OVHcloud unveils Bare Metal Pod: a sovereign ultra-secure solution undergoing SecNumCloud qualification, for sensitive environments

PRESS RELEASE

OVHcloud unveils Bare Metal Pod: a sovereign ultra-secure solution undergoing SecNumCloud qualification, for sensitive environments 

Roubaix – September 19th 2024 –OVHcloudtoday announces the launch of Bare Metal Pod, a trusted cloud platform designed to meet the most stringent security

requirements. Through physical and software isolation, Bare Metal Pod is undergoing ANSSI (Agence nationale de la sécurité des systems d’information) SecNumCloud qualification. It will be used by the AIFE (Agence pour l’Informatique Financière de l’Etat).

Physical and software isolation 

To answer SecNumCloud requirements, each Bare Metal Pod customer is completely isolated both at the physical and software level. Customer services operate in a dedicated space within an OVHcloud datacenter with fully dedicated servers and network equipment. 

Leveraging 25 years of expertise, OVHcloud has developed a control software to manage infrastructure lifecycles in datacenters capable of hosting up to 100,000 servers. This software has been entirely rewritten to work starting with just 8 servers. Each client uses control software hosted in their own physical space, ensuring autonomous and secure management, that can in the future scale to up to 5,000 servers per project.

Advanced security and strengthened encryption

The Bare Metal Pod control software includes advanced security mechanisms designed to meet the SecNumCloud qualification requirements. Each customer benefits from centralised access through an IAM system (Identity and Access Management) providing granular control of all infrastructure access. Thanks to the management of encryption keys through the customers’ KMS (Key Management System), drives are encrypted natively with the SED technology. Furthermore, clients benefit from complete observability over their infrastructure, with centralised logs and metrics collection for both proactive and reactive management of services.

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Availability in three geographical zones for maximum resiliency

To ensure service continuity and the greatest resiliency, customers can simultaneously deploy Bare Metal Pod in 1, 2 or 3 OVHcloud datacenters located in France. With each deployment, a new Bare Metal Pod is installed with the independent control software, ensuring a total separation between the different datacenters. The encrypted network between datacenters grants complete geographical redundancy. 

Bare Metal Pod includes a web management interface and an API to automate operations with tools like Terraform or Ansible. The API respects OpenStack standards facilitating reversibility and offering maximum flexibility in managing infrastructures.

Tailored development for SecNumCloud

The ANSSI SecNumCloud qualification process has already reached major milestones. J0 status has been validated in April 2024 and the J1 status has been confirmed. A final audit is scheduled for the end of the year 2024 with a complete qualification expected beginning of 2025.

AIFE, first public sector client of OVHcloud Bare Metal Pod

The AIFE (Agence pour l’Informatique Financière de l’Etat), a government agency with national authority attached to the French Ministry of the Economy and Finance, is the first institutional customer using Bare Metal Pod. The PPF (Portail Public de Facturation) will handle highly sensitive data with dense traffic, making Bare Metal Pod the logical choice for a sovereign solution combining dedicated and powerful servers in a SecNumCloud qualified environment. 

A trusted cloud-oriented roadmap

Bare Metal Pod is a key new step in OVHcloud's SecNumCloud roadmap. Today, all Public

Cloud teams at OVHcloud are using Bare Metal Pod to port the 40 Public Cloud ISO 27001 compliant products to the SecNumCloud Public Cloud. OVHcloud aims at filing a

SecNumCloud qualification request in the coming months. 

Bare Metal Pod is a complete hardware and software platform that can also be deployed in customer datacenters. Thanks to the extended version of the control software, clients have additional software modules to manage the lifecycle of their servers and network equipment within the datacenter. This development results from collaborating with businesses and customers handling highly sensitive data in the public sector, with elevated privacy needs in their datacenters and at the edge.

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The commercial Bare Metal Pod offer, available at the end of 2024, will debut with configurations starting today from 8 servers in a half-rack, to 480 servers in 10 racks, with hardware and software. It will also include CloudStore, a new solution integrating the management of products such as VMware, Nutanix, OpenStack, MinIO, Ceph, MySQL, PGSQL, etc. The control software will be open sourced to ease collaboration with the ecosystem and lay the groundwork for Cloud management standards in the datacenter.  

Resources

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About OVHcloud

OVHcloud is a global cloud player and the leading European cloud provider operating over 450,000 servers within 43 data centers across 4 continents to reach 1,6 million customers in over 140 countries. Spearheading a trusted cloud and pioneering a sustainable cloud with the best performance-price ratio, the Group has been leveraging for over 20 years an integrated model that guarantees total control of its value chain: from the design of its servers to the construction and management of its data centers, including the orchestration of its fiber-optic network. This unique approach enables OVHcloud to independently cover all the uses of its customers so they can seize the benefits of an environmentally conscious model with a frugal use of resources and a carbon footprint reaching the best ratios in the industry. OVHcloud now offers customers the latest-generation solutions combining performance, predictable pricing, and complete data sovereignty to support their unfettered growth.

CONTACT

Media relations

Julien Jay

Communications & Public Relations Manager 

media@ovhcloud.com

+33 (0)7 61 24 46 67