This translates into structuring, implementing and managing the Business Continuity Management System (BCMS). OVHcloud’s BCMS solves for different scenarios that can occur following a disruption and is declined according to the various types of impact and their level of severity.

To come up with these connections, we rely on the regulatory, market, organizational and sectoral requirements of the organization. We also take into account products and services peculiarities, the offered services, used processes, and of course the expectations and requirements of our stakeholders of which you are part of as our customers.

OVHcloud’s ambition is clear: obtaining the ISO22301 certification that will serve as a recognition of the organization’s reliability.

How does BCMS translate at OVHcloud?

BCMS is all about:

• Commitment from the management team
• Definition of business continuity goals
• Operational and maintenance of processes, capabilities and response structures to ensure all OVHcloud services will withstand any disruptions,
• Regular monitoring and review of BCMS performance and efficiency,
• Continuous improvements based on qualitative and quantitative measures,

Who are the actors and drivers of business continuity at OVHcloud?

Everybody! Indeed, it’s a companywide collective approach where all departments and players make a contribution. Each OVHcloud employee is responsible, committed and acts as a business continuity advocate to deliver customers the best service.

Three items are key to engage with staff to drive and achieve expected results:

1. Committed and involved management
2. Ambitious strategy and goals
3. A team comprised of business continuity experts.

What are the main themes to consider when working on resilience abilities?

• Industrial risks and physical security
• Network
• Resilience and securing solutions and products

As part of this process, we worked on revamping our fire prevention and protection plan via a strategy and a corporate objective: to be “Hyper Resilient”. The company has defined it will deploy measures to achieve a level of excellence and reference, surpassing the industry standards when it comes to fire risk prevention and protection.

How OVHcloud is planning to reinforce its fire prevention policy?

Three strong commitments have been taken by OVHcloud and are part of projects being deployed:

1. Generalization of automatic extinguishing on all sites, without distinction, along with additional and reinforced measures compared to recognized certifications that are APSAD and NFPA. When it comes to extinguishing, our goal is not only to answer a said standard or label but to offer the maximum protection to customers.
2. Strengthening compartmentalization for all areas of our datacenters regardless of activity by increasing fire rating of all infrastructures and by reducing spaces. Being a key element of fire protection, compartmentalization is implemented in all our datacenters.
3. Management facilities and power supply, including batteries, have been moved away from the core of the datacenter with creation of outside infrastructures aside from the data storage building.

What is the plan?

OVHcloud’s goal is to finish work related to automatic extinguishers before end of 2023 for all sites, including strengthened compartmentalization. Strasbourg’s datacenter (SBG5) is the proof: its operations will start on Wednesday July 6th 2022. SBG5, our new last generation datacenter benefits from OVHcloud’s new standards from the “Hyper Resilient” program:

• Ultra-secured surface of 1700m²,
• 19 independent rooms with 2 hours fire compartments (using concrete)
• 7 power rooms and 3 batteries room located outside of the main building, the latest hosting server rooms, telecommunications and network,
• Double “VESDA” detection installed in compliance with APSAD R7 requirements,
• Redundant gas extinguishing system in compliance with APSAD R13 requirements,
• OVHcloud water cooling technology,
• Water reserve of 120 m3 in addition to the water public network,
• Collaborative work with the institutions and more specifically the SDIS67 fire department to analyze and take into accounts all risks,

On the existing sites, work is being organized around the reorganization of physical spaces (including sealing and compartmentalization) but also the setup of new energy and battery rooms to move devices further away. Fire detection systems are overhauled with the “VESDA” dual fire detection systems and the installation of gas extinguishing systems.

We aim to favor gas extinguishing systems, in order to allow for the quickest possible restart of the activity in the event of an incident. Where gas extinguishing will not be possible, we will opt for sprinkler based extinguishing solutions but with specific features to reinforce service continuity. We will use so called pre-action systems that keep the extinguishing network out of water in order to avoid leaks and accidental triggering.

We will soon share delivery dates of these installations on a site-by-site basis, giving you full visibility on the roll out of our Hyper Resilient protection program.

OVHcloud is fully committed in maintaining business continuity of its services and infrastructures.

Our next blog will be about the resilience of Network@OVHcloud.

