of your comment, however, although I have not seen all of Kevin McCloud's 'Grand Designs' programs, I don't think there were many that featured shipping containers as major items in the design. There was one where he was doing 'huts' and cabins that did use them, but few architects would build a house from them.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
