At OVHcloud’s Startup Program, we are proud to support innovative startups like Silbo that are reshaping industries.
Today, we speak with Thomas Foricher, CTO of Silbo, a groundbreaking company transforming patient flow management in healthcare.

Can you introduce Silbo and its mission?

Silbo was founded in 2018 by Antoine Bohuon with a clear mission: to serve those who care for others by enabling healthcare professionals to focus on their core mission—delivering quality care.

Our platform addresses the complexities of hospital bed management, facilitating the allocation of beds to patients, improving information sharing among healthcare providers, and optimizing patient trajectories. By offering an intuitive, all-in-one solution, Silbo empowers hospitals to efficiently manage patient flows while enhancing the quality of care provided to patients.

What challenges did Silbo face before partnering with OVHcloud?

Our primary need was to find a sovereign hosting provider with strong expertise in modern technologies such as Kubernetes, MongoDB, and Redis. Additionally, compliance with HDS certification and a guaranteed SLA were critical due to the nature of our work in healthcare.

Managing and securing servers at scale requires highly specialized expertise. With increasing technical interdependencies, ensuring constant security and availability is a dedicated profession. For us, relying on experts like OVHcloud allows us to focus on what we do best—improving healthcare efficiency.

How did OVHcloud help Silbo address these challenges?

OVHcloud was the clear choice. It is the only hosting provider in France that offers a public cloud with high-quality services, combined with HDS and SecNumCloud compliance. Additionally, its strategic vision of deploying local datacenters across Europe aligns with the needs of countries seeking to keep sensitive data, such as health information, close to healthcare institutions.

We use several managed services, including Kubernetes, Object Storage, MongoDB, and Redis. These services are comparable to those offered by other providers, but OVHcloud’s standout feature was Rancher, which we beta-tested. Rancher allowed us to monitor on-premise Kubernetes deployments effectively, with support from OVHcloud’s engineering team.

With the help of OVHcloud experts, we improved our knowledge of Kubernetes. By adopting their best practices, we successfully deployed Kubernetes on-premise and leveraged Rancher for effective monitoring. This expertise has significantly enhanced our ability to scale infrastructure while maintaining high security and reliability.

What tangible results has Silbo achieved through this partnership?

Since partnering with OVHcloud, we’ve seen our infrastructure costs cut in half compared to other providers without public cloud capabilities. Our platform is now faster, providing a noticeably better experience for end-users.

From a development perspective, on-demand Kubernetes allows us to execute large computational jobs and parallelize analyses. This accelerates our deployment workflows and optimizes our processes.

By outsourcing infrastructure management to OVHcloud, we’ve freed up resources to focus on developing new features and enhancing our platform. This enables us to deliver even greater value to our users and maintain our commitment to innovation.

What’s next for Silbo?

Our ambitions are closely aligned with OVHcloud’s vision: expanding across Europe while providing secure, localized services compliant with both international and local regulations.
One of our main challenges will be managing multiple instances that comply with the specific regulations of different countries. Cloud solutions will be key in helping us navigate this complexity while maintaining high standards of security and efficiency.

What advice would you give to startups exploring cloud solutions?

Focus on two key aspects: identifying your user’s problem and solving it as simply and efficiently as possible.
Leverage existing, standardized solutions wherever possible. Avoid reinventing the wheel—your priorities should always align with your clients’ needs, not internal assumptions or preferences.

Join the OVHcloud Startup Program

Silbo’s success highlights the transformative power of leveraging OVHcloud’s Startup Program.
Are you ready to take your startup to the next level? Join a growing community of innovators and benefit from tailored cloud solutions, expert guidance, and a global ecosystem.
Learn more about OVHcloud’s Startup Program and get started on your journey today!

In this blog post we will see what is MRS and how to create several different Kubernetes clusters through the Rancher UI.

Managed Rancher Service

Managed Rancher Services (MRS), in General Availability since September 2024, is based on Rancher, an open-source container management platform, that simplifies the deployment and management of Kubernetes clusters. Managed Rancher Service by OVHcloud provides a powerful platform for orchestrating Kubernetes clusters seamlessly.

