A data centre burned. Where were the backups?
Fire destroyed an OVHcloud data centre in Strasbourg. Some customers lost everything because backups sat in the same place.
Last Wednesday a fire destroyed one of OVHcloud’s data centres in Strasbourg and damaged another. Millions of websites went offline. Some customers had backups, but stored in the same building or the same site. Those are gone too.
The cloud is someone else’s computer, in someone else’s building, and buildings burn, flood and lose power.
Questions for this week:
- Where exactly are your backups? Different provider or at least a different region, not another rack in the same site.
- Is backup actually included in your hosting plan, or did you assume it was?
- Could you rebuild elsewhere? Server configuration, DNS, certificates and the steps written down.
- How long would it take? Test a restore somewhere new and time it.
Providers promise uptime for their service, not for your data. That part is yours.