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Comment by el-salvador | Hacker News Reader

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el-salvador·

Pictures from the fire:

https://www.dna.fr/amp/faits-divers-justice/2021/03/10/stras...

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Without AMP: https://www.dna.fr/faits-divers-justice/2021/03/10/strasbour...

And here's some more from firefighters, while it was burning:

https://twitter.com/xgarreau/status/1369559995491172354

Looks glowing red to me.

Nobody hurt. That's a bit of good news.

is that entirely cargo containers? is that common for a data center?

No, SBG2 was a building in the "tower design", as is SBG3 behind it. The container in the foreground are SBG1 from the time when OVH didn't know if Straßburg is going to be a permanent thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modular_data_center

Container DCs were a big thing for a while. Even Google did a whole PR thing about how they used them.

Funnily enough, I think it was the fire risk that caused them to ditch the idea and move to their current design. Though I know modular design is highly likely to be used by all players as edge nodes spring up worldwide.

It was also that the container had literally no advantages. It was just a meme that did not survive rational analysis. The building in which the datacenter is located is the simplest, cheapest part of the design. Dividing it up into a bunch of inconveniently-sized rectangles solves nothing.

Uff... it looks like half of the containers on this picture were on fire...

Are you making a joke about docker containers or am I missing something?

Part of OVH datacenters are literal, physical containers with racks, power supply, vents, etc.

You can see more details here: https://baxtel.com/data-center/ovh-strasbourg-campus

Do the containers have fire suppressant systems installed?

This looks like yet another aluminium composite panel fire...

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