BGP Service
BGP Service
Build highly available services with multi-path connectivity. Announce public IP prefixes to the internet from your servers and VMs with full control and flexibility of the BGP protocol.
High availability, controlled by you
BGP Service lets you build highly available architectures where traffic reaches your servers over multiple paths at once - and where you decide, at any moment, which servers announce your public IP addresses.
Your servers establish private BGP sessions with OVHcloud edge infrastructure over your vRack private network. Through these sessions, they announce your public IP prefixes - Additional IP blocks from OVHcloud or your own ranges imported via BYOIP. The BGP protocol gives you full, real-time control of these announcements: when a server goes down, its route is withdrawn in seconds; when all your servers are up, incoming traffic is spread across them with multi-path (ECMP) routing.
No failover mechanism to trigger, no control-plane to wait for - and a flat, predictable pricing.
Why use BGP Service?
Instant failover
Your servers control their own route announcements via the BGP protocol. If a server fails, its route is withdrawn within seconds - no control-plane dependency, no API call, no waiting. Say goodbye to the failover delays of legacy Additional IP mechanisms.
Multi-path, active-active traffic
Announce the same public prefix from up to 10 servers and let the OVHcloud network spread incoming traffic across all of them with ECMP multi-path routing. Build stateless, highly available services without a load-balancer appliance.
Your public IPs, your control
Announce OVHcloud Additional IP blocks or your own prefixes imported with BYOIP - you keep full ownership and decide exactly which servers announce which prefix, in IPv4 and IPv6 alike, with complete feature parity.
Private sessions, predictable price
BGP sessions run privately between your servers and OVHcloud infrastructure, over your vRack - never over the public internet. Free during the Beta.
Discover the products that work with BGP Service
vRack
The foundation. Your BGP sessions are established over your vRack private network - private, isolated Layer 2 connectivity between your servers and OVHcloud infrastructure.
Additional IP
Announce your OVHcloud Additional IP blocks (IPv4 /24–/30, IPv6 /56) dynamically via BGP - a modern, faster alternative to the legacy failover mechanism, with active-active support.
Bring Your Own IP (BYOIP)
Own your address space? Import your IPv4 (/19–/24) or IPv6 ranges with BYOIP, then announce them to the internet from your OVHcloud servers - ownership preserved, reachability global. With the BYOAS option, OVHcloud announces your prefix to the internet with your own ASN kept as the origin AS - while you control the announcement of the prefix towards the services hosted on OVHcloud infrastructure through your private BGP sessions.
Bare Metal dedicated servers
Run a standard BGP daemon (FRRouting, BIRD, OpenBGPd…) directly on your dedicated servers connected to the vRack, and announce your prefixes from the servers that carry your traffic.
Hosted Private Cloud
VMware is linked with vRack by default. Your virtual servers can peer with BGP Service simply and control IP availability across the internet.
Public Cloud
Public Cloud instances connected to your vRack can peer with BGP Service too to build highly available architectures.
Use cases
High availability with multi-path routing
Run a critical web or API service across several servers in one availability zone. Each server announces the same public prefix through its own private BGP session; the OVHcloud network distributes incoming traffic across all healthy servers with ECMP multi-path routing. If a server fails, its session drops and traffic instantly converges on the remaining servers - no downtime, no manual intervention.
Announce your own IPs (BYOIP)
If you own an IPv4 or IPv6 block and want to serve it from OVHcloud - it's possible! Import it with BYOIP, add it to your BGP Service and announce it from your servers. Your prefix is propagated through OVHcloud border routers to the public internet - you keep ownership and control end to end.
With the BYOAS option, the prefix is announced to the internet with your own public ASN kept as the origin AS in the path.
BGP Service lets you control announcements over the private BGP sessions directly from your servers, while OVHcloud takes care of the external prefix announcements with DDoS protection and the infrastructure reliability.
IPv6-native deployments
Build IPv6 services with exactly the same operational model as IPv4: dedicated IPv6 peering range, allowed-prefix validation, multi-path routing and fast failover. Decide, whether you start with one address family (IPv4 or IPv6), or if you go dual-stack directly. One workflow, two address families - full parity from day one.
Automatic traffic distribution
Already using Additional IP with the API-driven failover mechanism? Keep the same public IP block and control its announcement via BGP instead. Failover time drops and no control-plane operations in the middle. Moreover, you gain active-active capability on top. Both mechanisms can coexist while you migrate at your own pace.
Centralised routing with a Route Server
Need more advanced routing policies or a wider fan-out? Deploy your own Route Server (BIRD, FRRouting, OpenBGPd) within your vRack. It holds the private BGP sessions with OVHcloud infrastructure and redistributes routes to your backend servers. This way you can use up to 10 hosts per BGP Service.
