Amsterdam in Beta Status: New Open Telekom Cloud Data Center Opens

In this article you will read about:

• How the new data center in Amsterdam is geo-redundantly expanding the Open Telekom Cloud’s resources,
•  Which services are already available in the data center’s beta status,
• And what lies behind the First Mover and Science Cloud discount offers.

Kickoff: The Open Telekom Cloud is opening its new twin-core data center in Amsterdam. It is initially in beta status with a limited range of services but with special starting offers. The first customers to opt for IT resources from the Open Telekom Cloud in the Netherlands will be offered first mover discounts and special conditions for their individual range of services. 

For customers in the new region most of the Open Telekom Cloud services are available in the data center’s beta status. Further services will be added in the weeks ahead. “We will also again be increasing significantly the degree of automation between the different availability zones,” says John Hüsch, Head of Product Management, Open Telekom Cloud. 

Alongside and in interaction with the existing twin-core data center in Magdeburg and Biere the Open Telekom Cloud is now available across borders in two regions and six availability zones, and the new data center in Amsterdam almost doubles its capacity. On 21,000 square meters of floor space at the Dutch sites in Aalsmeer and Almere servers and storage facilities are now in operation to the highest security standards. “Demand for our open stack-based cloud resources has increased enormously of late,” Hüsch says. “The expanded resources not only create more space for growth but in addition significantly extend the opportunities for users yet again.” 

The German and Dutch Open Telekom Cloud sites are more than 500 km apart. That is a huge benefit for enterprises and organizations in the critical infrastructure category because the regions are far enough apart from each other to comply with the geo-redundancy recommendations of Germany’s Federal Office for Information Security (BSI). These specify a distance of at least 200 km for geo-redundant operation. If required, the data centers in Amsterdam can mirror the resources of the two Open Telekom Cloud data centers in Germany. Servers, storage and customers’ data from the Open Telekom Cloud would then still be available if forces of nature such as earthquakes or flooding were to cause outages at one site. 

The two twin-core data centers in Amsterdam are identical in construction and around 35 km apart. A high-speed network connects them. They are also directly linked to Europe’s second-largest Internet exchange point, AMS-IX as well as to the research network GÉANT. As all Open Telekom Cloud data centers are in Europe they provide cloud computing with built-in data protection and ensure GDPR-compliant storage and processing of personal data. 

The Europa Cloud offers up to 99.999 percent availability, or Tier 3+ security as defined by the Uptime Institute. That makes it particularly attractive for enterprises and institutions with high compliance and security requirements that also require great flexibility.

“We have been aware for years at first hand of what research scientists require of a Science Cloud and we bore them in mind in the design of our new site,” says Hüsch. “Users of our offering include, for example, the European nuclear research center CERN.”

Other teaching and research organizations have already booked resources and services to coincide with the launch of the new data center in Amsterdam, such as for a new innovative service for long-term archiving of research data. A further advantage for these customers in particular is that the public cloud offers access to super computers that deliver a multiple of the computing power of a standard server (high-performance computing).

More information about the new region can be found on the landing page. Current service updates are shared in the Open Telekom Cloud Community - where you can ask questions and make comments. You can also watch the recording of the webinar on this topic.