Data center

HARDWARE OF OUR DATA MANUFACTORY

Since the end of 2017, our servers have been located in the data center of the Telehouse Group at Kleyerstraße 75 in Frankfurt am Main (Gallusviertel). We have always attached great importance to the fact that our customers' data are in our direct care.

That's why we work exclusively on hardware owned by us and manage our systems ourselves. As a matter of principle, we do not use cloud services.

From the front, the server cabinet looks quite tidy:

• the upper third houses the power distribution and two firewalls,
• the lower part is occupied by four servers for workstations, applications and backup.

At the back, the order principle is not exactly obvious.
But there is also a plan for that...

Inside of our new addition (12/2020): you can see the copper heatpipes, with which the heat of the processors - up to 360 watts - is released to the airflow. Are you thinking of a toy steam engine now, too?

IT and sustainability

are not necessarily contradictory: preserving value and avoiding waste go hand in hand for us. To date (01/2024), after approxymately ten (!) years of continuous operation in some cases, we have not had to dispose of a single one of our data center components. This works because we invested from the outset in high-quality, durable, high-performance and expandable components that remain technically flawless and economically viable even after a long service life.

In addition, Moore's law has lost its magic on closer inspection: It is true that the density of integrated circuits in commercially available chips continues to double every 18-24 months. But because conventional manufacturing techniques have long since approached physical limits, density and computing speed are no longer in constant proportion. Today, performance enhancement in hardware is mainly achieved by parallelization rather than by increasing speed. To oversimplify, it's like adding a second or third engine under the hood to increase the top speed of a car.

We are therefore following the research results on quantum computers with great interest ;-)

Energy consumption

With the number of devices the energy consumption grows. Currently (01/2024), we require an average of 0.83 kW of electrical power, which corresponds to around 600 kWh of electricity (100% eco) per month. In addition, there are costs for the redundant power supply as well as the removal of the resulting heat. All in all, this adds up to a considerable sum. We are all the more pleased that our data center operator (Telehouse) is pursuing innovative concepts for waste heat utilization together with Mainova AG.