Vital Web Hosting Lessons Businesses Can Learn from the OVH Data Center Disaster

The recent fire incident at the data center of OVH in Strasbourg, France, has been one of the biggest incidents in recent history. OVH is one of the biggest companies related to cloud computing and has a presence in over 19 countries with approximately 300,000 servers as of 2018. This incident has sparked controversy amongst all the cloud server companies and has started a debate as to precisely what to do to avoid such incidents in the future.

Thousands of websites went offline, and many others struggled to keep afloat to offer their visitors a seamless browsing experience. This was a major incident reported across the world, and the reputation of OVH was hit badly. This turned out to be a catastrophic event, especially for the website’s partial or complete data lost as a result. Although they will be able to retrieve some of it through the backup plans, it is game over in certain cases!

So, what’s the remedy to ensure that you can safeguard your data and get a good package according to your requirements? This blog will focus on the differences between small businesses and startups as big conglomerates have many resources to perfectly take care of these aspects.

Safeguard Your Interests 

The OVH incident is an eye-opener for all businesses as everyone uses online hosting, and the majority uses cloud servers. The company offers VPS, dedicated servers, and other such services. Businesses need to think about what can work for them rather than looking for such services from one of the biggest hosting providers in the market. Surely, they got their homework, then we can offer good solutions, but incidents like this happen all the time.

Although incidents like this on such a large scale are not common, anything can happen. If anything can go wrong, it will; that’s why such data centers must have good safety measures to avoid such incidents in the future. In this case, too, everything was taken care of within one hour, but the damage has been done. That’s why small businesses must think rationally rather than emotionally, as it is a matter of their survival on the internet.

Things Can Go Wrong Pretty Quickly

You may not be able to think about how quickly things can go wrong. In no time, it can be a catastrophic situation for any company. Rust is a prime example in this regard. Let me give you a little brief about what happened with this popular video game on Microsoft Windows and Mac OS. Rust is a multiplayer-only survival video game that is one of the most popular games, exclusively available for Windows and Mac.

Reportedly after the OVH incident last week, a total loss of Rust video game data made the game players wonder what will happen in the future. Incidents like this can make the game’s developer or the parent company go out of business quickly, especially if they have no other resource to bank on. You can imagine what can happen to the users who will experience a total loss of game data.

Don’t be Content with a Mediocre Service 

Everything that I’ve mentioned above doesn’t get the notion that I am forcing you to use a standard for a mediocre hosting service. Surely, big companies are prone to mega-disasters, just like OVH. It is logical because the proportion of loss would be greater when there are huge resources that can be compromised or completely destroyed due to a fire or any other acts of God, like an earthquake or hurricane.

Going for a famous hosting service just because you see their ads all over or they are offering a price that you can’t resist doesn’t mean that they are the best in the business. In place of physical servers on their premises, most businesses now go for the cloud servers and managed services in this concern. This gives them more freedom and liberty to use good support from such services and also less headache.

It is the best solution for small businesses and new startups that are not familiar with website hosting in all the related technologies. In this way, not only can they get to their goal of getting a good web hosting service, but they also don’t have to think about managing day-to-day operations and anything in this regard. This can be a constant headache for businesses as they can lose their focus and have to deal with this rather than keep an eye on their competitors.

Deciding what you Need

A disaster can indeed hit anytime and even a minor hiccup or glitch in the server. But you need to be wary of this fact as when dealing with a dedicated server, everything must work according to your requirements. As opposed to shared service, dedicated servers are designed to offer all the facilities and features that can make a website work seamlessly without any problem. Surely, disasters can happen, but apart from these exceptions, dedicated servers can offer exceptional support to companies, regardless of their size and nature of business.

Dedicated servers offer great support to businesses as there are many advantages for them. Small businesses and startups think of these servers as expensive, and that’s why they go for a shared server instead. But they don’t realize that this may turn out to be a bad decision in the future.

Shared servers can be used by dozens of companies simultaneously so that each website’s optimum performance cannot be guaranteed. And shared servers don’t even offer such performance in the first place. That’s why never trust these shared servers in the first place.

So, it doesn’t matter that you go for a big name like OVH and AWS, as incidents like these can happen even with these giants in the business. That’s where a cheap dedicated server hosting can bring you the dividends any company longs for.

Over to you

If you think that you can add something valuable to this blog or want to ask a question, you are more than welcome. For any feedback too, please use the comment section below.