MTN Business Gallo Manor data centre has undergone a retrofit that will see it expand its managed cloud services, and 80% of new server capacity has already been sold.
The data centre, which was built over a decade ago, has a total footprint size of 2 000m2 with another 500m2 already earmarked for expansion. MTN owns six main data centres and 11 third-party hosting sites.
Angela Gahagan-Thomson, MTN Business managing executive, says: “This enhancement talks to MTN Business' rapid expansion initiatives in support of our growing managed hosting product offerings.” She adds that MTN Business is also now offering an opex pay-per-use model and a 24/7 managed hosting environment.
During a tour of the data centre, MTN stated that the facility is now a tier-three data centre and complies with TIA 942 standards. MTN's service level agreements with its customers has been upgraded to 99.990% network uptime, four tier level of security, 24/7 facilities support and power availability of 99.982%.
According to MTN Business, an additional redundant diesel generator has been installed, should the entire feeder grid fail for an extended period of time. All racks are being fed power from 2(N+1) UPS sets, with sufficient battery backup. The facility consumes over 1.5 megawatts of power.
The mobile operator also replaced the old chillers with new hybrid cooling towers that use little or no water, but are rather air-cooled. It also added a new security system with a 24-hour monitoring station, CCTV cameras, as well as tag and fingerprint access control systems. A new fire protection system and staging areas have also been put in place.
Arthur Goldstuck, MD of World Wide Worx, says the expansion is a logical development for MTN Business, but also part of the long-term evolution of its data centre operations. “It was clearly not something undertaken in a hurry, but a result of careful planning.”
Goldstuck says: “As data demand grows rapidly in SA - and it is happening in both fixed-line and mobile - so will the demand on data centres grow. That means any major service provider must have a scalable data centre operation.”
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