Important Update: We’re moving! (Our servers)

Since inception in 2009 the BC Libraries Cooperative has operated its own server farm, co-located at the Harbour Centre facility in downtown Vancouver. This initial choice was made for many reasons, one main reason being that there were no good Canadian-based cloud hosting options at the time of our formation. In compliance with FOIPPA, we built our own hosting plant and operated it well and at competitive prices for the past 15 years.

Since then, a lot has changed. With many FOIPPA compliant cloud providers operating at a scale we can only dream of, the norm for organizations is to rely on leased cloud servers instead of their own hardware. In addition to reducing complexity, fragility and cost, the leased server model is far less challenging to hire for.

In January 2024 the Co-op’s board, informed by Co-op staff, approved a motion to move the Co-op’s technical operations out of our existing server farm and into a new plant we are building on leased hardware in the cloud, with the primary provider being OVH. The physical servers will be in a state-of-the-art facility outside Montreal, with much faster network access than we have.

Moving 15 years worth of technology and services is a big job, especially as we aim to do so with little-to-no interruptions of service. We will be sending out communications to individual services throughout the coming months with specific dates. But we wanted to inform you where many of the Co-op’s technical efforts are focused in 2024. We will start moving the first services this month, and plan to have everything moved to the new servers by end of October 2024.
If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to the Co-op’s System Manager Scott Leslie at scott.leslie@bc.libraries.coop.

Stay tuned for more updates.

Sincerely,

your BC Libraries Co-op team