Eurofiber is building new, small data centers through a consortium. Decentralization must ensure that workloads make the most of available green energy, while making the environmental impact of smaller locations negligible or even positive. Concrete tests of this new vision are already underway.

Soon there could be a small data center in your neighborhood without you even realizing it. Maybe you’ll notice it too, but in a positive sense, because your living room will be heated with the residual heat from the small property. Such small data centers are no longer the norm these days: server farms are usually large and hungry monsters that don’t fit neatly into the landscape and consume a lot of energy. In a world where energy is a scarce resource and sustainability is paramount, a different strategy is desirable. Eurofiber is taking the lead with a vision based on virtualization and decentralization.

Large data centers vs. energy and sustainability

“We currently have ten data centers, six of them in the Netherlands and four in France,” says Eric Kuisch, COO of Eurofiber. He outlines Eurofiber’s current situation and paints a picture that also applies to other colocation specialists. “The data centers are located in locations where there is enough power, space and connectivity to serve customers.”

“However, there is an increasing energy shortage,” he continues. “In addition, customer needs are changing. Anyone working with AI needs a lot more computing power. AI servers therefore consume significantly more electricity. This makes it more difficult to fully utilize the square footage of a large data center with the available power.”

Virtualization and IaaS

Kuisch also notes that customers have less and less the need to simply rent square meters. Instead of classic colocation, they are more concerned with placing their applications on a generic platform. Eurofiber already offers an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) solution that it developed itself together with Dell and VMware. “This platform was built by us, but runs in a private environment,” he explains. “Hyperscalers offer such a solution publicly, we offer it privately.” The result is a virtualized environment in which customers can run their workloads.

Since its spinoff by Dell and subsequent acquisition by Broadcom, VMware has been in the news regularly, although not always in a very positive way. However, Kuisch emphasizes that Eurofiber is not affected by strategy and licensing problems. “We are an important partner of VMware with good agreements, including with Broadcom.”

Many small ones instead of one big one

“Customers who need AI are certainly looking at virtualized platforms,” he continues. That gave the people at Eurofiber an idea. Kuisch: “Why shouldn’t we build a modern IaaS platform that runs in dozens of data centers rather than ten locations?”

Why shouldn’t we build a modern IaaS platform that runs in dozens of data centers rather than ten locations?

Eric Kuisch, COO Eurofiber

Eurofiber’s vision begins in the Netherlands. The company wants to spread dozens of small data centers across the country. For example, some are on the coast in the north, near windmills, others in the far south, and everywhere in between. “So you can change easily,” explains Kuisch. For small data centers, the energy requirement per location is significantly lower. Then you can shift workloads to the small data center where energy is generated.” Maybe the wind blows first in the north and the utilization there is better financially and environmentally, but after midday the wind dies down while in the south near another location the sun shines through.

Added value in the neighborhood

The data centers planned by Eurofiber are so small that they can actually be set up anywhere. Kuisch sees modest locations that may even be in residential areas where they are not noticeable, but can, for example, feed a local heating network with their residual heat. “Data centers are large, impersonal buildings with a huge impact on a region’s power supply. These edge data centers are much smaller and have limited environmental impact.”

Of course, the edge locations cannot be located everywhere. Because flexible workload relocation is only possible if the underlying network allows it, and that immediately explains why Eurofiber is supporting the project. “Not only are we a data center service provider, but we also own the fiber network to connect all of these edge data centers,” says the COO.

Eurofiber has many trump cards, but not all of them. That’s why the company founded a consortium. These include software developers and renewable energy specialists. “After all, these things are not our core business,” clarifies Kuisch.

More than an idea

Eurofiber’s vision is more than an interesting idea for the future. The practical implementation is in full swing. “Before founding the consortium, we first set up a test environment,” says Kuisch. “That worked, after that we officially started. We have also received grants from the EU for this vision, which serve as welcome start-up capital.”

This year Eurofiber will begin field testing. “We will be working with a real customer who is very well suited to these types of applications. The minimum configuration for this works with three locations. If everything works successfully, we will continue to expand.”

Kuisch also has his eye on Belgium. “This approach can easily be extended to Belgium. Because we don’t need two years to build a new, large data center. In the same way, we can quickly add locations across the border. In addition, we can perfectly divide the offer into separate zones, for example for those who want the data to remain within national borders.”

The big ones also remain relevant

To be clear: Kuisch is not preaching the end of the large centralized data center. Eurofiber’s vision is relevant for modern workloads, but traditional large locations also continue to play an important role. “A slightly larger data center, for example for pure storage, will always be necessary,” he explains. Eurofiber does not currently have such large locations in our country, but that should not be a problem. “Thanks to the virtual platform, we can work perfectly with an existing party.”

If the test project goes as planned, Eurofiber and its partners have the key to introducing a new data center architecture that appears to better fit European ideas about data protection, location and sustainability. And if the project can be launched in the Netherlands, Belgium and perhaps France, why not in other countries? From our point of view, the vision seems to ensure a nice additional differentiation compared to classic hyperscalers.