6 ms·

OVH and reliable, in the same sentence? They're cheap, so suitable for projects you don't mind going poof. Personal anecdote. A few years ago, I lost a lot of

OVH and reliable, in the same sentence? They're cheap, so suitable for projects you don't mind going poof. Personal anecdote. A few years ago, I lost a lot of sleep on a domain renewal at OVH. Their incompetence was mind-boggling. A less common tld was the only slightly challenging bit. After a week of calling and emailing, and on the verge of the domain lapsing, I gave up and sent someone to the tld registry with cash. Also, do search for OVH SBG2 should you have missed that.

tyingq 2y ago
They can be terrible. But it is dirt cheap. So if you use their stuff in a way that you can recover somewhere else if they have issues, you save a lot. As you mentioned I would stay away from them for things like domain hosting. Just use them for cheap compute, etc.
- rapind 2y ago
  Would you recommend vultr for dedicated metal? I’m lazily shopping around for a decent dedicated metal setup, but I need something reasonably reliable.
  - rat9988 2y ago
    Hetzner and Ovh are very reliable unless you need to reach to support.
- mst 2y ago
  I keep my whois and NS entries elsewhere and my nameservers sufficiently distributed that I find the risk acceptable, but both hetzner and ovh are firmly in the "I have always felt I got a very cost effective 'exactly what I paid for' - and in the case of my rare interactions with their support more than I'd hoped for" category for me. Neither has ever caused me a problem that didn't feel like "potentially having this level of problem occasionally is entirely in keeping with how little I'm paying" basically.
tredre3 2y ago
OVH's infrastructure is absolutely very reliable. The pain begins when you need support. Just like you, I have lost a lot of sleep over domains held hostage by their incompetence (for almost a year in one instance). Lesson learned, never use OVH for domains. The support for their dedicated servers is just as bad, mind you, but short of a hardware failure you really don't need them. I have several years of uptime on all my current services. So for personal projects their vps/dedicated is still a fantastic value.
- jsheard 2y ago
  > OVH's infrastructure is absolutely very reliable. Well except that time one of their datacenters burned down, likely due to insufficient fire suppression, and the data backups were also lost because they kept them in the same building as the originals. https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/ovhcloud-ordered-to-pay-250k-to-two-customers-who-lost-data-in-strasbourg-data-center-fire/ https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/ovhcloud-ordered-... These reports criticize OVHcloud for having no fire prevention system and no power cut-off on the site, for using wooden floors, and for a free-cooling design that created airflows that spread the fire. The reports also say that water was detected near electrical systems before the fire broke out. It takes quite a while to regain trust after shitting the bed that badly.
  - ggeorgovassilis 2y ago
    > data backups were also lost because they kept them in the same building as the originals. I asked that question Hetzner support and they admitted doing the same
    - jsheard 2y ago
      Better to be honest about having weak backups so users can plan accordingly, than to lie about how safe the data is and lull users into a false sense of security... the OVH contract relating to automatic backup stipulates that a backup of the VPS server is scheduled daily, exported, and then replicated three times before being available in the customer space, and that the storage space allocated to the 'back-up option is physically isolated from the infrastructure in which the VPS server is set up.'
fl0id 2y ago
Yeah,just hope you never have to interact with support
dabedee 2y ago
From personal experience a few years back, OVH support was one of the worst I have ever experienced in my career. Technical incompetence at multiple levels of the chain (e.g lack of understanding of how DNS works). I would never recommend it to anyone, not even my worst enemy.
- codexon 2y ago
  I can confirm this. I had packet loss on my server. They asked me several times to reboot my server into rescue mode and leave it there for 10+ hours until their senior technician could look into it at an unspecified time of day. After a month of doing this 3-4 times, they finally admitted that their switch is overprovisioned and there was no ETA. This problem happened in 2 locations. Also had a problem with the failover ip failing to move. Again they told me to reboot into rescue mode and leave it like that for hours. No fix. I've left OVH entirely after being a customer of theirs for over 10 years.

tyingq 2y ago

They can be terrible. But it is dirt cheap. So if you use their stuff in a way that you can recover somewhere else if they have issues, you save a lot. As you mentioned I would stay away from them for things like domain hosting. Just use them for cheap compute, etc.

rapind 2y ago
Would you recommend vultr for dedicated metal? I’m lazily shopping around for a decent dedicated metal setup, but I need something reasonably reliable.
- rat9988 2y ago
  Hetzner and Ovh are very reliable unless you need to reach to support.
mst 2y ago
I keep my whois and NS entries elsewhere and my nameservers sufficiently distributed that I find the risk acceptable, but both hetzner and ovh are firmly in the "I have always felt I got a very cost effective 'exactly what I paid for' - and in the case of my rare interactions with their support more than I'd hoped for" category for me. Neither has ever caused me a problem that didn't feel like "potentially having this level of problem occasionally is entirely in keeping with how little I'm paying" basically.

tredre3 2y ago

OVH's infrastructure is absolutely very reliable. The pain begins when you need support. Just like you, I have lost a lot of sleep over domains held hostage by their incompetence (for almost a year in one instance). Lesson learned, never use OVH for domains. The support for their dedicated servers is just as bad, mind you, but short of a hardware failure you really don't need them. I have several years of uptime on all my current services. So for personal projects their vps/dedicated is still a fantastic value.

jsheard 2y ago
> OVH's infrastructure is absolutely very reliable. Well except that time one of their datacenters burned down, likely due to insufficient fire suppression, and the data backups were also lost because they kept them in the same building as the originals. https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/ovhcloud-ordered-to-pay-250k-to-two-customers-who-lost-data-in-strasbourg-data-center-fire/ https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/ovhcloud-ordered-... These reports criticize OVHcloud for having no fire prevention system and no power cut-off on the site, for using wooden floors, and for a free-cooling design that created airflows that spread the fire. The reports also say that water was detected near electrical systems before the fire broke out. It takes quite a while to regain trust after shitting the bed that badly.
- ggeorgovassilis 2y ago
  > data backups were also lost because they kept them in the same building as the originals. I asked that question Hetzner support and they admitted doing the same
  - jsheard 2y ago
    Better to be honest about having weak backups so users can plan accordingly, than to lie about how safe the data is and lull users into a false sense of security... the OVH contract relating to automatic backup stipulates that a backup of the VPS server is scheduled daily, exported, and then replicated three times before being available in the customer space, and that the storage space allocated to the 'back-up option is physically isolated from the infrastructure in which the VPS server is set up.'

fl0id 2y ago

Yeah,just hope you never have to interact with support

dabedee 2y ago

From personal experience a few years back, OVH support was one of the worst I have ever experienced in my career. Technical incompetence at multiple levels of the chain (e.g lack of understanding of how DNS works). I would never recommend it to anyone, not even my worst enemy.

codexon 2y ago
I can confirm this. I had packet loss on my server. They asked me several times to reboot my server into rescue mode and leave it there for 10+ hours until their senior technician could look into it at an unspecified time of day. After a month of doing this 3-4 times, they finally admitted that their switch is overprovisioned and there was no ETA. This problem happened in 2 locations. Also had a problem with the failover ip failing to move. Again they told me to reboot into rescue mode and leave it like that for hours. No fix. I've left OVH entirely after being a customer of theirs for over 10 years.