Human is always the key of all faults, I know it well, time is money, stop a system to verify it costs a lot !!!
That’s simply a F… truth
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Even in programming, it’s ALWAYS good to know where the problem is, even if debugging say Visual Basic! Sure you can say, it’s VB, there is your problem, but that’s not always correct!
(Sometimes even VB works as it should!).
Sometimes it’s a combination of factors, like “No manager ever got fired for choosing windows” sort of ignorance, or plain dumbness or gullibility! Humans also like multiple-choice errors (Just cross all of them, no limits!)…
My 2 cents
Andy
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A lot of french websites are offline. Including small FOSS sites like https://veracrypt.fr
Today OVH said over 1.6 million websites are affected from 464.000 different domains.
And a lot of sites do not have a mirror/backup. Therefore, as stated by Raft publisher. so long, data gone!
my server is well :D, I mirror my data at home but indeed the snapshots of the VM are done in their datacenter, I should snapshot to home too.
If you have some Teras that you don’t need, please send me it
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Hum I suspect the low-cost driven accident. About 30000 servers destroyed and 3 datacenters stopped.
Fun that sgb1 has no coolers, only free cooling for severs. It is not a building but a containers assembly
Was it setup like that to reduce costs and did it have no cooling
With or without servers, a container is basically thin metal - and does NOT burn.
Most Servers also do not burn, nor burn well…
UPS can explode, they are a different matter…
My 2 cents
Andy
But it gives the saying “firing up a few servers” a completly new meaning!
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My Neth server (a Contabo VPS) backs up to DO Spaces, to my TrueNAS server, and to a hotsync host I have on premises. I’d wondered if that might be overkill. I don’t wonder that any more.
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I must admit I have never seen a data centre setup like that granted I’ve seen only a handful of centres 
I just assumed they would have set it up with a radiator like plumbing system
I know that there is a lot of competition in the cloud hosting area and I could never quite wrap my head around OVH’s pricing.
I would not be surprised if they cut some corners to save some money and if so, they’ve literally been burnt by it. Either that or something went wrong on the latest round of UPS maintenance…
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The video footage of the fire was too savage…
Most likely they thought putting the UPS in the top layer of containers was too much work, keep them at lowest (ground floor) level.
All the Servers were “UPS-Powered” after the ignition…
Should not happen in a well laid out NOC. But, then again, containers just don’t cut it!
And not if you have 4 complexes, some real buildings, and a container tower?
I don’t know how it works in foreign countries but in France after a disaster like this the insurance company comes to you and say, now you must have more detection and more extinguishing devices (with inert gas or high water fog) if you still want to be insured by us.
It will cost a lot 
Competition. If Insurance companies won’t make some “Customer trust” they’ll find a more reasonable one.
https://www.ovhcloud.com/en/lp/status-services-backup-strasbourg/
Report has been published.
According to Roberto Pezzali from dday.it which “sums” the word of the CEO of OVH, Octave Calaba, according to a couple of firefighters there was an “hotspot” close to a couple of UPS (info coming from a thermal camera). One of the two UPSes was repaired in the morning of the day.
UPS were stored in containers below ones with servers.
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I think just over a year ago, I almost opted for a (very cheap) kimsufi dedicated server at OVH. Now I am glad I didn’t go for it.
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These are automated CO2 Fire extinguisher systems - I have seen a very simple one in a laboratory storage for flamable liquids: A 5 kg weight is tied through a polymer fibre above a breakable glas valve. If the heat from a fire melts a polymer, the weight crushes down and releases the gas to the room. Such rooms have an CO2 alarm, too! If the room is flooded with CO2 by accident, any co-worker must be aware not to enter the room / enter.
Here is the German News on that (already posted yesterday)
It reads that the provider invoices an extra charge for external data backup - therefore only a few customer booked that service - consequently, their data was HDD-failure or delete-by-layer-8 proof, but not against fire. Lots of data got lost forever.