News from Verne Global

ZD Net 2012, February 10th

Iceland has ambitions to become major provider of low-cost data storage, but its isolation could make this a tough sell to businesses.

The country hopes to foster a datacenter industry, so it can use its energy beyond the three aluminum refineries currently operating in the country, Ossur Skarpheoinsson, Iceland's minister of foreign affairs, said on Thursday.

"In the future, [datacentres] will be one of the major ways to export green energy beyond the borders of Iceland," Skarpheoinsson told ZDNet UK. "My vision is that during this century we will move away from this basic production of aluminum smelters that are important to our economy and use [the energy] for a green economy." Iceland gets the overwhelming majority of its energy from geothermal and hydroelectric sources, Skarpheoinsson said. These are environmentally friendly, but unlike natural gas or petroleum, are difficult to package up and export. Some utility companies are working on high-voltage undersea powercables to deliver the power to Europe, but it will be years before this happens, ZDNet UK understands.

At the moment the Iceland has two datacentres: Thor, a 28,000-square foot facility that opened in mid-2010 that consumes around 3.5MW of power, and the Verne Global datacentre, which officially opened on Thursday and has leased a campus that gives it access to over 100MW of datacentre power, sourced from renewable hydroelectric and geothermal sources.

While Verne Global is starting out with a single Colt modular datacenter using 1.5MW of power, it is confident it will eventually meet or exceed the 100MW available. What sets Iceland apart from other countries is the combination of its excess power capacity, and how its utility companies are prepared to price their electricity: Verne Global has a power agreement with Icelandic utility company Landsvirkjun that gives it predicable prices for the next 20 years — a deal that is hard to find in any other European country, according to the datacentre provider's chief technology officer, Tate Cantrell.

In the next 10 years, Landsvirkjun hopes to supply one percent of Europe's datacentre power needs — around 160MW — to facilities in Iceland, its chief executive Hordur Arnarson said.

Location concerns
However, some businesses prefer to have their data stored close to their location, so Iceland's distance could be a stumbling block.

"The subtle disadvantage it has is... putting a datacentre in a place you don't know so well is one thing. It's another thing putting it somewhere where you don't have a local business address," said Steve Wallage, managing director of Broadgroup Consulting.

On the other hand, Wallage noted that in Iceland "power availability isn't an issue, whereas in the UK you're concerned about power station decommissioning."

Landsvirkjun said 10MW could be provisioned to most sites within Iceland inside a year of being requested, compared with the average within Europe of one-and-a-half years to three years.

Verne Global, whose customers include Iceland-based infrastructure service GreenQloud and Eve Onlinedeveloper CCP, acknowledged the difficulty of convincing businesses to send their data further afield.

"Every opportunity has some components of it that are hard work," Cantrell said. "You take the cost benefit, plus 'green' [energy], and you throw in the ability to expand and power security for 20 years. That starts to be enough to get over any obstacles they might have."

TechWeek Europe 2012, February 10th

As Verne Global’s Icelandic data centre goes live, Colt upgrades its partnership to include a Point of Presence

Verne Global’s data centre in Keflavik, Iceland, has opened with a handful of initial customers and an upgraded level of network support from partner Colt.

The Keflavik centre, announced in September, has dual sources of renewable energy, and its first customers include cloud provider GreenQloud and CCP Gaming, the Iceland-based maker of the popular EVE Online game. Telecoms firm Colt, which built the data centre, has increased its commitment to Iceland, by installing a point of presence (PoP) in the site and announcing plans for a redundant ring between Iceland, Amsterdam and London.

Consumerisation of the data centre?
The site has 500 square metres of data centre space (pictured), built inside a warehouse owned by Verne on a former NATO airbase, using the modular design Colt launched in 2010.

Verne owns some 36,000 square metres of warehouses at Keflavik, and opted to use Colt for the first space fitted out inside them.

Despite being “modular” and shipping within four months,  Colt’s system looks exactly like a conventional data centre on the inside, and is a long way from the shipping containers used by some sites, allowing hot-and-cold aisle containment and conventional racks, and having an expected PUE (power usage effectiveness) of less than 1.2.

