Infrastructure Update 2022: World Tour in an Endless Loop

Anexia is represented on all continents of the world with server locations – there are now around 100 locations. The development of this infrastructure – the Anexia World Wide Cloud (WWC) – began more than ten years ago. Since then, the Anexia WWC has evolved and grown strongly over the years.

To meet our high-quality standards and provide our customers with better performance, each server location is built and maintained by Anexia engineers themselves in over 70 countries worldwide.

50 server locations in two years

Before to the Corona pandemic, Anexia began transitioning its entire infrastructure to a new approach in 2019. This has already enabled 37 server locations worldwide, for example in New York and Copenhagen, to be upgraded with the same hardware as well as a better and faster connection for our customers. Anexia has been continuing the world tour since March of this year. “Over the next two years, 50 more locations are on our list,” says Malte von dem Hagen, Director Global Infrastructure, who is responsible for the ongoing development of Anexia’s infrastructure with his network and data center team.

The upgrade to the new Blueprint pursues the goal of being able to offer the same cloud service at every server location worldwide – without deviations. The data centers are to run at a significantly higher level of automation, the administrative effort is to be reduced and the response time in the case of faults is to be kept as low as possible. “Two-thirds of our locations are still equipped with standard systems, and now we need to equip them with the latest technology,” says von dem Hagen. “This will give our customers a better and faster connection.”

Snowstorm and technical challenges

At the beginning of March, Stefan Funke, Head of Network Services, started the world tour again and flew to the USA. There, he expanded server locations in the southern and western United States and was faced with unexpected challenges. “In Dallas, a snowstorm shut down the entire infrastructure – it was freezing and nothing was working,” Funke says.

Funke was able to finish the work in Los Angeles after his week off in California. Florian Tschiedel of the Network Operations team will update Anexia’s data center in Canada in May.

New server locations will also be opened up for Anexia’s approximately 100,000 customers on this worldtour. For example, two more locations in Australia are on the agenda after Easter: Christoph Kasser from the Network Operations team is heading to Brisbane and Perth.

“And when all the data center sites have been updated, we’ll start all over again,” says Funke. A world tour in endless loop.

We will report the world tour of our Anexia engineers on Twitter. Follow us: #worldtour #infrastructureupgrade #anexiawwc