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Hosting or SaaS growth
You have outgrown a cheap hall and now need power per rack, cross-connects and an IX port in the same building. This is the most common reason we end up here.
Datacenters we work with
Digital Realty Amsterdam: colocation with an independent advisor
Digital Realty is one of the operators we place customers with in Amsterdam. We are not the operator and not a reseller: the datacenter pays us a fee, and your contract, invoice and SLA are with them. That is why we can tell you when another campus fits better.
Location
Digital Realty buildings on Science Park and in Schiphol-Rijk.
Science Park
Schiphol-Rijk
City centre
Schiphol
The campus in numbers
What a Digital Realty placement in Amsterdam looks like.
Starting points for the conversation, not a quote. Every figure below is indicative and depends on the specific hall, the term and what is free that month.
- 12 buildings across the metro
- Digital Realty lists twelve Amsterdam-area data centres: on Science Park, at Schiphol-Rijk, in Rozenburg and Hoofddorp near the airport, and one in Amsterdam-Oost. Digital Realty bought Interxion in March 2020, so datacenters that were Interxion’s are now Digital Realty’s. Which one you want depends on power ceiling, carrier mix and what is available. We say which, and why.
- 3–70 kW per rack
- The band we usually place, from standard air-cooled halls to liquid-cooled density. Digital Realty advertises high-density colocation up to 150 kW per cabinet, but what a given Amsterdam hall delivers is a per-hall question; we size against your real gear, not a brochure number.
- AMS-IX · NL-ix · Nikhef
- AMS-IX and NL-ix both list several Digital Realty Amsterdam buildings as points of presence, and dark fibre to Nikhef is orderable. Not every building has both exchanges in-house, so confirm the exchange and carrier list per site.
- 6–28 km from the city centre
- Indicative road distance outside rush hour from Amsterdam city centre: about 6 km to Science Park, 8 km to the building in Amsterdam-Oost, and 24 to 28 km to Schiphol-Rijk, Rozenburg and Hoofddorp. From Schiphol itself, the airport-side buildings are 8 to 10 km away and Science Park about 20 km.
- Dedicated racks, cages, suites
- Your own contract, your own keys, your own carriers. We do not place 1U or shared racks here; for that we point you at a party that does it well.
Digital Realty holds
ISO 27001 · ISO 9001 · ISO 14001 · ISO 50001 · SOC 1 / 2 / 3 · PCI-DSSWhat we'd place here
Three workloads that fit a Digital Realty hall.
Not an exhaustive list, and not a reason to go here by default. If your workload is not on it, say so and we will tell you straight whether this is the right operator.
02
High density and GPU
Where the constraint is kW per rack rather than floor space. Ask for the cooling design of the specific hall before you commit to a density number.
03
A second site for disaster recovery
A different campus from your production hall: far enough apart to be a real second site, close enough that someone can drive over with a spare disk.
What to check before you sign
Five clauses worth an hour of your time.
We go through these with you before the first call with the account manager. None of them is a secret; they are just the things people forget to ask.
- Power ceiling per hall
- Not per campus. Ask what the hall you are going into delivers per rack today, what the A and B feeds are rated at, and what an upgrade costs later.
- Cross-connect pricing
- Per connect, per month, plus the one-off. Small money until you need twenty of them. Get the price list in writing and check whether it is indexed.
- Term and indexation
- Three years or five moves the rate, and so does the indexation clause. Ask what the annual increase is capped at before you sign, not at the first renewal.
- Remote hands SLA
- Response time, what counts as included, what is billed per quarter hour, and who picks up at 03:00. Test it once in the first month.
- Expansion rights
- First refusal on the racks next to you or the adjacent cage space, and how long it is held. Amsterdam capacity is finite; this is the clause people regret.
Datacenters we send elsewhere
When Digital Realty is not the answer.
If you need 1U, a half rack or a shared rack with bundled transit, this is the wrong door and we will say so on the first call; a few parties do that well and we will name one. Same if your footprint is small enough that a smaller operator will treat you better, or if the workload belongs in another metro. We only get paid when a placement works out, so pushing you into the wrong hall costs us.
Other options in Amsterdam
The rest of the metro, in one place.
We compare these against each other on power ceiling, carriers and availability before we recommend anything. Amsterdam is our focus, and we only place dedicated space. For the comparison with NorthC on power ceilings, cooling and contract style, read Digital Realty vs NorthC.
NorthC Amsterdam
A Dutch operator we also work with. Worth a look if a smaller footprint or a regional second site fits you better.
Amsterdam Science Park
The carrier and research campus in Amsterdam-Oost, with AMS-IX and Nikhef next door.
Schiphol-Rijk
Large campuses on the south side of the airport. Where the bigger power blocks usually sit.
Amsterdam-Zuidoost
The southeast business district. Several operators within a few kilometres of each other.
Questions we get
Independence, campus choice and margin.
Are you a Digital Realty partner?
We are an independent advisor. We work with datacenters such as Digital Realty and NorthC; there is no exclusivity in either direction. The datacenter pays us a fee, and you contract directly with them.
Which Digital Realty campus in Amsterdam should I pick?
It depends on power per rack, the carriers you need in the meet-me room, and what is free on your timeline. Digital Realty has more than one Amsterdam campus; we look at the halls with current availability and tell you which one fits.
Do you add a margin to the Digital Realty price?
No. Their contract, their invoice, their SLA. We are never on the invoice and we never add a margin. The referral fee comes from the datacenter.
Can I get AMS-IX, NL-ix or a cross-connect to Nikhef?
Yes. The ports come from AMS-IX and NL-ix, the cross-connects from Digital Realty. Where an exchange or Nikhef is not in your building, the path becomes a campus cross-connect or a metro link. We size the ports and cross-connects with you before the quote so the first number you see is a realistic one.
What if NorthC or another operator fits better?
Then we say that. We are independent of all of them, so the only thing that changes for us is which account manager gets the brief.
Want a Digital Realty quote without the sales process?
Send us racks, power per rack, redundancy and timeline. We brief the right account manager and you get a real, negotiated number.
Independent advisor, free to you: the datacenter pays our fee. You contract directly with Digital Realty, NorthC or another Amsterdam operator.
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