Simple, predictable pricing
| BGP Service | ||
| Price | Free during the Beta | |
| Bandwidth | 5 Gbps included | |
| Private BGP sessions | Up to 4 client peers (up to 10 next-hop with route server), backed by 4 OVHcloud infrastructure peers | |
| Announceable public prefixes | Up to 32 IPv4 and 32 IPv6 | |
| Billing | Flat pricing per vRack network in given location. | |
BGP Service regional availability
BGP Service is available in OVHcloud single-AZ locations. You enable it per vRack Services in each location where your infrastructure runs.
| Region | Location | BGP Service | |
| eu-west-gra | Gravelines, France | ✔ | |
| eu-west-rbx | Roubaix, France | ✔ | |
| eu-west-sbg | Strasbourg, France | ✔ | |
| eu-west-lim | Limburg, Germany | ✔ | |
| eu-central-waw | Warsaw, Poland | ✔ | |
| eu-west-eri | London, United Kingdom | ✔ | |
| ca-east-bhs | Beauharnois, Canada | ✔ | |
| ca-east-tor | Toronto, Canada | ✔ | |
Getting started guides
Support and documentation
We offer a range of documentation and online support to assist you in setting up and configuring your OVHcloud product.
FAQ
What is BGP Service?
BGP Service lets you build highly available, multi-path architectures on OVHcloud. Your servers establish private BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) sessions with OVHcloud infrastructure over your vRack private network, and use them to announce your public IP prefixes - Additional IP blocks or BYOIP ranges. You control the announcements; the network handles multi-path traffic distribution and instant failover.
What do I need before ordering BGP Service?
You need an asset (dedicated server or PCI/HPC instances) with vRack connectivity in a supported location, a private subnet in it (created with vRack Services), and a public IP block to announce - either an OVHcloud Additional IP block or a range imported via BYOIP into OVHcloud. Your servers or instances running a standard BGP daemon such as FRRouting, BIRD or OpenBGPd for peering.
How much does BGP Service cost?
BGP Service is free during the Beta: $0 /month per vRack Services in each location, with 5 Gbps of bandwidth included. There are no setup fees, no per-prefix fees and no termination fees. Billing is monthly; you can cancel at any time, effective at the end of the billing period.
Which IP prefixes can I announce?
Public prefixes you hold with OVHcloud: Additional IP blocks (IPv4 /24 to /30, IPv6 /56) and BYOIP blocks (IPv4 /19 to /24, announced in /24 minimum per internet routing standards; IPv6 announced as /48 to /56). Every prefix is validated for ownership and added to an explicit allowed list before it can be announced - unauthorised announcements are filtered automatically.
Are the BGP sessions established over the public internet?
No. All BGP sessions are private: they run between your servers (client peers) and OVHcloud infrastructure over your isolated vRack network. Only the public prefixes you announce are propagated to the internet, through OVHcloud border routers.
Does BGP Service support IPv6?
Yes - with full parity. You configure an IPv6 peering range alongside the IPv4 one and announce IPv6 prefixes with the same workflow, the same validation and the same multi-path and failover behaviour.
How can I use more than 4 peering hosts?
More than 4 peering hosts can only be used with the Route Server configuration. Configure the peering between OVHcloud edge routers and your Route Server to achieve this.
How many BGP sessions can I establish?
Each BGP Service allows configuring IPv4 and IPv6 peering range, each supporting up to 4 private client peer sessions backed by 4 OVHcloud infrastructure peers. To centralise routing policy, you can also deploy your own Route Server in the vRack and redistribute routes (up to 10 next-hops) from your backend servers.
How fast is failover?
When a server or its BGP session fails, its route is withdrawn in seconds (depends on the use-case, can take up to 4 seconds) and traffic converges on the remaining announcing servers. Unlike legacy Additional IP failover, no control-plane or API operation is involved.
Can I use my own public ASN to peer?
BGP Service uses only private ASN numbers for peering (range 64512–65534) in order to exchange route prefixes; No public ASN can be used within this service. Exception to this is situation when public IP block is brought into OVHcloud using BYOIP with customer ASN number (so in fact using BYOAS). That way, such IP block announced by OVHcloud to the internet with customer ASN is kept as the origin AS in the path ASN. In this setup, customer controls when and where which parts of the public IP blocks are announced with private BGP peering (the BGP Service).
Which OVHcloud products are compatible?
Any service connected to your vRack in the same location: Bare Metal dedicated servers, Hosted Private Cloud / VMware on OVHcloud, and Public Cloud instances. vRack and vRack Services are prerequisites; Additional IP and BYOIP provide the public prefixes you announce.
How do I automate BGP Service?
BGP Service is API-first: ordering, configuration and lifecycle are available through the OVHcloud API, the OVHcloud Terraform provider and the CLI, alongside guided workflows in the OVHcloud Control Panel.
Can I use it to establish BGP session from outside OVHcloud network?
No, this product allows only private peering from hosts inside OVHcloud network to the edge routers to let customers better control failover actions.
Can I use this service to establish a BGP session with OVHcloud in Point-of-Presence (PoP)?
No, please refer to peering.ovh.net instead.