HETZNER ONLINE CELEBRATES GRAND OPENING OF NEW DATA CENTER PARK IN NUREMBERG

Nürnberg – 1. July 2012

Data Center operator Hetzner Online AG celebrated the launch of its new data center park in Nuremberg together with over 400 invited guests. City Mayor Dr. Ulrich Maly praised the entrepreneurial foresight of the company's founder Martin Hetzner and expressed his delight at having one of the most successful webhosting companies in the business now based in the city. 

In his speech, Dr. Maly made reference to the "Bayerns best 50“ award recently bestowed on the company. The award places Hetzner Online once again among the 50 fastest growing companies in Bavaria. 

The positive development of the company since the webhoster was founded in 1997 necessitated sourcing a further data center location to operate alongside the existing data centers in Nuremberg-Altenfurt and Falkenstein/Vogtland. 

"The main reasons for choosing the site at Nuremberg's Business Park are its close proximity to the substation, its fiber optic cable connections for a fast exchange of data, as well as an appopriately-sized area of land for further expansion," explained Christian Fitz, spokesman for Hetzner Online. 

The first two units are built on 1,650 m² of space each and offer room for up to 32,000 servers. The 40,000 m² site has the capacity for more than 150,000 servers to be permanently connected to the Internet in future. As with the existing data centers, great emphasis is placed here too on the highest standards: 

To ensure that the data center is supplied with sufficient power in the event of possible interruptions to the power supply, Hetzner Online obtains its power redundantly from the network provider. Power is supplied via two separate routes from the directly adjacent substation and distributed to the redundantly laid out transformers. The A/B track concept provides for an even higher power supply availability. 

Thanks to the N+1 principle, the state-of-the-art modular UPS facility is in a position to safeguard the power supply completely even if one module should fail. In the event of a prolonged period of outage, diesel generators supply the power for the whole of the data center. 

Direct free cooling is used to cool IT hardware. Compared to conventional systems this efficient method draws air from the outside for cooling. If the outdoor temperature rises, the system automatically switches to mixed mode and the air is cooled by compressors. The cold air is then precisely conducted through the higher than average raised flooring into the air ducts of the servers. For up to 92 per cent of the time, cooling takes place in direct free cooling mode thus protecting the environment. 

Hetzner Online was awarded the "GreenIT BestPractice Award“ at the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology in Berlin for this concept.