.ovh is an active generic top-level domain (gTLD) delegated to the DNS root zone on June 20, 2014. The domain is sponsored by OVH, a major French telecommunications and hosting business. This top-level domain is run by the AFNIC and registrations are open to all via OVH and Espace2001.
OVH is an Internet Service Provider providing dedicated servers, shared and cloud hosting, domain registration, and VOIP telephony services. The company is a simplified joint-stock company under French law and its headquarters are in Roubaix, northern France.
The company has seventeen datacenters housing around 180,000 machines. The company offers localized services in France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, Ireland, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Lithuania, the Czech Republic and Finland. It has also expanded its services to the United States of America and Canada. The company has deployed IPv6 and DNSSEC, and sponsors the free certificate authority Let's Encrypt, which provides free certificates for secure websites.
OVH was founded in 1999 by Octave Klaba, at the time a third year student at the Institut catholique d'arts et métiers (ICAM) in Lille.
In 2001, OVH rented 7 racks from Paris hosting provider Claranet. With its expansion, more room was needed and cooling became an issue, so OVH moved to an abandoned datacenter from Free, a French ISP. Shortly after, the server park reached 1,200 machines. To keep up with the growing demand, OVH installed new servers.