“It’s the consumerisation of the data centre,” said Bernard Geogheghan, Colt’s vice president for data centre spaces, at the launch event in Iceland.  “We have a defined build, at a defined price. We tell you exactly what it will do. PUE has always been aget a ‘design PUE’ – we bring you a defined PUE”.

A boost for Iceland
“This is a new chapter in the industrial history of Iceland,” said  Ossur Skarphéðinsson, Iceland’s Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Iceland has a surplus of electricity, generated by two renewable sources – geothermal and hydroelectric energy. The government wants to encourage data centres to locate in the country, and Skarphéðinsson said it has provided the most favourable tax regime it can within the rules of the European Union, which Iceland hopes to join in due course.

“We as a government are committed to providing a favourable tax and legal environment to ensure that Iceland is as competitive as any country in the EU,” he said. Due to their base-load renewable supply, Iceland’s energy companies can offer a low energy price of $43 (£27)per MWh, and guarantee that for twelve years. In addition, as Sweden’s cold climate proves,  less electricity is needed since none is required for chiller units to keep the equipment cool.

A game bigger than Iceland
At this stage, the customers are all service provider partners except for one company which is based in Iceland. CCP Games makes EVE Online, a game whose virtual population of 450,000 worldwide exceeds Iceland’s 320,000 real inhabitants, and hopes to score a bigger hit with Dust 514, a game now in private beta.

“It is really good to have access to high class facilities here i our home country,” said Hilmar Veigar Pétursson CCP’s chief executive. CCP is running its back office functions from the Verne site, and will carry on hosting the games in Telehouse in London, with various “battle servers” distributed through the world.

“Connectivity  from Iceland is adequate for some parts of the world. We will watch what future development will be,” said Petursson. “It is about latency and the number of hops . There is a lot of management to reduce the number of hops.”

Iceland is increasing its bandwidth to both the USA and Europe, with two new fibre cables planned for the near future.

GreenQloud, a low-carbon infrastructure as a service (IaaS) player, which launched as a beta in 2010, is planning to run its commercial service on Verne’s data centre. The firm will keep some of its activity in the other new Icelandic data centre, Thor, but will make Verne its main centre, said Eirikiur Hrafnsson, CEO of GreenQloud.

“GreenQloud has a rather unique product,” said Verne CEO Jeff Munroe. “They have the  ability to take Amazon AWS customers and seamlessly transfer them to a green cloud.” This is done through a clone of the Amazon interface.

One other partner was present at the launch in Iceland. Opin Kerfi (“Open Systems”) is a reseller and integrator which will offer a cloud service from the centre, while handling equipment upgrades and repairs for other Verne customers.

Data Center Knowledge 2012, February 9th

Verne Global's 5,400 square foot data hall is assembled from 37 modules built in a factory by Colt, and then deployed at the Verne Global data center in Iceland.

Has Iceland arrived as a data center destination? Today marked a coming-out party for the leading player in the nascent Iceland data center market, as Verne Global unveiled its new “modular colo” data center in Keflavik, along with three new tenants.

Today’s event for analysts and media also served as a showcase for the use of modular designs to rapidly deploy data center space in remote locations with vast sources of renewable power. Working with modular specialist Colt, Verne Global was able to create a 500 square meter (5,400 square foot) data center in four months. The data center hall consists of 37 modules that were built in the UK and then shipped to Iceland, where they were assembled into a completed data center.

Modular Design Meets Renewable Energy
The new facility, built in a former NATO command center, takes advantage of Iceland’s vast supply of renewable energy (hydroelectric and geothermal), along with a cool climate that allows the year-round use of outside air for free cooling for the entire year. Colt customized its modular data center hall design, equipping it with cooling modules that allow Verne to cool servers using air from outside the data center. In winter months, the system gives Verne the option of mixing the chilly outside air with exhaust heat from servers.

“With Colt’s modular approach, we have the ability to streamline the design process while leveraging Colt’s factory controlled fabrication process to ensure quality,” said Jeff Monroe, CEO at Verne Global. “This approach also provides Verne Global with the opportunity to quickly scale capacity to address customer demand in a rapid timeframe.”

