South-Africa-based Web hosting company, Hetzner yesterday revealed that construction is under way on a data centre in Samrand (Gauteng), which is expected to open its doors in late 2013.
The company says the new facility, with a hosting capacity of 1 200 square metres, can house in excess of 12 000 servers. This will increase its national capacity to meet growing customer demand as well as allow it to expand its existing product line with the introduction of colocation services to the Gauteng market, it adds.
Athena Turner, marketing and communications manager for Hetzner, says, with this new development, the company is building for growth, ensuring that it continues to deliver a reliable and long-term value proposition to its customers.
"Hetzner South Africa's building design and data centre efficiencies have been modelled off of Hetzner Online's German facilities, including reducing our dependency on power-intensive air conditioning. Whenever the ambient temperature allows for it, we will make use of direct free cooling, which reduces power consumption significantly," says Turner.
Hetzner Online, one of the leading hosting companies in Germany, has been recognised by global engineering standards firm T"UV S"UD. In 2011, the firm certified that the Hetzner Online Data Centre Park, in Falkenstein, had achieved the best Power Usage Effectiveness result ever recorded during certification by T"UV S"UD in Germany.
"This has been a long-term project that we've been preparing for. Sourcing the right location for our facility was paramount. With our data centre in close proximity to fibre routes and a recently built power substation, we're strategically positioned to maximise the benefits of the available infrastructure, enabling us to offer a cost-effective hosting service.
"What's more, the new location has also made multi-homing a reality for Hetzner. Through negotiations with various upstream network providers to find the most suitable connectivity options that will benefit our customers and our growing business requirement, we can confirm that AfricaINX and Internet Solutions will function as our primary bandwidth providers. This will significantly increase Hetzner's network resilience."
Turner concludes: "We chose Gauteng as the location for Hetzner's first Data Centre Park as it's our primary market and generates the strongest demand for our services. Our Cape Town customers will continue to benefit from our recently retrofitted data centre at Great Westerford (Newlands), which has adopted many of the same engineering principles."
Hetzner is taking a phased approach with the first of five data centres under construction, in what is to become a sophisticated Data Centre Park.
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