Dataplace, a leading carrier neutral datacentre operator in the Netherlands has opened a new Tier III datacentre in Hoofddorp. This new datacenter is designed for full 2N configuration and uses state-of-the-art proven technologies in the field of continuity, security and sustainability.
Located at Parellaan in Hoofddorp, this datacentre is operational competely since May 1.
Dataplace has an overall floor area of around 4,500 m2 and a net datacentre floor area of 2,000 m2. And, Dataplace to provide its high-quality datacentre services in the Amsterdam metropolitan. It is siuated at a right location to make Dataplace an attractive partner for both national and international organizations.
Gerben van der Veen, Managing Director of Dataplace: “As business activity in the Amsterdam metropolitan area continues to grow rapidly, demand for colocation services is also increasing. We are delighted that we can now provide datacentre solutions in the region from this brand-new location. Dataplace is a leading national player, and the opening of our sixth datacenter at this location allows us also to raise our international profile, while retaining our regional personality and personal approach as well as a strong customer focus.”
Jan Bonke, Manager Operations of Dataplace: “We relied on our own expertise and experience to design the technical systems and installations entirely in house. Our engineers created a 2N solution that is configured for a fully separated A & B power supply. This design fully meets the needs and demands that the market currently places on a hypermodern datacenter.
Alex Goldblum, CEO of Eurofiber: “This expansion gives Eurofiber a national cloud infrastructure in the Netherlands, providing a perfect platform for national and international parties alike. It represents another significant milestone for Dataplace, and by extension for Eurofiber, in line with our growth ambition in Europe. As part of this strategy we also recently acquired Eura DC, which operates two datacenters in France. Our digital infrastructure currently consists of eight hypermodern datacentres and 36,000 kilometres of installed fiberoptic cable.”
The datacentres across Europe have realised that it is important to come up with sustainable solutions. And, are overcoming the challenge with green solutions. Currently, hyperscale datacentre construction is being deployed to lead effective and energy efficient design and adopt latest technologies. Also, datacentres will soon deploy Artificial Intelligence to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 4% this decade.
Google is leading the same by reducing the use of energy by 50% by establishing advanced temperature management practices to cut energy use. Besides Google, there are a few datacentres that want to achieve sustainability and reduce the use of non-renewable sources. At a point in time when data gets bigger making datacentres use more energy and churn out more harmful greenhouse gases, these innovative projects in Europe are reducing the environmental impact greatly. Let’s take a look!
Project Natick (Scotland)
Founder/s: NA
Founded year: NA
Funding: NA
Microsoft is leveraging technology from submarines to become the pioneer in developing self-sufficient underwater datacentres that deliver lighting-quick cloud services to coastal cities. A shipping-container-size experimental prototype processes workload on the seafloor near Scotland’s Orkney Islands since 2018. The 40-foot-long prototype is fitted with 12 racks containing 864 servers and associated cooling-system infrastructure.
It is designed to create a datacentre using minimal energy and to operate for up to five years sans any maintenance. This datacentre will be cooled naturally by the cold northern seas. For cooling submarines, a heat-exchange process is deployed usually but this project involves renewable energy from the European Marine Energy Centre’s tidal turbines and wave energy converters.
Verne Global (Iceland)
Founder/s: Isaac Kato, Jeff Monroe
Founded year: 2007
Funding: €89.1 million
Verne Global comes to help in disposing of waste heat while it is chilly outside in Iceland. With its 44-acre campus situated close to the town of Keflavik, Verne Global does not require any dirty and expensive cooling system as the outside air is enough to cool the system entirely. The outside air enters the system via a controllable louvre system. It features adaptive temperature controls, smart lighting, hot/cold aisle containment, and the ability to optimise data hall resiliency.
The Verne Global datacentre runs completely on green energy with local hydroelectric and geothermal sources that were developed for aluminium smelting. It is touted that the site uses only 10% of the electricity available at any given time thereby facing no necessity to use non-renewable sources. Being the largest datacentre in Iceland, its clients include car makers such as Volkswagen and BMW.
Interxion (Netherlands)
Founder/s: Bart van den Dries
Founded year: 1998
Funding: NA
Interxion is a leading data centre provider in Europe providing both efficient energy practices and the use of renewable energy. It shows that being green is an essential way to win European customers. With over two decades of energy-saving designs, Interxion is a pioneer that uses 100% sustainable energy sources such as solar, wind, and water to power its European data centres. In recent times, Interxion chose to redeem the electricity usage of its data centres in the form of renewable energy produced in Europe itself.
Citigroup (Germany)
Founder/s: NA
Founded year: NA
Funding: NA
The Citigroup datacentre located in Frankfurt is completely green and has a living wall and a living roof as well. It carries the credits of being the world’s first datacentre to get the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design platinum certification. Citigroup claims that the site is optimised for natural air cooling and estimates that the overall cooling costs literally nothing for 65% of the year as it uses only 30% of the power used by a conventional datacentre and requires 40% of the heating energy. On the whole, it is estimated that the overall CO2 emissions will be cut by 11,750 tonnes a year as compared to the conventional facilities.
Besides minimising CO2 emissions, the Citigroup datacentre also saves water as it deploys innovative reverse osmosis water treatment in its cooling plant that is claimed to save nearly 50 million litres of water a year.
DigiPlex (Sweden)
Founder/s: Gisle Eckhoff
Founded year: 2000
Funding: NA
DigiPlex teamed up with Stockholm Exergi, an energy firm to use the excessive heat from its datacentre so that it can keep homes in the locality warm. The energy firm operates a district heating network supplying 90% of homes in Stockholm through a network of underground pipes carrying hot water. Along with this, DigiPlex contributes heat required to warm 10,000 homes. DigiPlex runs entirely on renewable energy since 2004.
The Copenhagen datacentre uses air-to-air evaporative cooling system capitalising on the moist and cool atmospheric conditions of the region. Its cooling system is managed and controlled using an algorithm that optimises the performance based on the amount of electrical power its data servers consume.
Green Mountain (Norway)
Founder/s: NA
Founded year: 2010
Funding: NA
Located under a mountain on the Norwegian island of Rennesøy, Green Mountain DC1-Stavenger is a former NATO ammunition bunker and one of the best protected datacentres in the world. There are claims that this data centre can withstand even a nuclear bomb. The company touts to use less than 3kW of power to achieve over 1,000kW of cooling. This datacentre uses 100% renewable power with the lowest power prices in Europe, which makes it one of the world’s greenest datacentres. It is completely airtight and doesn’t require the use of fire extinguishing gases. The entire space is flame retardant as it lowers oxygen content to 15%, which is much lower to start a fire.
Main image picture credits: Dataplace
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