The French cloud provider OVH has started building a new data center in Limburg an der Lahn. Construction is scheduled to be completed in the third quarter of 2023; then OVH wants to accommodate up to 40,000 new servers on the area of 6000 square meters. The company promises a storage capacity of 100 exabytes.
According to the wishes of the operator, the new building should be particularly energy-efficient and enable resource-saving operation. An existing OVH-RZ in Limburg is located in repurposed buildings and has already been extended twice. In total, OVHcloud intends to operate 85,000 servers at the Limburg site.
Renewable electricity, rainwater tanks and use of waste heat
OVH promises to build a modern and sustainable data center. The aim is to cover 100 percent of the energy requirements from renewable sources. The servers are to be cooled using OVH’s in-house water cooling system, which is fed from rainwater tanks. The waste heat from the servers is to feed underfloor heating in neighboring offices, and the roof and facades of the facility are to be greened. OVH calculates that up to 830 kg of CO₂ per year can be filtered out of the atmosphere. The plants would also reduce the need for air conditioning.
Despite the goals for a resource-saving data center, OVH and other providers such as Hetzner recently increased the service fees due to the high energy costs. However, OVHcloud could benefit from Microsoft’s changed licensing models in the future – the French provider had lodged a complaint with the EU Commission against the old terms and conditions.