With the Managed Rancher Service it becomes easy to manage and create multiple Kubernetes clusters on any platform and location including:

• Hosted Kubernetes provider (e.g. OVHcloud MKS, AWS EKS, GCP GKE, etc).
• Infrastructure Provider – Public Cloud or Private Cloud (vSphere, Nutanix, etc).
• Bare-metal servers, cloud hosted or on premise.
• Virtual machines, cloud hosted or on premise

You can also import your existing Kubernetes clusters and then manage them for a multi-cloud purpose:

Find more information on our dedicated Managed Rancher Services page.

How To

Through this blog post we will show how to create several Kubernetes clusters:

• a Managed Kubernetes (MKS) cluster (Hosted Kubernetes provider)
• a Kubernetes cluster running on OVHcloud Public Cloud Compute Instances (PCI) (Infrastructure Provider)
• a K3s Kubernetes cluster using existing nodes (Custom driver)

Create an OVHcloud Managed Kubernetes (MKS) cluster

In this part of this blog post, we will create a MKS cluster with 3 nodes based on b3-8 flavor:

Log in to your Managed Rancher Service UI and then click on Create button.

To create an MKS cluster, use the hosted Kubernetes provider way and click on the OVHcloud MKS driver.

First, enter an MKS cluster name, for example my-rancher-mks-cluster:

At this step, you can optionally configure Member Roles or Labels & Annotations, follow our guide to know more.

For the Account Configuration, you need to provide your OVHcloud API credentials (Application Key, Application Secret and Consumer Key). If you don’t have OVHcloud API credentials, you can follow our guide on how to Generate your OVHcloud API keys.

Also provide your Public Cloud project ID. The project ID is where your Managed Kubernetes Service (MKS) cluster will be deployed. You can follow the guide on How to create your first Project or if already existing, you can copy/paste it from the OVHcloud Control Panel or API.

And finally select the OVHcloud API endpoint, depending on your location: ovh-eu, ovh-ca or ovh-us.

For the Cluster Configuration, you need to select the Region where your cluster will be deployed. Then, select the Kubernetes Version. Then, select Update Policy information. If you want further information, refer to the Managed Kubernetes Update Policies guide.

For the Network Configuration, in the Private Network ID field, select an existing OVHcloud Public Cloud private network or choose None if you want to create a cluster with nodes using only public interfaces.

For the NodePools Configuration, for every NodePool you want to:

• Enter the Name of the NodePool. The name must be unique inside a same MKS cluster.
• Choose an OVHcloud instance Flavor used by this NodePool.
• Enable or disable the Autoscaling.
• Enter the number of nodes you want, it’s the Size of your NodePool. If the autoscaling is enabled, then choose the minimum and maximum number of nodes.
• Enable the Monthly Billing (Hourly billing by default).
• Click on the Add Node Pool button to add the node pool in the list below.

Click on the Finish & Create Cluster button.

Your MKS cluster is provisioning, the creation will take around 3-4 minutes for the cluster creation and 3-4 minutes for the node pool with 3 nodes and the Rancher agent deployed into them.

Create a Kubernetes cluster based on OVHcloud Public Cloud Compute Instances 

In this part of this blog post, we will create a Kubernetes cluster with 3 nodes based on b3-16 flavor for etcd & control-plane & 2 nodes based on b3-8 flavor for workers.

In the Rancher UI, you have to first create OVHcloud Public Cloud credentials.

Then, go back to the Rancher UI Home and click on the Create button.

This time, you will create a Kubernetes cluster running in Compute Instances, so you have to provision new nodes and create a cluster using RKE2/K3s through the Infrastructure provider and specifically the OVHcloud Public Cloud driver:

Select the OVHcloud Public Cloud credential created earlier in this blog post:

Then, define the cluster name, my-rancher-k8s-pci for example.

In the Machine Pools section you will configure your cluster. When you configure a machine pool in Rancher, there are three roles that can be assigned to nodes: etcd, Control Plane and Worker.

Note:
In Rancher when you configure a node, there are three roles that can be assigned to nodes: etcd, controlplane and worker.

