01
What London gives you
Depth of market and your own time zone. For UK-only traffic and UK-only data it is hard to beat.
From London
Colocation in Amsterdam from London
London is 7 ms from the Amsterdam halls and about an hour and a quarter by air. UK companies come for an EU footprint, for continental peering, and for the other half of a London–Amsterdam pair. English throughout. Advisor, not reseller: you contract directly with the datacenter.
Distance and latency
Amsterdam from London
- Round-trip latency to Amsterdam
- 7 ms. The figure from our latency map; verify it on your own circuit.
- Distance
- About 540 km by road to Amsterdam city centre via the tunnel. Almost nobody drives it.
- Travel time
- A scheduled flight of 1 h 10 to 1 h 30 from London City or Heathrow to Schiphol, then 10 minutes to the Schiphol-Rijk campus and about 20 to Science Park or Zuidoost. By rail, about four hours to Amsterdam Centraal.
- Suitable as a DR site?
- Yes, a common European pair. At 7 ms replication is asynchronous for most databases; design for that rather than around it.
The honest comparison
Why not colocate in London?
London is the bigger market. More halls, more operators, a large exchange of its own, and a supply chain that has been doing this for thirty years. If your users are British and your data has to stay in the UK, stay in the UK; we will tell you that in the first mail. Amsterdam is for the other cases: an EU establishment with EU-resident data, peering with continental networks that are on AMS-IX but not in London, subsea capacity, and a second site in another country on another grid. At 7 ms the two are close enough to run as one estate.
02
What you give up
Nothing you cannot buy twice. The real question is whether you need an EU site at all; if you do, 7 ms is a short hop.
03
When we'd say stay
UK data residency, UK-only users, or a single rack that never needed a second country. We say it before you book a flight.
Who it's for
Who does this from London
01
UK company that needs an EU footprint
Customers, auditors or a contract now ask for EU-resident data. You sign with an EU-registered datacenter company and the hardware in the rack is yours. You want to know which campus, what it costs, and who is on the other end of the mail. English throughout.
02
UK hoster or SaaS wanting continental peering
AMS-IX and NL-ix reachable from the building, cross-connects to European carriers, and room to grow.
03
London primary, Amsterdam second site
The classic pair: two countries, two grids, 7 ms apart. We size rack, power and cross-connects for the failover case, not the steady state.
How it works
How it works from here
- 01Tell us what you needMail the specs from London. Five minutes, in English.
- 02We engineer and negotiateWe size racks, kW and campus and negotiate the terms with the operator.
- 03We fast-track the introductionThe right account manager gets a filled-in brief. You get a real quote.
- 04You contract with the datacenterContract, invoice and SLA are with the datacenter. We stay on as technical contact.
We start on a call, and walk the hall with you in Amsterdam whenever you want to see it; from London that is a day trip rather than a stay. Everything runs in English.
Questions from London
Remote hands, latency and staying put.
Do I have to fly to Amsterdam for remote hands?
No. Remote hands is staffed in the building around the clock and ordered in the operator portal. Most UK customers fly in twice: once to see the hall, once for move-in.
How fast is Amsterdam from London?
7 ms round-trip, the figure from our latency map. It is indicative, so verify it on your own circuit before you design replication around it.
Is everything in English?
Yes. We work in English and Dutch, and the datacenter contracts, portals and support run in English.
Can we keep our London peering and add AMS-IX?
Yes. The two sites are separate estates with their own ports and cross-connects. Plenty of networks sit on both exchanges and backhaul between them.
Related
Read on
The pages people from London open next.
Colocation in Amsterdam
What we place, in which campus, and what sits in the price.
Disaster recovery in Amsterdam
Second site, replication distance, and what to ask the operator for.
Amsterdam Science Park
Nikhef, both exchanges, and the halls around them.
Schiphol-Rijk
The campus nearest the airport, and the workloads it suits.
Amsterdam-Zuidoost
Power, capacity and the south-east halls.
Pricing
How a rack price is built up, and where the negotiation room is.
From other cities
Placing racks in Amsterdam from London?
Tell us your specs. We'll come back with a real, negotiated quote from the datacenter, not a range from a brochure.
Independent advisor, free to you: the datacenter pays our fee. You contract directly with Digital Realty, NorthC or another Amsterdam operator.
Reply within one business day