We are starting our regionalisation journey
OVHcloud aims at providing the most robust infrastructure, allowing our customers to build services and applications that are highly available and resilient. Today, OVHcloud has reached another milestone — with its introduction of Regions and Availability Zones, along with associated supported products. The first 3-AZ Region, comprising three Availability Zones, is now available and located in Paris, France. The first product line to support this model is Bare Metal, but other lines, such as Public Cloud instances and Storage solutions, will be available soon. Also, OVHcloud plans to deploy its new 3-AZ Regions in other locations in the near future.
Regions
OVHcloud operates several Regions to ensure its global presence and offer its customers around the world top-notch services. A Region is a physical location comprising one or several datacentres where OVHcloud services are hosted. OVHcloud Regions are deployed in several locations, including Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific, and are interconnected to the OVHcloud backbone network. Please refer to the table below for the list of Regions.
There are currently 2 types of regions at OVHcloud:
3-AZ Region
This type of Region comprises three availability zones (AZ), is fully independent and offers resilience, multi-AZ application design and very low latency between AZs. The Paris Region (a 3-AZ Region) is the first to be deployed, with more to be launched in the future. For an overview of what an availability zone is, please refer to the next section.
1-AZ Region
This type of Region comprises only one global Availability Zone, but has fully redundant power and network - with a 2N+1 design - and is spread across multiple datacentres. Hence, it provides a high level of resilience. OVHcloud runs several 1-AZ Regions globally (Roubaix, Gravelines, Frankfurt, Beauharnois etc.). These Regions could transition from 1-AZ to 3-AZ over time.
Availability Zones
An availability zone is a distinct set of one or more physical datacentres present within a given region. They are designed to ensure higher availability and fault tolerance for cloud services and applications. Each AZ has its own independent and redundant power, cooling and network infrastructure. This prevents a complete region-wide downtime in the event of an infrastructure failure (e.g., electrical or network failure). While they ensure higher availability, AZs are also specifically designed to maintain high performance connectivity (i.e., low latency) between various AZs within a region.
Available OVHcloud Regions
The table below breaks down OVHcloud Regions, their official names, AZ names, types and Region code or trigram (as they are often called in API and UI, e.g., “RBX”).
List of available Regions
| Region location | Type | Region name | AZ name(s) | Region code (aka trigram) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Europe (France - Paris) | 3-AZ | eu-west-par | eu-west-par-a eu-west-par-b eu-west-par-c | PAR |
| Europe (France - Gravelines) | 1-AZ | eu-west-gra | eu-west-gra-a | GRA |
| Europe (France - Roubaix) | 1-AZ | eu-west-rbx | eu-west-rbx-a | RBX |
| Europe (France - Strasbourg) | 1-AZ | eu-west-sbg | eu-west-sbg-a | SBG |
| Europe (Germany - Limburg) | 1-AZ | eu-west-lim | eu-west-lim-a | LIM |
| Europe (Poland - Warsaw) | 1-AZ | eu-central-waw | eu-central-waw-a | WAW |
| Europe (UK - Erith) | 1-AZ | eu-west-eri | eu-west-eri-a | ERI |
| North America (US - East - Vint Hill) | 1-AZ | us-east-vin | us-east-vin-a | VIN |
| North America (US - West - Hillsboro) | 1-AZ | us-west-hil | us-west-hil-a | HIL |
| North America (Canada - East - Beauharnois) | 1-AZ | ca-east-bhs | ca-east-bhs-a | BHS |
| North America (Canada - East - Toronto) | 1-AZ | ca-east-tor | ca-east-tor-a | YYZ |
| Asia Pacific (Singapore -Singapore) | 1-AZ | ap-southeast-sgp | ap-southeast-sgp-a | SGP |
| Asia Pacific (Australia - Sydney) | 1-AZ | ap-southeast-syd | ap-southeast-syd-a | SYD |
| Asia Pacific (India – Mumbai) | 1-AZ | ap-south-mum | ap-south-mum-a | YNM |
| Europe (France - Roubaix) (SNC) | 1-AZ | eu-west-rbx-snc | eu-west-rbx-snc-a | RBX-SNC |
| Europe (France - Strasbourg) (SNC) | 1-AZ | eu-west-sbg-snc | eu-west-sbg-snc-a | SBG-SNC |
| Europe (France - Gravelines) (SNC) | 1-AZ | eu-west-gra-snc | eu-west-gra-snc-a | GRA-SNC |
Scope of products
With multiple AZs, products can be run at different levels: at the "zone" level, at the "region" level or at global level.
A product provided at the "zone" level runs on a specific zone chosen by the customer when placing the order. In the event of a downtime within the zone, the product becomes unavailable. It is therefore up to the customer to handle the situation by, for example, creating a new product instance on an available AZ within the same region.
A product provided at the "region" level runs on a specific region chosen by the customer when placing the order. However, it does not run on a specific zone. In the event of a downtime in one of the Region’s zones, the product remains available on AZs that are still functional.
The following products are available in 3-AZ Regions*.
| Product | Scope | Region | Region location |
| Additional IP | Regional | eu-west-par | Europe (France - Paris) |
| Baremetal Scale servers | Zonal | eu-west-par | Europe (France - Paris) |
| vRack** | Global | eu-west-par | Europe (France - Paris) |
*Presently, only the Paris Region is a 3-AZ Region
**vRack is a global L2 network and does not support "zone" or "region" level resilience.
Customers seeking higher resilience levels should choose a 3-AZ-supported Region and build a specific design based on multiple AZs.
Region selection tips
Typically, it is recommended that a region be selected to ensure optimal performance for users, especially in terms of latency. For example, a service with users or customers based in Western Europe would require a Region in Western Europe, e.g., eu-west-par (Paris, France) or eu-west-rbx (Roubaix, France). A service available globally should be spread across multiple Regions around the world, e.g., eu-west-gra (Gravelines, France) for Europe, ap-southeast-sgp (Singapore) for Asia-Pacific and ca-east-bhs (Beauharnois, Canada) for North America.
FAQ
Do you plan to deploy more 3-AZ Regions in the future?
Yes, stay tuned.
Which products support 3-AZ Regions?
Bare Metal servers and Additional IP products are the first to support 3-AZ. Please visit corresponding product page for more information. Public Cloud and Storage solutions will be supported in the near future.
How regionalization will impact product experience?
OVHcloud plans to gradually transition products to Regions as product lines are scaled to support 3-AZ Regions. As soon as a new product can support a 3-AZ, Region and AZ concepts will appear in their UI and API where relevant, as well as in website and documentation content. During this transition, OVHcloud will ensure that all products remain operable without any change in either customer code or habits by, in particular, maintaining API compatibility.
As of today, only the Bare Metal and Additional IP product lines support 3-AZ and are thus, the only products that expose this transition — via new UI and API experience. More products such as Public Cloud instances or Storage products will soon be supporting this model. Over time, several products will support Region and AZs.