OVH data centers suffered a fire, many popular sites are offline

OVH, the largest hosting provider in Europe, has suffered a terrible fire that destroyed the data centers located in Strasbourg.

OVH, one of the largest hosting providers in the world, has suffered a terrible fire that destroyed its data centers located in Strasbourg.

The news was also confirmed by OVH founder Octave Klaba via Twitter, he also provided a series of updates on the incident.

The French plant in Strasbourg includes 4 data centers, SBG1, SBG2, SBG3, and SBG4 that were shut down due to the incident, and the fire started in SBG2 one. Firefighters immediately acted to contain the fire, but the situation at the SBG2 rapidly went out of control. The authorities isolated the entire plant and closed off its perimeter.

We have a major incident on SBG2. The fire declared in the building. Firefighters were immediately on the scene but could not control the fire in SBG2. The whole site has been isolated which impacts all services in SGB1-4. We recommend to activate your Disaster Recovery Plan.

— Octave Klaba (@olesovhcom) March 10, 2021

The company is urging its customers to implement their disaster recovery plans because the fire has disrupted its services.

“At 00:47 on Wednesday, March 10, 2021, a fire broke out in a room in one of our 4 datacenters in Strasbourg, SBG2. Please note that the site is not classified as a Seveso site.” reads the announcement published by the company on the status page. “From 5:30 am, the site has been unavailable to our teams for obvious security reasons, under the direction of the prefecture. The fire is now contained. We are relieved that no one was injured, neither among our teams nor among the firefighters and the services of the prefecture, whom we thank for their exemplary mobilization at our side.”

Fire is over and firefighters continue work to cool the buildings, while the company is assessing the damages.

OVH has 15 data centers in Europe, 27 worldwide, it is working to support our customers and mitigate the impact of the incident at the Strasbourg site.

Update 7:20am
Fire is over. Firefighters continue to cool the buildings with the water.
We don’t have the access to the site. That is why SBG1, SBG3, SBG4 won’t be restarted today.

— Octave Klaba (@olesovhcom) March 10, 2021

The update provided by Klaba at 11.20 am GMT, all servers in SBG3 are okay, but still non-operational.

At 1 pm the company publicly shared a recovery plan for its operations that will last the next 2 weeks.

Update 1pm
Plan for the next 1-2 weeks:
1) rebuilding 20KV for SBG3
2) rebuilding 240V in SBG1/SBG4
3) verifying DWDM/routers/switchs in the network room A (SBG1). checking the fibers Paris/Frankfurt
4) rebuilding the network room B (in SBG5). checking fibers Paris/Frankfurt

— Octave Klaba (@olesovhcom) March 10, 2021

If you want to receive the weekly Security Affairs Newsletter for free subscribe here.

Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook

[adrotate banner=”9″]

[adrotate banner=”12″]

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, OVH)

[adrotate banner=”5″]

[adrotate banner=”13″]