About France
Paris is France's primary interconnection market and one of the core northern European delivery metros, with dense carrier presence, a deep public peering fabric, and short terrestrial paths into Germany, the United Kingdom, and the Benelux. Marseille plays the opposite role, a Mediterranean landing point where subsea systems come ashore to link Europe with North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia.
Zenlayer operates 5 data centers in France, three in Paris and two in Marseille, covering bare metal cloud (BMC) at four sites, edge colocation at two, and IP transit at four, together with Cloud WAN, Cloud Connect, and public cloud capacity. The split gives teams a carrier-dense northern anchor for European delivery alongside a southern position for traffic that continues past the continent.
France sits inside the EU regulatory perimeter, so workloads that need data residency and audited controls can stay in country; certifications across the French facilities include ISO 27001, ISO 14001, ISO 22301, PCI DSS, and SOC 2 Type II. Paris also reaches Zenlayer's other Western European markets, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Spain, over the same backbone, and teams frequently pair France with one of them rather than treating it as a standalone footprint.
Compute in France
Both French metros carry compute. Bare metal cloud (BMC) runs at four of the five French facilities, with edge colocation for customer-owned hardware at two of them and public cloud capacity at one. Bare metal is the usual choice here because it keeps data on French soil under a single tenancy boundary and sits beside the local peering fabric rather than behind an upstream carrier in another country.
Typical Paris deployments include regional API and application tiers for French and Western European users, game servers covering the domestic player base, and fintech workloads that need predictable round trips into the local exchanges. Marseille draws a different profile, with customer-run origin servers and gateway tiers placed close to the subsea landings so traffic bound for Africa or Asia does not travel north before it leaves Europe.
Enterprise hardware
Intel Xeon Scalable. Up to 384 GB RAM. NVMe and SSD storage tiers.
Premium network
100+ Tbps backbone with dynamic, latency-optimized routing.
Instant provisioning
Deploy via Terraform, REST API, or the point-and-click zenConsole.
Flexible billing
Hourly pay-as-you-go with discounts for longer commitments.
Networking in France
Zenlayer's French network services cover IP transit at four of the five sites alongside Cloud WAN and Cloud Connect, with the Paris facilities carrying most of the interconnection weight. Paris is where French carrier and content networks meet, so transit taken in the metro reaches domestic eyeball networks directly rather than through an upstream hop in Frankfurt or London.
Cloud Connect provides private links into the major public cloud on-ramps serving the Paris area, keeping enterprise traffic off the public internet for steadier throughput and more predictable round trips. Cloud WAN joins France to Zenlayer's global software-defined backbone, and the Marseille sites extend that reach south and east from within the same French footprint and the same contract.
IP Transit
Blended carrier routes tuned for the lowest real-world latency.
Cloud Connect
Private, dedicated links into AWS, Azure, GCP, and Oracle.
Cloud WAN
Software-defined backbone spanning 290+ points of presence.
Edge protection
Layer 3 and 4 DDoS mitigation with real-time traffic filtering.
Colocation in France
Zenlayer offers colocation at two of its five French data centers, supporting enterprises that want to run owned hardware next to managed compute and network services. Certifications across the French facilities include ISO 27001, ISO 14001, ISO 22301, PCI DSS, and SOC 2 Type II. Coverage is not identical building to building, so the audit scope worth confirming is the one attached to the specific site.
Paris is a tight colocation market, where new capacity inside the inner suburbs arrives slowly, so lead times on large power draws tend to run longer than in metros with more room to build. Marseille inverts that problem: floor space is easier to secure, but the routing advantage sits in the short radius around the cable landing stations, which is the part of the market worth planning around.
Carrier-neutral
Access to 400+ carriers and major regional peering exchanges.
Flexible power
Standard and high-density rack configurations on request.
Secure access
Biometric entry, CCTV, and 24/7 dedicated remote hands.
Rapid turn-up
Cage-to-production cross-connects in days, not weeks.
Cities in France
Paris
PARFrench capital and the primary gateway reaching Francophone Africa and Western European markets.
Marseille
MRSMediterranean subsea cable crossroads linking Europe with North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.
Data Centers in France
5 totalParis
French capital and the primary gateway reaching Francophone Africa and Western European markets.
3 DCs
Paris
French capital and the primary gateway reaching Francophone Africa and Western European markets.
| Services | ||
|---|---|---|
| EU-Paris2 (Equinix_PA2)PAR2 |  | ColoBMCIP Transit |
| EU-Paris3 (Interxion_PAR5)PAR3 | Interxion | ColoBMCIP Transit |
| EU-Paris4(Telehouse_Paris Voltaire)PAR4 |  | Colo |
Marseille
Mediterranean subsea cable crossroads linking Europe with North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.
2 DCs
Marseille
Mediterranean subsea cable crossroads linking Europe with North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.
| Services | ||
|---|---|---|
| EU-Marseille1(Interxion_MRS2)MRS1 | Interxion | ColoBMCIP TransitCloud WANCloud Connect |
| EU-Marseille2(Telehouse_TH1)MRS2 | | ColoBMCIP Transit |
FAQs
Common questions about deploying compute, networking, and colocation infrastructure in France.
Where are Zenlayer's data centers located across France?
<p>Zenlayer operates 5 data centers in France, three in Paris and two in Marseille. The two metros do different jobs. Paris concentrates carrier and content interconnection for domestic and Western European delivery, while Marseille sits on the Mediterranean subsea corridor where systems come ashore to connect Europe with North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia.</p>
What cloud and network services are available in France?
<p>The French footprint carries bare metal cloud (BMC) at four sites, edge colocation at two, and IP transit at four, plus Cloud WAN, Cloud Connect, and public cloud capacity at one site. Availability is not uniform across the five facilities, so the practical first step is confirming which building carries the specific products a deployment needs before settling on a metro.</p>
Should enterprises choose Paris or Marseille for a deployment?
<p>It depends on where the traffic goes. Paris is the choice for reaching French and Western European users, with deeper carrier interconnection and three of the five sites. Marseille is the choice when the audience sits beyond Europe, because the subsea systems landing there shorten the path south and east. Teams serving both typically run Paris as the primary and Marseille as the southern egress.</p>
Why does Marseille matter for traffic between Europe and Asia?
<p>Marseille is where Mediterranean subsea systems come ashore, which makes it the first European landing point for routes arriving from Asia and the Middle East. Serving those audiences from Marseille rather than from a northern metro removes the backhaul leg up to Paris, London, or Frankfurt and back again, cutting round-trip time and reducing exposure to congestion on the terrestrial links crossing Europe.</p>
Can one French deployment cover neighbouring European markets?
<p>Often, yes, though the two French metros answer different halves of the question. Paris is the working entry point for Western Europe and for domestic French delivery, while Marseille gives an option most northern sites cannot: a southern egress towards Iberia, Italy, and the Mediterranean rim. Where a workload has to sit inside another market, Zenlayer also operates in Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Spain.</p>
Deploy Infrastructure in France
Talk with Zenlayer to design a French deployment that pairs Paris carrier interconnection with Marseille subsea landing access and EU data residency.