Last Tuesday, a data center in Strasbourg, France went up in flames just days after the company, OVHcloud, had announced plans to begin trading publicly. The fire did not harm anyone, but it did take down some popular WordPress plugins, along with thousands of sites.OVHcloud manages 27 data centers that serve over 1.5 million customers, and their Strasbourg campus includes four data centers: SBG1, SBG2, SBG3, and SBG4.
The fire started in SBG2 and moved to SBG1, destroying all of SBG2 and part of SBG1. SBG3 and SBG4 stayed safe, though they also have been experiencing downtime due to the inaccessibility of the data centers and the heat from the fire. Police are still investigating the cause.
OVH suggested that customers implement their disaster recovery plans, frustrating many customers who did not understand that a disaster recovery plan was not an OVH service.
As of Wednesday, the data centers are still not fully operational, and much of the recoverable data has still not been recovered. Most websites and all WordPress plugins are back online, but some customers have lost their data forever.
Read more about this story on Search Engine Journal.
