Around 3.6 million websites across 464,000 domain names were taken offline after a major fire at an OVHcloud data centre site in Strasbourg last week, Netcraft is reporting. Around 184,000 websites using 59,600 .fr domain names were impacted, around 1.9% of all .fr domain names.
The fire destroyed one of the 4 data centres at the site and seriously damaged another. Of the 4 data centres, OVHcloud notes in SBG-1, 4 of 12 rooms were damaged with power to be restored on 16 March, internal networks redeployed on 16 March and servers to be gradually restarted from 22 March. SBG-2 was completely destroyed while SBG-3 and SBG-4 don’t appear to have been damaged however power was cut because of the fire with a provisional ETA for a gradual restart of 22 March.
The fire broke out in a room at one of our four OVHcloud datacentres in Strasbourg (SBG2) at 00:47 on Wednesday 10 March 2021. The fire was contained by the early hours of the morning with no injuries. The fire was reported as over in a tweet by Octave Klaba, OVHcloud founder and chair, at 07:20. Klaba advised clients to activate Disaster Recovery Plans. The data centre is one of OVHcould’s 15 scattered throughout Europe.
“The intervention involved the mobilisation of 115 firefighters and 44 fire engines,” the local fire service, Service départemental d’incendie et de secours du Bas-Rhin – SDIS 67, announced. “Major resources were deployed including six fire hoses, two ladders, the drone and the fire boat. German firefighters also came to assist. The fire was contained after more than six hours of operation. There are no casualties.”
“Websites that went offline during the fire included online banks, webmail services, news sites, online shops selling PPE to protect against coronavirus, and several countries’ government websites,” Netcraft reported.
“Examples of the latter included websites used by the Polish Financial Ombudsman; the Ivorian DGE; the French Plate-forme des achats de l’Etat; the Welsh Government’s Export Hub; and the UK Government’s Vehicle Certification Agency website, which got a new SSL certificate by 10am and is now back online with a UK hosting company.”