I took the chance on a summer day last year, 2019-06-20, to take a peek at the construction site of the Norwegian Bulk Infrastructure data center DK01 Campus being built in Kjersing, Esbjerg, Denmark. The pictures were stowed away until now but I think they deserve to be set free, so here goes.
The data center is a part of Bulk Infrastructure’s involvement in the Havfrue/AEC-2 subsea cable system (link to a previous blog post with details), built in cooperation with Google and Facebook, which is going to land on the Western shore of Jutland in the near future (ready for service expected in 2020-Q3). Bulk Infrastructure is going to build and operate an extension of the main cable trunk (with reduced capacity) to Norway and its datacenters present there.
It seems the DK01 Campus data center is going to act as an exchange point between other fiber networks Bulk is involved in and also landing in Esbjerg;
Havfrue
Havhingsten
Havsil
The location in Esbjerg is indicated by the orange area outline on the map below, courtesy of OpenStreetMap.
Arriving to the area from the highway driving along the Kjersing Ringvej the site is partly visible at your left hand.
Taking the 3rd exit in the roundabout onto Guldborgsundvej and turning the first left corner the site is just in front of you on the right.
Getting close the inner construction work is visible through the still open facade.
Stepping out and taking a snapshot closer to the fence.
Walking around the end of the building. Small compartments are visible.
At the other side there’s some foundation extending from the tall white wall barely visible. It is probably going to have lighter walls erected. Could be administration offices, where the high ceiling room with walls already standing is the main data center hall.
A lot of temporary arrangements on site for the construction period and site protection.
For the guests, like me, there is even a nice information board with outline map showing some details. As anticipated, offices on left side of the data center hall (right side of the building in the yellow marking, map is facing North, most pictures taken South-West). And also smaller rooms in the hall itself in the Northerne end of the building that we saw above. This is probably to be able to segment co-located equipment for restricting access.
My VCTA tracks pr. 2020-09-24 visualised by some hackish javascript on tools.mikini.dk/vcta (code).
The start of the Wadden Sea dykes at Roborg near Tjæreborg. National cycle route 1 (N1 – Vestkystruten) runs along here. Location: 55.45083;8.56325
In front of Sneum Sluse, where Sneum Å joins the sea. Location: 55.43321;8.60780
Along the dyke between Sneum Sluse and Darum. Approximate location: 55.42917;8.62244
Crossing Sneum Å again, this time in-land approximately 12 km upstream from Sneum Sluse. Location: 55.49637;8.69648
Following national cycle route 6 (N6 – Esbjerg-København) and regional cycle route 10 heading back towards Ålbæk, Opsneum and Tjæreborg. Location: 55.49874;8.69664
Outgoing track as recorded by OpenTracks.
Homegoing track as recorded by OpenTracks.
WARNING: as OSM user “mmd” wisely points out (in comment to OSM diary for this post) the sort of thing described here is dangerous to do by hand, and should not be done on the main production instances (there are testing instances for playing around with the API, a little documentation here). He also points out that the feature packed JOSM editor actually supports continuing a changeset regardless of where it has been initiated. So if you just need to continue working on a changeset (but remember the 1 hour idle timeout) be sure to check out the JSOM upload documentation. Thanks mmd, for being the sane voice ;).
During an editing session the Android OpenStreetMap editor Vespucci crashed on me, which made the mapping UI unusable (objects greyed out and unable to select or edit, had to purge all data to recover functionality). Luckly, I could still navigate the menus, upload changes and opt to not close the changeset. Now, I had long wondered whether the OSM API allowed to continue amending changes to an open changeset from some other editor, so the quest began.
I had the intention of adding a tag representing the name of a building in Esbjerg known as “ISC Huset” (ISC is an engineering consultancy, see wikipedia, and more about the construction), which houses a number of healtcare clinics. The building’s address is Borgergade 70, 6700 Esbjerg (current address node).
This blog post willl attempt to actually add the tag by hand on the command line.
