Storage and Backup
Storage and Backup
This domain tests product selection more than configuration depth: given a durability, access-pattern and retrieval requirement, which OVHcloud storage or backup service fits, and what does it not do?
The services
- Object Storage - S3-compatible buckets (also Swift API), region-scoped, with versioning, lifecycle rules and object lock for immutability. It is an object store, not a mounted filesystem.
- Block Storage - volumes attached to Public Cloud instances, with snapshots; bound to a single region.
- File Storage and NAS-HA - shared NFS (and CIFS on NAS-HA) for servers that need a mountable filesystem.
- Archive Storage / Cold Archive - very low cost per TB with a retrieval delay measured in hours; Cold Archive is the deepest tier.
- Backup Storage - FTP, NFS or rsync target for dedicated servers; Veeam Managed Backup for managed VM backup.
Worked example
A company must retain 40 TB of compliance records for seven years. Access is rare, but legal may request a file with six hours' notice. Object Storage is too expensive at that volume, and Block Storage is wrong because it is attached to one instance. The correct design is Cold Archive or Archive Storage as the landing tier, fed from Object Storage by a lifecycle rule, because retrieval time and cost per TB, not latency, are the binding constraints.
Traps
Snapshots are not backups: a volume snapshot sits in the same region and depends on the source. Deleting a bucket requires it to be empty, and versioning raises cost because old versions persist. Egress traffic is billed, so restoring large archives has a cost. Object Storage has no POSIX semantics, so applications expecting file locking will fail.