Businesspeople often lose sleep over network outages. Downtime caused by unplanned outages results in the bottom line taking a hit and can cost huge sums of money. According to Gartner, the total average cost per minute of unplanned downtime runs at about $5,600.

Network resilience is becoming increasingly important for mission-critical operations as well as the increasing use of cloud services by all types of business. Data availability is becoming of key importance for everyone: from those running corporate IT departments in the cloud, to websites providing government services — even down to healthcare organisations performing surgery using extended reality (XR). 

Because of the growing dependence on network performance, we have instituted a five-year plan to move towards the delivery of a hyper-resilient network and reduce the risk of network threats that can cause business operations to screech to a halt. Because these threats come from all angles, including from human error, weather conditions and fibre cuts, as well as susceptibility to bugs and cyberattacks — we believe hyper-resilience is the path all network providers need to follow.

We are now three years into our plan and have been working hard to completely re-engineer every part of our network, from the optical and IP layers to the routes into our global data centres. The thinking behind this is to increase the trust in the performance of our network by increasing both reach and speed. 

Using continuous improvement to build hyper-resilience 

Our route to hyper-resilience is based on a five-pillar approach to improve the performance of all aspects of the network, including event management, incident management, change management and problem management. Broken down, these pillars support the overlay, changing the way customers consume network services and the underlay, which allows us to automatically configure each of the components that our customers use.

This is all underpinned by a philosophy of continuous improvement so we can make accurate assessments on the number of risks introduced and find effective ways to manage them.

Reducing risk means not introducing problems — something that often happens with human intervention. To facilitate centralised management of the network and to make it more flexible, we have introduced a software-defined networking approach. This allows for enhanced control and uses automation across both physical and virtual network environments.

To back this up, there are multiple routes taking fibre connections into our data centres to further reduce the risk of downtime. When fibre optic cables were intentionally sabotaged earlier this year, several cities in France experienced internet slowdowns and outages. With our network having multiple paths for data traffic, we were able to re-route traffic, so our customers didn’t notice.

A proactive and predictive approach to managing risk

Our risk management methodology is both proactive and predictive and is designed to grow and evolve — nothing ever remains static in the evolution of networks. For problem management, we can now solve any issues early on, using a data driven approach. This data shows us any recurring patterns that indicate possible points of failure. Rather than let the problem grow, it allows us to solve any issue immediately. We have also increased the amount of network filtering to reduce the risk of any kind of malicious activity. These preventative measures mean there is less risk of a bigger incident later on down the line — and we can ensure that there is as little impact on the customer as possible.

One of our principal goals is to reach 100 per cent automation to overcome not just human error, but also ensure that any failures can be detected and fixed as they occur. With the software we build to manage the network, we’ve introduced automation into code production. This greatly reduces errors and together with robust CI/CD processes, we can iron out any bugs and errors before any code goes into production.

Zero-touch provisioning is another way of reducing and eliminating risk. Our next-generation network can detect new devices and determine what their purpose in the network is, and configure, install and deploy the devices automatically. This level of automation also removes the headache of updating device firmware. Before, this was a time-consuming and disruptive process. Now we can update devices more easily without any network interruption. We’re also supporting this further with software that’s designed to be self-healing to detect, react to and correct issues on the fly.

Leveraging new services for customers 

By building a hyper-resilient network, we’re now able to focus on delivering a better service to customers and help them with their specific business needs. It also means we can offer more value-added services that customers can make use of in the cloud, such as private networks, and support any business looking to leverage infrastructure as code (IaS). Not only can we deliver services much faster and more easily, we can ensure they have resilience built in by default. 

While we recognise that threats can never be fully eliminated, we aim to make our own network as resilient as possible and see this journey as an ever-continuing one. Ultimately, it’s all about ensuring that customers can rely on their networks, generate value and increase their agility. With networks moving beyond being a commodity to being a valuable business enabler, it’s vital that hyper-resilient networks become the mantra for all.

Les pannes de réseau sont une source constante d’inquiétude pour les entreprises. Les temps d’arrêt causés par des pannes non planifiées se traduisent par des pertes financières et peuvent ainsi coûter très cher. Selon Gartner, leur coût total moyen par minute s’élève à environ 5 600 dollars.

Pour tous les types d’entreprise, la résilience du réseau devient de plus en plus importante pour les opérations critiques, ainsi que pour l’utilisation croissante des services Cloud. La disponibilité des données est essentielle pour tout le monde, des services informatiques d’entreprise dans le Cloud aux sites Web fournissant des services publics, en passant par les organismes de santé qui pratiquent des opérations chirurgicales en réalité étendue (XR).

En raison de cette dépendance croissante aux performances du réseau, nous avons élaboré un plan quinquennal visant à mettre en place un réseau hyper-résilient et à réduire le risque de menaces susceptibles de paralyser les opérations commerciales. Étant donné que ces dernières proviennent de tous les horizons, notamment de l’erreur humaine, des conditions météorologiques et des coupures de fibre, ainsi que de la vulnérabilité aux bogues et aux cyberattaques, nous pensons que l’hyper-résilience est la voie que tous les fournisseurs de réseaux doivent suivre.

