Vinayak Hegde

It all started with a faint memory in the increasingly transient nature of the Internet. I vaguely remembered reading about a datacenter which was based somewhere near Stockholm and was built inside an (decommissioned) nuclear bunker. A little bit of googling later I realised that I had read about it on the Pingdom site. I thought to myself that since this is a conference where networking geeks converge, there is a good chance that some attendee knows the people in the Bahnhof ISP. So I sent this mail. Initially no one replied, but then the number of people interested in seeing the datacenter just ballooned. Two people stepped forward to arrange the visit during the lunch break at the conference and the CEO of Bahnhof, Jon Karlung personally gave guided us through this fantastic datacenter.

The entrance to the Datacenter

There is actually a house on top of that hill and there is pathway from the datacenter that opens up onto the top of the hill. The datacenter is actually dug out of hard rock (granite) as can be clearly seen from the pictures of the server floor at the end of the post. It was originally a military bunker and nuclear shelter during the Cold War era. The Code name from the military days Pionen White Mountains can be seen in the photos of the entrance to the datacenter.

The Backup Generators

2 Maybach MTU diesel engines that produce 1.5 Megawatt of AC power provide backup power. The engines were originally designed for German submarines. There is a warning horn from a German submarine that add to the effect

The Conference Room

The Conference room and the pathway leading to it is made completely out of metal and glass and it hangs above the server flow adding tothe futuristic space staion look of the datacenter (as can be seen from the picture at the top of the post). There is also a Tintin theme rocket [ See Destination Moon for the Tintin Reference ]

The Fountains

There are lots of plants around the datacenter to reduce the claustrophobic feel of the bunker and make it like a more natural working environment. The Fountains at the entry also make up the decor of the place but are generally switched off as they make a lot of noise.

The Netops and the Leisure room

This is Bahnhof’s biggest facility in Sweden and this Network operations room is used for running the ISP. The leisure room has a huge fishtank to add to natural feel of the place.

The Server Floor

Some of the walls of the server floor are unadroned and are made of bare rock giving away the initial use of the facility as a Cold war Era nuclear bunker.

Bahnhof uses the unique nature of the datacenter for marketing purposes. IT is actually possibe to co-locate your servers here. The Pionen Datacenter gives a whole new meaning to disaster recovery backup.

If you liked this then you may also like to read

• The Vasa – The Titanic of Sweden
• ACM Compute 2010 and ACM India launch
• Tweetup with Alexis Ohanian – Reddit Cofounder
• Change of Guards at the Royal Palace
• Drottningholm Palace – UNESCO World Heritage Site