On 10 March 2021, I had only just fallen asleep when my phone started buzzing. Then another notification, and another. In a matter of minutes, 142 of my servers went up in the clouds. And not the cloud-computing kind.

Most of them were physically going up in a column of smoke in Strasbourg.

My wife looked at me and asked if I wanted a coffee. I nodded. It was going to be a very long day.

At EuroBSDCon 2026, I won't be giving a theoretical lecture on high availability. Instead, I’m going to tell the raw story of that night: the emergency recovery, the architectural choices that actually saved us, and the ones that crumbled under pressure (because we rarely talk about what fails).

Most of all, I’ll explain why that night changed my perspective, and why I’ve come to see BSD systems not just as operating systems, but as essential, practical tools for building simpler, more resilient infrastructure.

The official schedule is now live. If you want to hear a real-world post-mortem, join me on Saturday, 12 Sept at 11:15 (Room D.0.02).

EuroBSDCon Full schedule: events.eurobsdcon.org/2026/sch…
See you there! ☕️

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