References to OSM objects used:
Option summary for GNU wget used to do HTTP requests below:
NOTE: I’ve broken some long output lines replicated below to make it fit the blog, but inserted an escape character (\) before the inserted newline to help copy’n’pasting.
Lets start by looking at the changeset’s metadata.
This can be done by issuing an unauthenticated GET request to the “/api/0.6/changeset/<changeset id>” endpoint.
Note that the ‘changeset’ element has the attribute ‘open=”true”‘ required to be able to modify the changeset. The editor used to create the changeset needs to have done this without explicitly closing it (Vespucci & JOSM closes by default but can be configured not to, iD always closes).
$ wget -nv -O- http://api.openstreetmap.org/api/0.6/changeset/88490797 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <osm version="0.6" generator="CGImap 0.8.3 (802 thorn-02.openstreetmap.org)" copyright="OpenStreetMap and contributors"\ attribution="http://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright" license="http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/1-0/"> <changeset id="88490797" created_at="2020-07-25T09:51:30Z" open="true" user="mikini" uid="2051"\ min_lat="55.4654072" min_lon="8.4378053" max_lat="55.5258532" max_lon="8.4639026" comments_count="0" changes_count="68"> <tag k="source" v="survey;research"/> <tag k="locale" v="da-DK"/> <tag k="created_by" v="Vespucci 14.1.4.0"/> <tag k="comment" v="Details at Klevestien & Borgergade in Esbjerg and Tarp."/> </changeset> </osm> 2020-07-25 14:26:52 URL:http://api.openstreetmap.org/api/0.6/changeset/88490797 [709] -> "-" [1] $
To test that the changeset is open, and that we can authenticate correctly, lets try amending it with an empty osmChange structure.
This can be done by issuing an authenticated POST request to the “/api/0.6/changeset/<changeset id>/upload” endpoint.
This also seem to reset the 60 minute timer used for auto-closing the changeset (see mention of “idle timeout” in changeset wiki article).
$ wget -nv -O- --user=mikini --ask-password https://api.openstreetmap.org/api/0.6/changeset/88490797/upload --post-data="<osmChange></osmChange>" Password for user ‘mikini’: Authentication selected: Basic realm="Web Password", charset="UTF-8" <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <diffResult version="0.6" generator="CGImap 0.8.3 (8531 thorn-03.openstreetmap.org)" copyright="OpenStreetMap and contributors"\ attribution="http://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright" license="http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/1-0/"/> 2020-07-25 14:27:20 URL:https://api.openstreetmap.org/api/0.6/changeset/88490797/upload [278] -> "-" [1] $
The API’s “changeset/<changeset id>/upload” method supports only modifications encoded in the osmChange format which requires changes to be described as complete way/node/relation objects. That is, you can not ask the API to “add this tag to this way”, you need instead to describe the modified way completely saying “this way now looks like this”, including anything (like node references or existing tags) that was not modified. So to make a modificatino to the building’s way we need to retrieve the current version, modify it as needed and upload the complete new way.
Thus the procedure contains these steps;
This can be done by issuing an unauthenticated GET request to the “/api/0.6/way/<way id>” endpoint.
The stdin splitter ‘tee’ is used here to both show the result in terminal and put it into file 185369466_v3.osc that we can use for amending the way with the wanted modifications.