Être Chief Resilience Officer, c’est faire en sorte que jamais nous n’arrêtions d’innover, de nous remettre en question, d’avancer – c’est faire évoluer, améliorer les standards et continuer à construire le modèle unique d’OVHcloud pour proposer à nos clients le niveau de service le plus exigeant.

Il y a d’abord des pré-requis

Être Chief Resilience Officer, c’est savoir d’abord construire sur le court, moyen et long terme, savoir s’adapter, réagir rapidement mais également anticiper et se projeter. La majorité des missions de résilience s’intègre dans le plan à cinq ans de l’entreprise. Il ne s’agit donc pas de tout réaliser tout de suite, mais de s’assurer que chaque étape est menée à temps pour que nous arrivions à la bonne destination au bon moment. Notre destination, notre ambition est claire : élever les standards de protection / prévention et définir de nouveaux standards pour notre activité. Plus que jamais, notre objectif est d’être encore plus aux côtés de nos clients et de les accompagner – efficacement et quotidiennement – dans le développement de leur business par l’assurance de continuité des services.

Être Chief Resilience Officer, c’est contribuer à renforcer ce qui fait la valeur de OVHcloud : de l’infrastructure, aux solutions, en passant par le réseau et les hommes et femmes de notre organisation. La sécurité physique de nos équipes et la continuité de l’activité de nos clients ont toujours été et resteront nos principales préoccupations. Nous nous assurons que nous pouvons augmenter les standards de protection/prévention dans nos datacenters existants – répondre à des standards de référence métiers ou internationaux et si nécessaire ne pas se limiter à ces derniers mais aller encore plus loin l’objectif étant d’être « hyper » résilience. De nombreuses mesures de sécurité physique étaient déjà en place pour limiter l’impact des pannes de courant, de réseau ou autres événements majeurs (sur tous nos sites réseau redondé, alimentation en électricité redondée, plan incendie).  Nous voulons intensifier leur résilience notamment avec la généralisation et systématisation de l’extinction automatique sur tous nos sites, en repensant l’urbanisation afin de limiter l’impact d’un incident en maitrisant l’ensemble des risques sur les serveurs et les services, et enfin en durcissant le compartimentage et la résistance au feu. La sécurité physique des lieux va également être renforcée.

Devenir hautement résilient

Lorsque nous construisons de nouveaux datacenters, c’est nous inspirer des meilleurs cas pratiques et nous hisser comme la référence du marché en matière de standards de protection. Nos futurs datacenters, qu’ils soient en projet ou en cours de construction, en seront la démonstration. Nous aurons l’occasion de vous en dire davantage dans quelques mois.

Devenir hautement résilient signifie également continuer de hausser notre niveau d’exigence côté solutions.

A court terme, c’est à la fois nous assurer que nos clients aient un bon niveau de connaissance sur les offres de back up et de « Disaster Recovery Plan » (DRP) proposés dans le cadre de notre catalogue de service (par exemple, l’espace backup gratuit de 500 Go disponible sur les gammes baremetal, les options backup pour VPS et les solutions backup et DRP du marché) et mettre nos clients en contact avec notre écosytème de partenaires qui pourront les accompagner dans leurs plans de Disaster Recovery.

A moyen terme, nous sommes en train de développer de nouveaux services.

Nous voulons ainsi construire de nouvelles solutions et de nouveaux partenariats pour offrir à nos clients l’un des portefeuilles de backup et de DRP les plus développés du marché.  Parallèlement, nous allons construire 4 DC qui pourront servir de backup technique aux solutions OVHcloud, ce qui permettra de restaurer les services de nos clients (à partir des backups techniques réalisés pour le fonctionnement de nos services) en cas de perte totale d’activité (une situation que notre démarche de haute résilience sur l’infrastructure et le réseau a pour but d’éviter). Nous sommes pour le moment en train d’acquérir les terrains et nous pourrons vous informer dans les prochains mois de l’avancée des travaux.

Pour les applications ayant besoin d’une résilience encore plus forte, nous allons faire en sorte de pouvoir proposer à nos clients un service de redondance instantanée – en créant des régions de 3 datacenters proches les uns des autres. Le principe : avoir une copie permanente et s’assurer ainsi de la continuité de l’activité. La première région à disposer d’une telle infrastructure sera Paris.

En parallèle des mesures partagées, nous avons entrepris le projet de certifier « ISO 22301 » nos plans de continuité d’activé. Une reconnaissance sur un standard international non discutable permettra encore davantage de transparence et compréhension des processus de résilience d’OVHcloud.

