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Code Name: Pionen White Mountains.  Location: Stolkhom, Sweden.  Assignment:  Perform as a Data Center?? 

Yep…the Pionen is a real, working data center located in central Stockholm.  It was totally redesigned and rebuilt from 2007 to 2008; after having served during the Cold War era as a nuclear shelter and military bunker.  The “code name” for the center?  Its actual code name from back in its military days.

James Bond would be proud.  Although it is serving a practical purpose, housing the Network Op Center for not only Sweden’s biggest ISP, but also the NOC for all of the operations for Bahnhof; it also clearly has a high tech almost science fiction class and style.  It also serves as a co-location hosting center; so others can come in and put their own servers there as well.  And once you’ve seen this place, you will not forget the experience. 

As Jon Karlung, CEO at Bahnhof (the ISP behind Pionen) puts it, “The unique design makes it a ‘talk about’ facility.  If you have been inside Pionen you will for sure tell somebody else about it.”  The photo shows the conference room which is suspended above the server area.  And get this, the floor of the conference room is the surface of the moon.  (Well, not really obviously, but designed to look just like it). 

They don’t even use a boring back-up power source.  Try German submarine engines.  Or to be more specific, two Maybach MTU diesel engines producing 1.5 Megawatt of power.  And for kicks, the folks at Pionen even installed the sound horn warning system from the original German sub.

(on left: Back up generators from the German subs.  On right: Interior Server area)

And the stuff there is pretty darn safe from attack.  It’ll even take a near hit from a hydrogen bomb.  Heck, most workplaces probably can’t take a hit from a big tree in a windstorm.  They’ve got 1.5 megawatt of cooling for the servers.  The network has both fiber optics and extra copper lines with three different physical ways to get into the mountain housing the server space for a Triple redundancy Internet backbone access.  Talk about being well connected.

Now to the really cool stuff.  They have waterfalls, greenhouses and simulated daylight.  They say they wanted to break the standard mold and really focus on the humans.  Karlung explains, “Rather than just concentrating on technical hardware we decided to put humans in focus.  Of course, the security, power, cooling, network, etc, are all top notch, but the people designing data centers often (always!) forget about the humans that are supposed to work with the stuff.”

It’s clear there was some kind of inspiration behind the design of building a place like Pionen in a mountain of bedrock.  Karlung confirms this.  “Since we got hold of this unique nuclear bunker in central Stockholm deep below the rock, we just couldn’t build it like a traditional – more boring – hosting center,” he said. “We wanted to make something different. The place itself needed something far out in design and science fiction was the natural source of inspiration in this case – plus of course some solid experience from having been a hosting provider for more than a decade.”

(workstation at Pionen)

And it’s also clear some of that inspiration came from places other than just thoughts that came to them in the middle of the night.  Some visual inspiration was needed, so where does one go?  Of course.  Movies.  “I’m personally a big fan of old science fiction movies. Especially ones from the 70s like Logan’s Run, Silent Running, Star Wars (especially The Empire Strikes Back) so these were an influence,“ said Karlung. “James Bond movies have also had an impact on the design. I was actually looking for the same outfit as the villain ‘Blofeld’ in Bond and even considered getting a white cat, but that might have been going a bit far!”

Right now, only 15 senior technical staff employees work full time in Pionen; so even if you think it is way cool, it may not be utterly practical sending them your resume just yet. 

Via: [royalpingdom]