$ wget -nv -O- http://api.openstreetmap.org/api/0.6/way/185369466|tee 185369466_v3.osc <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <osm version="0.6" generator="CGImap 0.8.3 (28697 thorn-01.openstreetmap.org)" copyright="OpenStreetMap and contributors"\ attribution="http://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright" license="http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/1-0/"> <way id="185369466" visible="true" version="3" changeset="84400254" timestamp="2020-04-30T09:35:21Z" user="mikini" uid="2051"> <nd ref="1959614623"/> <nd ref="1959614727"/> <nd ref="6299449794"/> <nd ref="1959614650"/> <nd ref="1959614630"/> <nd ref="6299449793"/> <nd ref="1959614765"/> <nd ref="7466482063"/> <nd ref="7466482064"/> <nd ref="7466482065"/> <nd ref="7466482062"/> <nd ref="1959614729"/> <nd ref="1959614623"/> <tag k="building" v="yes"/> </way> </osm> 2020-07-25 14:54:30 URL:http://api.openstreetmap.org/api/0.6/way/185369466 [769] -> "-" [1] $
Now we need to build an osmChange file out of the existing <way>…</way> element from the output above describing the wanted building. This involves;
Use your favorite editor (emacs would be my preference) to load the 185369466_v3.osm file, make the modifications and save it as 185369466_v4.osc. OSM tags are a XML empty-element tags containing the OSM tag’s key and value in the “k” and “v” attributes, thus the “name” tag of the building I needed to add would be ‘<tag k=”name” v=”ISC Huset”/>’, I also added some other related tags (“source:name” and “website”).
The finished .osc file now looks like this;
$ cat 185369466_v4.osc <osmChange> <modify> <way id="185369466" visible="true" version="3" changeset="88490797" timestamp="2020-04-30T09:35:21Z" user="mikini" uid="2051"> <nd ref="1959614623"/> <nd ref="1959614727"/> <nd ref="6299449794"/> <nd ref="1959614650"/> <nd ref="1959614630"/> <nd ref="6299449793"/> <nd ref="1959614765"/> <nd ref="7466482063"/> <nd ref="7466482064"/> <nd ref="7466482065"/> <nd ref="7466482062"/> <nd ref="1959614729"/> <nd ref="1959614623"/> <tag k="building" v="yes"/> <tag k="name" v="ISC Huset"/> <tag k="source:name" v="sign;website"/> <tag k="website" v="https://www.isc.dk/isc-huset-esbjerg/"/> </way> </modify> </osmChange> $
Wdiff’ing against the .osm source shows exactly what changed (additions between “{+” & “+}”, removals between “[-” & “-]”);
$ wdiff 185369466_v3.osm 185369466_v4.osc [-<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <osm version="0.6" generator="CGImap 0.8.3 (28697 thorn-01.openstreetmap.org)" copyright="OpenStreetMap and contributors"\ attribution="http://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright" license="http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/1-0/">-]{+<osmChange> <modify>+} <way id="185369466" visible="true" version="3" [-changeset="84400254"-] {+changeset="88490797"+} timestamp="2020-04-30T09:35:21Z" user="mikini" uid="2051"> <nd ref="1959614623"/> <nd ref="1959614727"/> <nd ref="6299449794"/> <nd ref="1959614650"/> <nd ref="1959614630"/> <nd ref="6299449793"/> <nd ref="1959614765"/> <nd ref="7466482063"/> <nd ref="7466482064"/> <nd ref="7466482065"/> <nd ref="7466482062"/> <nd ref="1959614729"/> <nd ref="1959614623"/> <tag k="building" v="yes"/> {+<tag k="name" v="ISC Huset"/> <tag k="source:name" v="sign;website"/> <tag k="website" v="https://www.isc.dk/isc-huset-esbjerg/"/>+} </way> [-</osm>-] {+</modify> </osmChange>+} $
Now, we’ll again use the changeset upload method but this time supplying our actual osmChange elemet in the .osc file.
The output is a bit elaborate, because I had enabled full output from wget while debugging what changes to the <way> element was needed for the server to accept the upload (only the “changeset” attribute needs to match the open changeset as outlined in the “Modify building data” above). I’ve highligted the actual server response telling that the changes were accepted and way #185369466 is now at v4.