La suite

Je vous propose de partager dans une série de 4 blogs la stratégie, les ambitions et le calendrier OVHcloud par thématique dans les mois à venir.

• L’Hyper résilience @OVHcloud : sécurité physique et continuité d’activité
• Les back-up @OVHcloud  – rappel des solutions existantes et rôles du DC Back-up
• AZ – 2 lettres pour une triple résilience : l’Availability Zone
• Network @OVHcloud

Être Chief Resilience Officer, finalement, c’est faire en sorte que jamais nous n’arrêtions d’innover, de nous remettre en question, d’avancer – c’est faire évoluer, améliorer les standards et continuer à construire le modèle unique d’OVHcloud pour proposer à nos clients le niveau de service le plus exigeant.

To be Chief Resilience Officer is to ensure that we never stop innovating, questioning and moving forward – it involves developing, improving standards and continuing to build the unique OVHcloud model, in order to offer our customers the most demanding service level.

First, there are requirements

To be a Chief Resilience Officer, you need to know how to build over the short, medium and long term. You also need to know how to adapt, react quickly, anticipate and plan ahead. The majority of resilience missions fit into the company’s five-year plan. So it’s not a question of doing everything right now, but of ensuring that every step is taken in time for us to reach the right destination at the right time. Our destination ans our ambition are clear: raise protection/prevention standards and set new standards for our business. Now more than ever, our goal is to be even closer to our customers, and to support them – effectively and on a daily basis – in developing their business by guaranteeing service continuity.

To be a Chief Resilience Officer, you will help reinforce what makes OVHcloud valuable: from infrastructure and solutions, to the network or to the people in our organisation. The physical security of our teams and the continuity of our customers’ activity have always been and will remain our main concerns. We ensure that we can raise the standards for protection and prevention in our existing datacenters meet industry or international benchmarks, and if necessary, go even further with the goal of being “hyper” resilience. Numerous physical security measures were already in place to limit the impact of power, network or other major events (on all our redundant network sites, redundant power supply, fire plan). We want to increase their resilience, particularly by making automatic shutdowns more widespread and systematic across all of our websites. We are doing this by rethinking urbanisation in order to limit the impact of an incident, by managing all of the risks on servers and services, and by reinforcing compartmentalisation and fire resistance. Physical security will also be strengthened.

Becoming highly resilient

When we build new datacenters, we are inspired by the best practical cases, and rank ourselves as the market benchmark in terms of protection standard. Our datacenters in the pipeline, and datacenters under construction, will demonstrate this. We will have the opportunity to tell you more in a few months.

Becoming highly resilient also means continuing to raise our demand for solutions.

In the short term, this means both ensuring that our customers have a good level of knowledge of the backup and Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) offers offered as part of our service catalogue (for example, the free 500 GB backup space available on bare-metal ranges, backup options for VPS and backup and DRP solutions on the market) and connecting our customers to our ecosystem partners who can support them in their disaster recovery plans.

In the medium term, we are developing new services.

We want to build new solutions and partnerships to offer our customers one of the most developed backup and DRP portfolios on the market. At the same time, we will build 4 datacentres that can serve as technical backups for OVHcloud solutions, which will enable us to restore our customers’ services (from the technical backups made for our services to work) in the event of a total loss of business (a situation that our approach to high resilience on infrastructure and network aims to avoid). We are currently acquiring the land and we will be able to inform you in the coming months about the progress of the work.

For applications that require even greater resilience, we will ensure we can offer our customers an instant redundancy service – by creating regions in 3 datacentres, all in close proximity. The principle is simple: a permanent copy will ensure business continuity. The first region to have such an infrastructure would be Paris.

In parallel with the shared measures, we undertook the project to certify “ISO 22301” our active business continuity plans. Recognition based on an unquestionable international standard will provide even more transparency and understanding of OVH’s resilience processes.

What’s next

On the coming months, I will focus with you on four specific topics in other blogposts, detailing the OVHcloud strategy, ambitions and calendar:

• Hyper-resilience @OVHcloud: physical security and business continuity
• The @OVHcloud back-ups – a reminder of existing solutions and the roles of the DC back-up
• AZ – 2 letters for triple resilience: Availability Zone
• Network @OVHcloud