The fire in the data centers of the host OVH on Wednesday caused a wave of panic on the French web, with many sites made inaccessible.

And the government experienced some cold sweats since it was on this site in particular that the data for the Covid-19 vaccination campaign was centralized.

EUROPE INFO 1

It is a fire with serious consequences: Wednesday morning, in Strasbourg, a building of the OVH company, the leading French web host, was ravaged by a violent fire.

The flames were brought under control at dawn after the intervention of a hundred firefighters.

In the smoldering ruins, a data center has been completely destroyed and three others are shut down until March 19 at the latest, causing a little panic on the web.

However, among OVH's customers, there is the State.

Administration sites and databases have been affected.

And, according to information from Europe 1, the government was scared in connection with the vaccination against Covid-19. 

>> Find the morning show of the day in replay and podcast here

Data related to the vaccination campaign were hosted in Strasbourg

The fire broke out shortly before 1 a.m. on the site at the OVH site located in the industrial area of ​​Port du Rhin, east of Strasbourg.

Immediately informed of the facts, the executive experienced a big heat stroke at the end of the morning.

During the Council of Ministers, the incident was raised and the executive learned that the Strasbourg datacenters were hosting public data.

The Ministry of Solidarity and Health is concerned in the foreground: this is where OVH centralized data related to the vaccination against Covid-19, including dose orders.

Concern in the cabinets, the phones start to heat up.

We are trying to find out as quickly as possible the impact of the destruction of the servers on the current vaccination campaign.

And at the other end of the line, it's Octave Klaba himself who answers.

The CEO of OVH transmits the information in real time to Olivier Véran's advisers.

The first hours go by slowly.

The IT teams of the Ministry of Health are busy retrieving the latest backups.

"Except that it's like when you break your phone: you always lose data even with backups", plague an advisor.

Current inventory of public administration sites

For its part, OVH is active.

The company's technical teams are authorized to access the Strasbourg site in the middle of the afternoon.

Finally, more fear than harm.

According to information from Europe 1, shortly after 3:30 p.m., OVH informed the ministry that the services it provided were new operational.

Everything was moved to another data center and no data was lost in the process, nor in the server fire.

"All the business recovery plans, which ensure the monitoring of accommodation in the event of an incident, have been put in place at the state level," says one at OVH.

The vaccination can therefore continue without worry.

DECRYPTION>

 Fire at OVH: what consequences for the French Internet?

Relief at the Ministry of Health but the day is far from over in other ministries, in particular in the office of Amélie de Montchalin, the Minister of Transformation and the Public Service.

In fact, several public administrations experienced bugs on Wednesday.

"All the sites work but some functionalities are restricted. Some were settled in an hour, others take longer," slips an advisor at the end of the day.

DINUM, the interministerial digital department, was responsible for making an inventory of the affected sites, knowing that, in the worst case, the State has backups in other data centers.