$ wget -S -O- --user=mikini --ask-password https://api.openstreetmap.org/api/0.6/changeset/88490797/upload --post-file=185369466_v4.osc Password for user ‘mikini’: --2020-07-25 15:44:41-- https://api.openstreetmap.org/api/0.6/changeset/88490797/upload Resolving api.openstreetmap.org (api.openstreetmap.org)... 130.117.76.12, 130.117.76.13, 130.117.76.11, ... Connecting to api.openstreetmap.org (api.openstreetmap.org)|130.117.76.12|:443... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... HTTP/1.1 401 Unauthorized Date: Sat, 25 Jul 2020 13:44:41 GMT Server: Apache/2.4.29 (Ubuntu) Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains; preload Expect-CT: max-age=0, report-uri="https://openstreetmap.report-uri.com/r/d/ct/reportOnly" WWW-Authenticate: Basic realm="Web Password", charset="UTF-8" Cache-Control: no-cache Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains; preload Expect-CT: max-age=0, report-uri="https://openstreetmap.report-uri.com/r/d/ct/reportOnly" Content-Length: 22 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Keep-Alive: timeout=5, max=100 Connection: Keep-Alive Authentication selected: Basic realm="Web Password", charset="UTF-8" Reusing existing connection to api.openstreetmap.org:443. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Sat, 25 Jul 2020 13:44:42 GMT Server: Apache/2.4.29 (Ubuntu) Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains; preload Expect-CT: max-age=0, report-uri="https://openstreetmap.report-uri.com/r/d/ct/reportOnly" Content-Encoding: identity Cache-Control: private, max-age=0, must-revalidate Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains; preload Expect-CT: max-age=0, report-uri="https://openstreetmap.report-uri.com/r/d/ct/reportOnly" Vary: Accept-Encoding Content-Type: application/xml; charset=utf-8 Keep-Alive: timeout=5, max=99 Connection: Keep-Alive Transfer-Encoding: chunked Length: unspecified [application/xml] Saving to: ‘STDOUT’ - [<=> ] 0 --.-KB/s <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <diffResult version="0.6" generator="CGImap 0.8.3 (8537 thorn-03.openstreetmap.org)" copyright="OpenStreetMap and contributors"\ attribution="http://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright" license="http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/1-0/"> <way old_id="185369466" new_id="185369466" new_version="4"/> </diffResult> - [ <=> ] 353 --.-KB/s in 0s 2020-07-25 15:44:42 (20,3 MB/s) - written to stdout [353] $
That was it, the building is now named in OSM, in a changset amended by hand.
Take a look at https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/185369466/.
Came by Esbjerg Harbour on September 24th 2019 and saw what was obviously a cable ship docked at the quay. A giant ship and I immediately thought that the mermaid might be closing in on Jutland. Some quick drive-by pictures and vessel details below:
New sighting on 2019-11-03:
JV article about ship and ongoing upgrades causing noise.
2020-11-25 add news item about cable extension to Copenhagen, add Bulk data center blog link 2019-06-04 add details of Bulk data center in Esbjerg and infrastructure, add local news items about construction start 2019-05-08 add system summary from FCC application, elaborate on landing point discrepancies between FCC/cablemap, link to docs describing seg. 5 cable lay schedule 2019-03-06 fix links to submarinecablemap.com and some press, add info from TE Subcom experience doc., some general touch ups 2019-01-22 change “Danish Press Coverage” to “National Press”, add “International Press”, add some National about datacenter prospects & International Press items about contractors choosen 2018-10-05 initial commit
Europe, Denmark and my local neighbourhood of Western Jutland is going to get its connectivity boosted by the Havfrue transatlantic cable system being built by a consortium consisting of Google, Facebook, Aqua Comms and Bulk Infrastructure. To quote the announcement done by Google;
To increase capacity and resiliency in our North Atlantic systems, we’re working with Facebook, Aqua Comms and Bulk Infrastructure to build a direct submarine cable system connecting the U.S. to Denmark and Ireland. This cable, called Havfrue (Danish for “mermaid”), will be built by TE SubCom and is expected to come online by the end of 2019. Google blog post, 2018-01-16
Digging into the details first reveals the projected trench as illustrated in below by some of the stakeholders;
Projected trench of the Havfrue cable as illustrated by cloud.google.com.
Projected trench of the Havfrue cable as illustrated by TE SubCom.
Projected trench of the Havfrue cable as illustrated by submarinecablemap.com.