There are some good practices:

• At least 3 machines/nodes with the role etcd are needed to survive a loss of 1 node and have a minimum high availability configuration for etcd. 3 etcd nodes are generally sufficient for smaller and medium clusters, and 5 etcd nodes for large clusters.
• At least 2 machines/nodes with the role Control Plane for master component high availability.
• You can set both the etcd and Control Plane roles for one instance.
• The Worker role should not be used or added to nodes with the etcd or Control Plane role.
• At least 2 machines/nodes with the Worker role for workload rescheduling upon node failure.

For each of the machine pools, you have to:

• Define the pool name (node-pool-1 for example for the first machine pool).
• Define machine count (3 for example for the first machine pool).
• Select roles (check etcd and Control Plane for the first machine pool)/
• Choose the region (GRA11 for example for the first machine pool). If you want to check the availability of specific products that you plan to use alongside Kubernetes, you can refer to the Availability of Public Cloud Product page.
• Choose the flavor (b3-16 for example). You can refer to the OVHcloud Flavor list.
• Choose the image for the Operating System (OS) used for your machines/nodes. Please refer to Rancher Operating Systems and Container Runtime Requirements.
• Choose a Key Pair (optional). It’s the SSH Key Pair that will be used to access your nodes. Please refer to this guide on how to create a SSH KeyPair and add it to your Public Cloud project. If you leave this field empty, a new keypair will be generated automatically.
• Choose the Security Group that will be applied to created instances. You can leave the field empty.
• Choose the Availability Zone (only nova is supported at the moment).
• Choose the Floating IP Pools (only Ext-Net is supported at the moment).
• Choose the Networks. You need to choose a private network (with a gateway). The compute instances will be created in this private network.

At the bottom of the Machine Pools section, click on the + button to add the second machine pool with 2 workers machines/nodes and the same configuration.

As you can see, we can choose another flavor type for worker machines/nodes.

In the Cluster Configuration section, choose the Kubernetes version. You need to choose between RKE2 and K3s Kubernetes Operating System (OS). For a production environment, we recommend choosing RKE2.

You need also to choose the container network (CNI), we decided to choose CIlium for this blog post but you can select calico or canal instead depending on your needs.

Select the Container Network, choose if you want to activate a Project Network isolation and the System Services tooling you want to install in your cluster.

Follow the RKE2 cluster configuration reference for the Cluster Configuration.

In the Member Roles tab, you can add members for users that need to access the cluster. After creating the cluster, you can also add members.

Finally, click the Create button to create your Kubernetes cluster with OVHcloud PCI driver.

The cluster creation can take several minutes (depending on the OS and on the number of nodes you want).

Create a Kubernetes cluster with existing nodes

Another possibility through MRS is to create a Kubernetes cluster based on existing nodes. You can bring your own nodes and create a Kubernetes cluster running on them 🙂

For that the pre-requisite is to have existing machines (virtual or physical) accessible through SSH.

In the Rancher UI create on the Create button, scroll down and select the Custom driver:

Fill in a cluster name (custom-kube-cluster for example) and choose the Kubernetes version You can choose between K3s and RKE2. For production needs we recommend RKE2. And choose the container network (calico by default).

Click on the different tabs to configure your cluster depending on your needs and then click on the Create button.

As we already said in the previous chapter, in Rancher, there are three roles that can be assigned to nodes: etcd, Control Plane and Worker.

For the configuration of our etcd + Control Plane nodes, check only the etcd and Control Plane Nodes Roles:

SSH to your machines/nodes you created for etcd and Control Plane and copy/paste the registration command.

ssh xxxxx@xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

curl -fL https://xxxxxx.xxxx.rancher.ovh.net/system-agent-install.sh | sudo  sh -s - --server https://xxxxxx.xxxx.rancher.ovh.net --label 'cattle.io/os=linux' --token z2r458coqudhfilgdsifgdsqilgfqsdigfidsufgoisdnvzj --etcd --controlplane

For the configuration of our Worker nodes, uncheck the checkboxes and check only the Worker checkbox:

SSH to your machines/nodes you created for etcd and controlpane and copy/paste the registration command.

ssh xxxxx@xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

curl -fL https://xxxxxx.xxxx.rancher.ovh.net/system-agent-install.sh | sudo  sh -s - --server https://xxxxxx.xxxx.rancher.ovh.net --label 'cattle.io/os=linux' --token z2r458coqudhfilgdsifgdsqilgfqsdigfidsufgoisdnvzj --worker

After executing these commands to the machines/nodes, wait until the cluster is in Active state in the Rancher UI.

