Pionen is a former civil defence center built in the White Mountains Södermalm borough of

Stockholm Stockholm () is the capital and largest city of Sweden as well as the largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people live in the municipality, with 1.6 million in the urban area, and 2.4 million in the metropo ...

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic countries, Nordic c ...

in 1943 to protect essential government functions. The address of the Pionen

data center A data center (American English) or data centre (British English)See spelling differences. is a building, a dedicated space within a building, or a group of buildings used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommun ...

is Renstiernas gata 35 and 37. It was converted into a

by the Swedish Internet service provider

Bahnhof Bahnhof ( German for "railway station") is a Swedish Internet service provider (ISP) founded in 1994 by Oscar Swartz in Uppsala, Sweden, and is the country's first independent ISP. Today the company is represented in Stockholm, Gothenburg, Upps ...

. It opened on 11 September 2008 and Bahnhof continues to use the facility today. Because of the facility being buried under the mountain, secured by a 40-centimeter thick door, and only reachable by an entrance tunnel, the

is capable of withstanding a

hydrogen bomb A thermonuclear weapon, fusion weapon or hydrogen bomb (H bomb) is a second-generation nuclear weapon design. Its greater sophistication affords it vastly greater destructive power than first-generation nuclear bombs, a more compact size, a lowe ...

. The Pionen data center is also a

colocation centre A colocation center (also spelled co-location, or colo) or "carrier hotel", is a type of data centre where equipment, space, and bandwidth are available for rental to retail customers. Colocation facilities provide space, power, cooling, and ...

. In 2010

WikiLeaks WikiLeaks () is an international non-profit organisation that published news leaks and classified media provided by anonymous sources. Julian Assange, an Australian Internet activist, is generally described as its founder and director and ...

used Pionen's colocation services to store their servers.

Environment

Pionen is a

deep below 30 meters of

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained ( phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies un ...

, with three physical datalinks into the mountain. Also, Pionen is located in Central Stockholm, with 1,100 square meters of space. Pionen features

fountain A fountain, from the Latin "fons" (genitive "fontis"), meaning source or spring, is a decorative reservoir used for discharging water. It is also a structure that jets water into the air for a decorative or dramatic effect. Fountains were ori ...

greenhouse A greenhouse (also called a glasshouse, or, if with sufficient heating, a hothouse) is a structure with walls and roof made chiefly of transparent material, such as glass, in which plants requiring regulated climatic conditions are grown.These ...

s, simulated daylight and a huge salt water

fish tank An aquarium (plural: ''aquariums'' or ''aquaria'') is a vivarium of any size having at least one transparent side in which aquatic plants or animals are kept and displayed. fishkeeping, Fishkeepers use aquaria to keep fish, invertebrates, amp ...

. Its

has two backup power generators, which are actually submarine engines. It previously hosted

References

External links

* Buildings and structures in Stockholm Data centers Air raid shelters {{Sweden-struct-stub