La mise en œuvre de notre plan a commencé il y a trois ans. Nous avons travaillé d’arrache-pied pour réorganiser complètement chaque partie de notre réseau, des couches optiques et IP aux voies menant à nos centres de données mondiaux. L’objectif est de renforcer la confiance dans les performances de notre réseau en augmentant sa portée et sa vitesse.

L’amélioration continue au service de l’hyper-résilience

Notre cheminement vers l’hyper-résilience repose sur une approche basée sur cinq piliers visant à améliorer les performances de tous les aspects du réseau, notamment la gestion des événements, la gestion des incidents, la gestion des changements et la gestion des problèmes. Ces piliers soutiennent la couche supérieure, qui modifie la façon dont les clients utilisent les services réseau, et la couche inférieure, qui nous permet de configurer automatiquement chacun des composants utilisés par nos clients.

Tout cela est sous-tendu par une philosophie d’amélioration continue qui nous permet d’évaluer avec précision le nombre de risques introduits et de trouver des moyens efficaces de les gérer.

Réduire les risques signifie ne pas introduire de problèmes, ce qui arrive souvent lors d’interventions humaines. Pour faciliter la gestion centralisée du réseau et le rendre plus flexible, nous avons introduit une approche réseau définie par logiciel. Cela permet d’améliorer le contrôle et d’utiliser l’automatisation dans les environnements de réseaux physique comme virtuel.

Pour consolider cette approche, de multiples voies de connexion en fibre optique sont prévues dans nos centres de données afin de réduire encore davantage le risque d’interruption de service. Lorsque des câbles ont été intentionnellement sabotés au début de l’année, plusieurs villes françaises ont connu des ralentissements et des coupures d’internet. Comme notre réseau dispose de plusieurs routes pour le trafic de données, nous avons pu le réacheminer, et nos clients ne s’en sont ainsi pas rendu compte.

Une approche proactive et prédictive de la gestion des risques

Notre méthodologie de gestion des risques est à la fois proactive et prédictive. Elle est conçue pour croître et évoluer : rien ne reste jamais statique dans l’évolution des réseaux. En ce qui concerne la gestion des problèmes, nous pouvons désormais résoudre tout problème de manière anticipée, en utilisant une approche axée sur les données. Ces dernières nous montrent les schémas récurrents qui indiquent les points de défaillance possibles. Cela nous permet de résoudre le problème immédiatement plutôt que de le laisser s’aggraver. Nous avons également augmenté le filtrage sur le réseau afin de réduire le risque d’activités malveillantes. Ces mesures préventives réduisent le risque d’un incident plus important plus tard, et nous pouvons faire en sorte que l’impact sur le client soit le plus faible possible.

L’un de nos principaux objectifs est d’atteindre un niveau d’automatisation de 100 % afin d’éliminer non seulement l’erreur humaine, mais aussi de garantir que toute défaillance puisse être détectée et corrigée dès qu’elle se produit. Avec le logiciel que nous avons créé pour gérer le réseau, nous avons introduit l’automatisation dans la production du code. Cela réduit considérablement les erreurs et, avec des processus CI/CD robustes, nous pouvons éliminer les bogues et les erreurs avant que la mise en production.

Le provisionnement sans intervention est un autre moyen de réduire et d’éliminer les risques. Notre réseau de nouvelle génération peut détecter les nouveaux appareils et déterminer leur rôle dans le réseau, puis les configurer, les installer et les déployer automatiquement. Ce niveau d’automatisation élimine également le casse-tête de la mise à jour des micrologiciels des appareils. Auparavant, il s’agissait d’un processus long et perturbateur. Désormais, nous pouvons les mettre à jour plus facilement, sans aucune interruption du réseau. Nous allons plus loin encore dans ce domaine avec un logiciel conçu pour s’auto-réparer afin de détecter, de réagir et de corriger les problèmes à la volée.

Tirer parti de nouveaux services pour les clients

Grâce à la mise en place d’un réseau hyper-résilient, nous pouvons désormais nous concentrer sur la fourniture d’un meilleur service aux clients et les aider à répondre à leurs besoins spécifiques. Cela signifie également que nous pouvons offrir davantage de services à valeur ajoutée que les clients peuvent utiliser dans le Cloud, comme les réseaux privés, et soutenir toute entreprise cherchant à exploiter l’infrastructure en tant que code (IaS). Nous pouvons ainsi fournir des services beaucoup plus rapidement et plus facilement, et nous pouvons également nous assurer qu’ils sont résilients par défaut.