EDIT 2020-11-25: Additionally in 2019-06-21 Interxion announced a direct connection between the AEC2 landing site in Blaabjerg to its two datacenters in Ballerup/Copenhagen.
More digging into the Danish parts reveals that most sources mention Blåbjerg (Blaabjerg) as the Danish landing point for Havfrue (just as TAT-14), although ComputerWorld DK (see National Press below) relays the information that it will land at Endrup (where COBRAcable is terminated). However, a FCC application dated 2018-05-25 SCL-00214S (pdf) refers to it as the “Havfrue system” and specifically states that a new cable landing station will be constructed in Blaabjerg (as well as in Leckanvy, Ireland and Kristiansand, Norway);
The Havfrue system will consist of three segments. (1) The Main Trunk will connect the existing cable landing station at Wall, New Jersey with a new cable landing station to be constructed at Blaabjerg, Denmark. (2) The Ireland Branch will connect a new cable landing station to be constructed at Old Head Beach, Leckanvy, Ireland with a branching unit on the Main Trunk. (3) The Norway Branch will connect a new cable landing station at Kristiansand, Norway with a branching unit on the Main Trunk.
Google is currently also projecting its own private subsea cables, some of the rationale behind their mixed private/consortium/lease approach are disclosed in blog post from 2018-07-17 announcing the Dunant cable, which is the first Google private transatlantic subsea cable projected to connect Virginia Beach and France.
EDIT 2020-11-25: see blog post detailing my visit to the construction site in June 2019
Bulk has announced that the Esbjerg data center location will be referred to as DK01 Campus which is described on the about page (EDIT 2020-11-25: now has its own page with different wording) as follows:
Bulk’s DK01 Campus, Esbjerg, southwest Denmark, will be a scalable Carrier Neutral Colocation data center ready for customers Q4 2019. Esbjerg is becoming a highly strategic data center location with several subsea fiber systems terminating within or nearby. These include Havfrue (US, Ireland, Norway, Denmark), Havhingsten (Ireland, Denmark), Cobra (Holland, Denmark), Skagerrak 4 (Norway Denmark), DANICE (Iceland, Denmark) and TAT-14 (United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark). Combined with excellent terrestrial connectivity, this will make Esbjerg the main international entry point to the Nordics and enable the Bulk DK01 campus to be the natural traffic exchange point.
An article (translated) in the local newspaper JydskeVestkysten first revealed the exact location of the center and renderings of its visual appearence and construction. The location is in Kjersing industrial area North of Esbjerg.
A further map of the Bulk connections between Norway, Denmark and Ireland has been revealed in an article of Capacitymedia and on Bulk’s own fiber networks page. Also a partnership with Amazon about delivering both connectivity and datacenter infrastructure for AWS has been announced.
Taking a deeper look into the meta data of the document containing the Environmental Assessment (Danish: “miljøvurdering” shortened “MV”) and Environmental Impact Assessment (Danish: “miljøkonsekvensvurdering” or “vurdering af virkningerne på miljøet” shortened “VVM”) of the announced data center in Esbjerg reveals an interesting embedded title of the document which has not been carried out into other publicly used references.
The embedded PDF title of the document uses the “Project Ember” term which has not been indicated by other sources than articles in the JydskeVestkysten newspaper. The paper cite municipal sources but the municipality has not used the name directly in any of their communications.
The report authored by consultants COWI contains the following naming:
Below a dump of the full meta data:
$ pdfinfo MV-VVM_afgr%c3%a6nsning.pdf Title: Microsoft Word – Project_Ember_MV-VVM_afgrænsning_v.4.0.docx Author: lojo Creator: PScript5.dll Version 5.2.2 Producer: Acrobat Distiller 15.0 (Windows) CreationDate: Fri May 25 15:49:44 2018 ModDate: Fri May 25 15:49:44 2018 Tagged: no UserProperties: no Suspects: no Form: none JavaScript: no Pages: 25 Encrypted: no Page size: 595.22 x 842 pts (A4) Page rot: 0 File size: 234728 bytes Optimized: yes PDF version: 1.5
