The Hollywood-style Swedish data center, called Pionen, is managed by Bahnhof, one of Sweden’s largest ISP’s. The facility is located in a Cold War era nuclear shelter, deep in the bedrock, right underneath Stockholm city. It was designed to be able to withstand a near hit by a hydrogen bomb.

Pionen is one the best-connected places in Northern Europe. It offers triple redundancy Internet backbone access. The network has full redundancy with both fiber optics and extra copper lines with multiple different physical ways into the mountain.

Backup power supply is ensured by two Maybach MTU diesel engines that were originally designed for submarines. They are capable of producing 1.5 Megawatts of power. Just for fun, a warning system (sound horns) from the original German submarine has been installed.

The cooling is handled by “Baltimore Aircoil fans producing a cooling effect of 1.5 megawatts”. This is enough to cool several hundred rack-mounted servers at a time.

Boasting 11,950 sq ft of space the data center houses a Network Operations Center (NOC) for all of Bahnhof’s operations. One of five data centers, it is the largest and is manned by a 15 member team of senior technical staff.

Global Switch’s network comprises multiple main production servers, backup servers, as well as administrative, spare and dedicated servers.

Our state-of-the-art data center is a Tier 3 data center located in Rotterdam, The Netherlands (optimal for worldwide coverage). The data center has the ability to remain active through a power outage of up to 72 Hours. The network is connected to 7 premium backbone providers using 100GE uplinks. We use multiple Points of Presence (POPs) for redundancy allowing us to provide robust connections to even the most problematic network destinations for all clients. We use Juniper routers with 2 redundant routing engines, 2 redundant uplink connections per switch, and redundant fiber rings. The power supply uses A+B feeds (one feed from main power and one from UPS backup power). The network uses the Noction Intelligent Routing Platform which automatically analyzes routes with congestion or packet loss and then reroutes packets to their optimal routes. This has been shown to improve performance and deliverability by up to 50% by bypassing congestion and packet loss.

ISO 27001 assures customers that the integrity, confidentiality and availability of their data are guaranteed and that potential risks to their data are evaluated on a regular basis. Our data center constantly enforces the strict procedures established by this standard.

Our data center is highly-secured and conforms to the highest security certification requirements. Only authorized personnel are allowed to enter the data floors. The data center is watched by closed-circuit cameras and is monitored 24x7.

Our data center's cooling system components are fully redundant meaning that if a component fails, the indoor temperature is not compromised. The data floor is filled with sealed cold-air passageways which ensure that the cold air is used efficiently.

Our data center provides 2 separated power supply lines. In case of a grid failure, the system automatically & instantly switches to redundant UPS batteries while the generator system starts up. The 13,000 liters diesel generator can then run for 50 hours.

The Very Early Smoke Detection Alarm (VESDA) aspiration systems are installed in all data floors. In the unlikely event of a fire, a special gas is rapidly released which quickly lowers the concentration of oxygen and smothers the fire without damaging the servers.