Last fall Verne announced managed hosting provider Datapipe as the first tenant for its facility. Today Verne announced three new customers:

• Game developer CCP Games (CCP), the creator of the EVE Online virtual world, is moving some of its corporate hosting to Verne’s Iceland campus. After studying alternatives to its primary hosting facility in London, CCP chose Verne based on the site’s renewable power grid and strategic location between its two primary markets. But a key factor was Verne’s ability to offer fixed power pricing for extended contracts. “Being able to select a green data centre for our corporate hosting needs is a key benefit to CCP Games,” said Ingvar Bjarnason, CCP’s IT Director. “However, the primary reasons for selecting Verne Global above all other alternative sites were the availability and predictability of power and the option of securing long-term price guarantees at attractive price levels.”
• GreenQloud, which offers carbon-neutral cloud services,is basing its hosting service from the Verne campus. GreenQloud offers hosting and storage for the European and North American markets, and the Iceland site can act a single hub for both markets. GreenQloud was founded in 2010 and is privately funded by Icelandic investors and has won several government grants.
• IT service provider Opin Kerfi has been selected as Verne’s preferred systems integrator. Opin Kerfi has served as the IT partner for leading Icelandic companies, offering solutions from HP, Microsoft and Ciso. Opin Kerfi is also taking space in the data centre for its own hosting requirements to support its growing managed services business. “Our rich history, dedicated IT support team and established relationships with leading solution providers such as HP, Microsoft, Cisco and others will help ensure that Verne Global’s customers have the support needed to succeed,” said Gunnar Guðjónsson, CEO of Opin Kerfi.
• Colt also announced plans to extend its European network into Iceland with a new Point-of-Presence (PoP) that will connect Colt’s backbone with the Verne’s data center site, providing a gateway connection from mainland Europe into Iceland.

The launch of the Verne Global facility opens a new chapter for the company and its host country. Verne announced the project in early 2008, but has taken a while to complete its concept and line up customers – which wasn’t always easy when Iceland was making headlines for its economic crisis and ash-spewing volcanic eruptions.

Development Effort Dates to 2007
Iceland’s efforts started even earlier. In 2007 the government of Iceland began been touting the country as an affordable destination for data center development, citing its abundant supply of geothermal power. The country has other data centers, including the Thor facility, which also uses modules.

That’s helping Iceland emerge as a case study in strategies that pair modular design with renewable energy, which is growing in importance as more companies make corporate commitments to sustainable operations. Colt has been on the front lines of efforts to make modular designs more attractive to enterprise customers, adapating multi-module systems that can be joined to create a conventional data hall, rather than a simple container.

“We are continuously working to improve our modular design allowing customers to operate at maximum efficiency no matter what the environmental conditions or where the data centre is located,” said Bernard Geoghegan, Executive Vice President at Colt Data Centre Services. “We can deliver it almost anywhere in the world. The customization of Verne Global’s data centre campus demonstrates this flexible approach to our customers’ needs.”

“Partnering with Colt enables us to have a purpose-built facility supporting our mission of delivering the world’s first dual-sourced renewably powered data center,” said Monroe. “We see a strong demand in the colocation market and we required a partner who could provide highly resilient, flexible data centre space, configured to our specific technical requirements.”

Datacenter Dynamics 2012, February 9th

Point of presence will link Iceland to Amsterdam and London

Colt will establish a point of presence in Verne Global’s data center in Keflavik, Iceland to connect its pan-European access and backbone network with the site, The PoP will link into Colt’s European network in Amsterdam and London. The connection to Iceland, due to be completed by mid 2012, broadens the availability of Colt’s integrated network and computing solutions for enterprises, carriers and channel partners, it said. Colt’s platform includes 19 Colt data centres and a 35,000km high-performance network in 21 European countries and the USA.

“Given its location and abundance of natural resources for renewable energy, Iceland is expected to become the new epicentre for business between the USA and mainland Europe, and as such, it is an important strategic step for us to expand our network presence into this region,” said François Eloy, Executive Vice President at Colt. As a primary networking partner, Colt will provide Verne Global’s customers with access to high performance network connectivity.

The PoP will enable Colt to offer end-to-end solutions between Iceland and the rest of Europe including colocation, managed IT services and the network access vital for delivery, backed by stringent Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

“As a leading provider of network access with a network that stretches across Europe, Colt is the natural choice of partner for our Iceland data centre campus,” said Jeff Monroe, CEO of Verne Global.

The deal extends Colt’s engagement with Verne who is a customer for its Modular data center solution.