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.
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.
Edit 2023-04-23: on present day Ring is known instead as GNU Jami. Contact me using ring:f20607f4f974714ba91c664b153496fb931020e5 on the Ring distributed communication platform: ring.cx