Même si les menaces ne pourront jamais être totalement éliminées, nous nous efforçons de rendre notre propre réseau aussi résilient que possible et nous considérons que cette démarche doit être poursuivie en continu. En fin de compte, il s’agit de faire en sorte que les clients puissent compter sur leurs réseaux, générer de la valeur et accroître leur agilité. Puisqu’ils ne sont plus un simple produit de base mais un outil commercial précieux, il est essentiel que les réseaux hyper-résilients deviennent la norme pour tous.

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.

One of the possible forms of IT outsourcing is working with a Managed Service Provider (MSP) who manages and operates the information system. This player is an essential link in the relationship between the end customer and the cloud infrastructure provider.

What is the role of an MSP?

The role of an MSP consists in ensuring an optimal level of availability, security, and performance of the client’s infrastructures.

To do so, he/she advises, implements, maintains and secures hosting infrastructures, whether they are based on a simple virtual server (VPS) or a complex configuration made of multiple hosting solutions.

From a liability standpoint, when developers endeavour to guarantee the proper functioning of the code of the application or site they have designed and when OVHcloud guarantees the availability of the hosting bricks (Bare Metal Cloud, Public Cloud, Hosted Private Cloud with VMware, Nutanix, Anthos, Object Storage, CDN), the MSP is in charge of making the connection between the “system” and interfacing the different bricks. The system corresponds to all the software layers (OS and services) that will run on the “hardware” layer and which allow the proper functioning of the application code.

The MSP provides the client with real support through 4 main missions:

• BUILD – This is the stage of designing the architecture according to the needs and constraints of the client, then installing the infrastructure. The consulting dimension is a key pilar here.
• RUN – This refers to the day-to-day management and maintenance of the infrastructures in operational conditions, including continuous monitoring and incident response.
• SUPPORT – The support provided by the MSP also includes the optimization and evolution of the platforms with adapted and specific advice in relation to the client’s requests.
  In addition to their technical expertise, MSPs can rely on the levels of support offered by OVHcloud, thus ensuring a better quality of service according to the criticality of the data, the applications or the platforms used by customers.
• BACK UP – Essential part of any secure infrastructure, the backups and the Disaster Recovery Plan or the Business Continuity Plan are guarantees that should not be overlooked.
  To avoid any loss of data, the MSP sets up a backup system. One of the good practices consists in storing backups on remote units, both distributed and redundant on 2 or 3 different and geographically distant sites. To do this, OVHcloud has datacenters in France in Roubaix, Gravelines and Strasbourg, but also all across Europe.
  The MSP can also build a Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) which aims to anticipate scenarios in order to anticipate against major accidents responsible for the destruction or extended shutdown of a production infrastructure by having a fast and reliable backup solution.

What are the advantages of outsourcing your IT management to an MSP?

In addition to sound advice to optimize the infrastructure, and developing a relationship with a single point of contact, using the services of an MSP also means:

Eliminate stress and focus on your core business

Beyond the technical aspect, the foundation of the MSP role consists mainly in eliminating stress and dissatisfaction by relying on two key capacities, namely problem solving and anticipation. Freed from the management of the IT infrastructure, customers are then able to fully concentrate on their core business.

A software publisher can use its time to innovate and implement new features, an online sales platform can focus on promoting its brand, its products and the development of its community…

On their side, financial institutions will be able to focus on processing their data by relying on a high-performance and secure environment that will enable them to protect themselves from both internal and external threats, while the media players will be able to concentrate on content creation, without worrying about the availability and accessibility of their production environment.

Master the management of the security aspect

The MSP’s mission is to provide an efficient, stable, but above all secure infrastructure. They will be in charge of strengthening the security of the system layer to guard against attacks (brute force, denial of service, etc.). The MSP is also taking care of the rigorous application of security updates in a transparent way for the customer.

Better control infrastructure and training costs

Working with an MSP means considering a new economic/financial model focusing less on major investment phases than on financial smoothing over time. Indeed, clients can benefit from continuously updated infrastructures without having to manage the technical evolution.

They get professional advice on how to optimize their IT to better match their expectations in line with the industry innovations.

Rely on a reliable ecosystem of experts

Trusting the MSP is essential, but this is not the only essential factor. The mutual trust between the MSP and the cloud provider(s)/host(s) with whom they work is also particularly important.

This trust is based on multiple elements:

• Technical and technological elements: quality of infrastructure, datacentres, hardware, network
• Human and relational elements: quality, availability and accessibility of OVHcloud teams
• Values: compatibility on the corporate culture through the values of transparency, accessibility, reversibility, interoperability and sovereignty.
  OVHcloud strives to offer a trusted cloud based on open standards on which its ecosystem of partners relies to create value and meet the evolving needs of customers.

If you would like to be supported in the management of your IT infrastructures, get in touch with one of our trusted French partners below to get the level of service that best suits your needs.

hello@alixans.com 01 84 24 05 44	commercial@cognix-systems.com 02 30 96 34 40	vchapuis@partitio.com 05 34 60 42 84

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