Conclusion

Managed Rancher Service can help you to create, import and manage your new and existing Kubernetes clusters with a centralised interface. You saw in this blog posts three ways to create a Kubernetes clusters but we encourage you to test the other possibilities and explore the Rancher UI.

Want to go further?

Visit our technical guides and how to about OVHcloud Managed Rancher Service.

Managed Rancher Services (MRS)

Managed Rancher Services (MRS), in Beta for now, is based on Rancher, an open-source container management platform, that simplifies the deployment and management of Kubernetes clusters. Managed Rancher Service by OVHcloud provides a powerful platform for orchestrating Kubernetes clusters seamlessly.

Find more information on our dedicated Managed Rancher Services page.

Note: The product is in Beta so you can try Managed Rancher Services for free!

Local Zones (LZ)

This year we also launched Local Zones. Local Zones are an extension of regions that bring OVHcloud services closer to specific locations, offering reduced latency and improved performances for applications.
Local Zones are strategically placed in proximity to areas with high user demand. Their main goal is to minimize the time it takes to transfer data between the user and the cloud, in order to make services faster and more responsive, and meet data residency requirements.

Find more information on our dedicated Local Zone page.

Note: Until 31 August 2024 you can try Local Zones for free!

Kubernetes on Compute instances

At OVHcloud we have a Managed Kubernetes Services solution but you can also deploy Kubernetes clusters on Compute Instances if you want to managed in your own your clusters.

Find more information on our dedicated Compute instances page.

Demo

In this demo we will:

• Create 5 compute instances (3 for the Kubernetes’s etcd + controlplane & 2 for workers) on a Local Zone
• Create a managed Rancher
• In Rancher, configure the instances to deploy into them a Kubernetes cluster (with k3s or RKE2, depending on your needs ans use cases)

Creating Compute instances

First, you have to log in to the OVHcloud Control Panel and open the Public Cloud section. Then access the Instances under the Compute section.

Click on the Create an instance button.

Choose a model (the type of an instance / the flavor, B3-8 for example, but you can choose another one, depending on your needs).

Choose a local zone (Marseille for example):

Choose a distribution (Ubuntu for example).

Select your SSH key (we have to log in our instances later).

Choose 5 as the number of instances to be created and change the name of the instance name (lz-kube for example).

Check the checkbox Public network (to have a pubic IP).

The instances will take several minutes to spawn.

Deploying a Managed Rancher

Still in the OVHcloud Control Panel, click on the Create a Managed Rancher Service button.

Fill a name (my_lz_rancher for example), choose the Standard plan, the recommended version then click on the Create a Managed Rancher Service button.
Rancher instances are pre-provisioned, so your instance will be created immediately.

In the list of existing Managed Rancher Service, click on your instance, then click on Generate access code button to generate the login and password to access to Rancher. Save the login and password and click on Go to Rancher button.

Copy/paste the password in password field and click on Log in with Local User button.

A new password will be generated, save it! Save the server URL too, check the End User License Agreement checkbox and click on the Continue button.

Configuring Rancher to deploy a Kubernetes cluster

Creating a cluster

In Rancher UI, click on the Create button and then on the Custom driver:

Fill a cluster name (lz-k3s for example).

In the Kubernetes version list, choose the latest version of the wanted OS. For this blog post we will choose the latest version of K3s, but for production needs we recommend RKE2 instead.

Then click on Create button.

Configuring the cluster

Note:
In Rancher when you configure a node, there are three roles that can be assigned to nodes: etcd, controlplane and worker.

