Negotiating a rack in Amsterdam: what moves, and by how much

Why nobody publishes a price

Ask three Amsterdam datacenters what a rack costs and you get three ranges, all of them wide. That is not evasion. A rack is not one product. It is a floor space fee, a power commitment, a set of cross-connects, an interconnect port and a labour agreement, each priced on a different logic and each negotiable to a different degree.

The useful question is which line items you are buying, which of them move in a negotiation, and what a fair landing zone looks like at your size.

We run production in these buildings ourselves, at Serverside.com and Host Havoc, so what follows is what we see on real quotes rather than what a brochure says. We do not publish amounts: every line depends on your specs, so prices are on request. We are an advisor, not a reseller: you sign with the datacenter and they pay us, which is set out on the colocation pricing page.

The six lines on the quote

• Rack fee. The cabinet itself: floor space, the cabinet, the locks, cooling to the cold aisle. Usually a flat monthly fee per rack.
• Power. A per-kW monthly fee for the capacity you commit to, whether you draw it or not, or a per-kWh charge billed afterwards. Above 3 kW this is the biggest line on the page.
• Cross-connects. One fibre or copper pair between your rack and someone else’s, inside the building. Priced per connect per month, plus a one-off.
• IX ports. Your port on AMS-IX or NL-ix. Priced by speed, billed by the exchange or passed through by the datacenter.
• Remote hands. Someone else’s engineer touching your kit. An hourly rate, sometimes with a small monthly bundle included.
• Setup. One-off install: cabinet build, first cross-connects, and an engineering fee for anything that is not standard.

What moves each line

We do not put amounts on this page. A 1 kW rack in a legacy hall and a 15 kW rack in a new build both appear on the quote as one rack, and they are nowhere near each other on price, so a published range would mislead more than it helps. Send us your specs and we come back with real numbers. What we can say is what drives each line.

Committed kW versus paying per kWh

Committed power is the default in Amsterdam. You reserve kW, you pay for those kW every month, and the datacenter plans capacity around your commitment. It is simple to budget and it is the line where volume buys you something.

The alternative is to pay afterwards for the kWh you used. There is nothing to size up front, but the rate is higher, so once your draw is steady it usually costs more than a commit that matches it.

The trap is sizing the commit. Commit 5 kW and draw 2 kW and you pay for 3 kW you never use. Commit on your measured average, not on the nameplate of the power supplies, and check the breaker on each feed against your peak so a batch window does not trip it.

Our rule: commit what you will draw within six months and put the rest on a written ramp, instead of an option nobody will honour. Pay per kWh only while you have no measured draw to size a commit on.

Where the negotiation room is

• Term. Twelve months buys you almost nothing. Thirty-six is where the rack fee and the per-kW rate both move. Sixty moves them again, if you are confident enough about your hardware roadmap to sign for it.
• kW commit. Density is the strongest lever there is. The same building will price 20 kW across four racks differently from 20 kW across ten, because the ten-rack version costs them ten cabinets of floor.
• Cross-connect bundles. Ask for a block of eight, twelve or twenty included, instead of per-connect pricing. This is usually the easiest concession to get and the one people forget to ask for.
• Ramp. Pay for what you occupy in month one and step up on a written schedule. Operators would rather sign a ramp than a smaller deal.
• Setup fees. One-offs are the first thing a sales engineer can waive without asking anyone. Treat them as zero and be surprised if they are not.
• Indexation. Over five years the annual increase clause matters more than the rack fee does. Ask for a cap, in writing, against a named index.

List price versus negotiated price

An illustrative example. Four racks, 5 kW committed each, 36 months, six cross-connects and one 10 Gbit IX port. The same specification at list price and after negotiation. We show the movement per line rather than the amounts; the amounts are on request.

What produced the negotiated column

The negotiated side of that table is a 36-month term, a sensible density and a cross-connect bundle, asked for by someone who knew the list was a list. No relationship, no volume you do not have, no favour.

What it does need is a brief the operator can price quickly and compare against their own capacity plan. Half the discount in practice is just being easy to quote.

What to send us

Racks, kW per rack, redundancy (A+B or a single feed), how many cross-connects and to whom, IX speed, and the date the first rack has to be live. That is enough to brief two or three operators properly and come back with real quotes.

If you need one or two units rather than a rack we will say so and point you elsewhere. We do dedicated racks, cages and suites; shared racks are not our thing. The decision itself is the subject of colocation versus cloud.