Portus Data Centers Takes Foothold in Grand Duchy

The European Data Hub (EDH) SA, operated by Portus Data Centers, is located at the Centre Drosbach in the Cloche d'Or suburb of Luxembourg city which was constructed in 2010 by Technopolis for the European Commission; the EDH was subsequently sold by the Wagner Group (in 2023 Q4) to the UK investment fund Arcus Infrastructure Partners.

Portus Data Centers is a relatively recent entry into the data centres industry: it was founded by Arcus and acquired EDH in 2023, with the acquisition of two further sites following, namely SpaceNet in Munich and Internet Port Hamburg (IPHH). EDH is led by David Celis (CEO), with Patrice Roy as COO and Jean-Pierre Marzi as CTO; recently, Chronicle.lu got the opportunity to meet with Jean-Pierre Marzi who recounted the EDH's history and explained the site layout and operations by way of a tour of the facility.

According to its publicity material, the EDH provides the latest, carrier-neutral edge co-location services across Luxembourg and the greater region; its customer base includes telecom carriers, multinational corporations and both national and European institutions.

Technically, EDH is a Tier IV data centre, which means the top rating of data centres (certified by the Uptime Institute). It is designed for a total site capacity of 5.5 MW and is built completely underground; it is operated in strict compliance with the highest institute standards (the only data centre in Luxembourg with m&o certification); for customers to house, host or manage their critical IT infrastructure in a secure, sustainable and resilient environment.

It has fully independent and redundant connections to the power grid, with industry grade UPS systems and generators to protect its infrastructure from power losses and ensure business continuity for up to five days and beyond thanks to 24/7/365 refuelling agreements. When addressing the topic of the generators, Jean-Pierre Marzi explained that, since 2020, grid outages have increased from (on average) one outage annually, to 5-6 outages annually. He explained that these are primarily down to extreme climate reasons, specifically due to heavy wind and rain.

Cooling is guaranteed via 2N redundant cooling design assured by hi-tech Quantum chillers as well as cooling towers that, combined, assure low operational costs and high efficiency. The data centre uses only green energy (from the grid; they do not have their own photovoltaic cells as they are not installed on the building) and uses hybrid cooling towers which run run without any use of water up to 22C.

Its Fire and Very Early Smoke Detection Aspiration system (VESDA) is supported by an environmentally-friendly low pressure Water Mist fire suppression system which is in the process of replacing the argon (gas) fire extinguishing system.  

The site has being undergoing expansion over the past two years and is currently undergoing a rebranding exercise - to the Portus Group. They confirmed that they still have some capacity available.

Jean-Pierre Marzi explained "The site has been designed for a total 5.5 MW capacity and has been partially outfitted to match these objectives. This growth takes a couple of years; the technologies are changing, with more chilling systems, for example, as well as norms and constraints evolving over time, which is one of the reasons sites like ours get upgraded as they grow, so they can always ensure they use the most efficient technologies available and are always best match environmental obligations."