There are some good practices:

• At least 3 nodes with the role etcd are needed to survive a loss of 1 node and have a minimum high availability configuration for etcd. 3 etcd nodes are generally sufficient for smaller and medium clusters, and 5 etcd nodes for large clusters.
• At least 2 nodes with the role controlplane for master component high availability.
• You can set both the etcd and controlplane roles for one instance.
• The worker role should not be used or added to nodes with the etcd or controlplane role.
• At least 2 nodes with the role worker for workload rescheduling upon node failure.

For the configuration of our etcd + control planes nodes, check only the etcd and control plane Nodes Roles:

And copy/paste the registration command in a file.
For the configuration of our worker nodes, uncheck the checkboxes and check only the Worker checkbox:

And copy/paste the registration command in a file.

In the OVHcloud Control Panel, click on the Instances button.

Fill the search box with the beginning of the name of our instances: lz-kube.

For the first three instances, pick the Public IP addresses and then in your local terminal connect you in ssh and copy/paste the first registration command (for etcd and control plane nodes):

$ ssh root@xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
The authenticity of host 'xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx)' can't be established.
ED25519 key fingerprint is SHA256:dqsdqsdqsdqsd/dqsdqsdqsdqsdqsdqsdq.
This key is not known by any other names
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no/[fingerprint])? yes
...
root@lz-kube-1:~# curl -fL https://dsqdsqdqsd.p7mg.rancher.ovh.net/system-agent-install.sh | sudo  sh -s - --server https://dsqdsqdqsd.p7mg.rancher.ovh.net --label 'cattle.io/os=linux' --token kbv5k48vc8thhgqqhmtd8tn55qtlpgw7jp4llm4m4tvnp9sznscmpf --etcd --controlplane
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100 30794    0 30794    0     0   156k      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--  157k
[INFO]  Label: cattle.io/os=linux
...

And for the last two instances, pick the Public IP addresses and then in your local terminal connect you in ssh and copy/paste the second registration command (for worker nodes):

$ ssh root@xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
The authenticity of host 'xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx)' can't be established.
ED25519 key fingerprint is SHA256:dqsdqsdqsdqsd/dqsdqsdqsdqsdqsdqsdq.
This key is not known by any other names
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no/[fingerprint])? yes
...

root@lz-kube-4:~# curl -fL https://dsqdsqdqsd.p7mg.rancher.ovh.net/system-agent-install.sh | sudo  sh -s - --server https://dsqdsqdqsd.p7mg.rancher.ovh.net --label 'cattle.io/os=linux' --token kbv5k48vc8thhgqqhmtd8tn55qtlpgw7jp4llm4m4tvnp9sznscmpf --worker

  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100 30794    0 30794    0     0   156k      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--  157k
[INFO]  Label: cattle.io/os=linux
...

Wait until the cluster is in Active state.

Connecting to the cluster with kubectl CLI

In Rancher UI, click on the lz-k3s cluster.

Then click on the Download KubeConfig icon to download the kubeconfig file and save the path of kubeconfig in an environment variable:

$ export KUBE_CLUSTER=$(pwd)/lz_k3s.yml

Test the connexion to the Kubernetes:

$ kubectl --kubeconfig=$KUBE_CLUSTER cluster-info

List the nodes:

$ kubectl --kubeconfig=$KUBE_CLUSTER get no

NAME        STATUS   ROLES                       AGE     VERSION
lz-kube-1   Ready    control-plane,etcd,master   9m9s    v1.27.14+k3s1
lz-kube-2   Ready    control-plane,etcd,master   9m28s   v1.27.14+k3s1
lz-kube-3   Ready    control-plane,etcd,master   10m     v1.27.14+k3s1
lz-kube-4   Ready    worker                      8m59s   v1.27.14+k3s1
lz-kube-5   Ready    worker                      9m      v1.27.14+k3s1

Conclusion

We deployed and configured a Kubernetes cluster in Compute Instances on Local Zones with the new Managed Rancher Services and we discovered how to connect to it.
During the Beta phase, MRS is free so don’t hesitate to test it.

Want to go further?

Visit our technical guides and how to about OVHcloud Managed Rancher Service.