Dark fibre rings deployed in Amsterdam region

Founded by some hosting industry veterans and accompanying investors, Datacenter.com recently broke ground on its first data centre, Datacenter.com AMS1. Located in one of the world’s most ‘carrier fibre’-dense areas in the Amsterdam South-East business district, Datacenter.com AMS1 is a 137,778sq. ft. facility being built with scale in mind and modularity as a key component.

AMS1 features a highly energy-efficient data centre design. The use of indirect adiabatic cooling combined with innovative heat exchange technology and hot aisle containment results in a calculated, energy-efficient pPUE of 1.04. The modularity thus flexibility/scalability of its power and cooling technology would cater to the dynamic needs of a wide range of customers – from startups to enterprise-scale users. 

Relined Fiber Network will establish a Point-of-Presence (PoP) in Datacenter.com AMS1 - providing Datacenter.com with an extensive network, with multiple dedicated dark fibre rings spanning the Amsterdam metropolitan area. The two meet-me-rooms (MMRs) present in AMS1 provide customers with highly redundant connectivity options.

“We work with the world’s top carriers as well as local metro providers to unlock dark fibre options and meet bandwidth requirements for our customers,” said Jochem Steman, CEO of Datacenter.com. “Relined is the first carrier to open a PoP in AMS1, connecting the new facility to all other data centres in the Amsterdam metropolitan area and beyond. As a Dutch provider of reliable fibre infrastructure across the Netherlands, Relined is an ideal partner to start with, to interconnect our new facility with other data centres in the region.”

Cloud Services Providers (CSPs)
Datacenter.com AMS1 will soon be adding new carriers to its blend of carriers available onsite. “Extensive, carrier-neutral connectivity options are a prerequisite for flexible, cost-efficient and reliable deployment of IT infrastructures in our colocation environments,” added Mr. Steman. “Datacenter.com customers may expect a bit more though, as we’re a quite ambitious colocation company planning to do things differently.” 

One feature in Datacenter.com AMS1 that stands out from the crowd is the size of the data centre racks. Almost all data centres have standardised on 48U racks. Not Datacenter.com, they’ve decided to fill AMS1 with fully enclosed racks of 54U height.

“Our power infrastructure is highly scalable, starting at 5kW with seamless upgrading options and a maximum power capacity of 25kW,” added Mr. Steman. “These power supplies are fully in line with the requirements set by the use of 54U racks. Especially for cloud services providers and enterprises with demanding applications these 54U racks would be a good fit, as it allows them to maximise operational and cost efficiency with high rack loads while addressing dynamic demands set by cloud providers and enterprises alike.” 

Fortress-Like Facility 
Another feature that might shake up things in the data centre industry is Datacenter.com’s way of presenting itself. “We have paid over $500,000 to be able to utilise one of the most eye-catching and valuable domain names in the world,” added Steman. “But it doesn’t stop there. We chose to put our brand name quite large on the facade of the building as well.” 

“We know that it’s commonplace in the data centre market to keep things low-profile for reasons of security,” added Steman. “Then again, everyone knows where the Whitehouse and Kensington Palace are, so why not making these data centre premises high profile as well? A fortress-like facility, Datacenter.com AMS1 is even better secured than any palace in the world. And it helps our marketing efforts in a positive way. Not without success, I must say, as the first phase of AMS1 is almost sold-out already. Our fast, controlled growth on a global scale means customers will be reaping the benefits of economies of scale while addressing their international colocation needs.”