Teraco Data Environments has completed the second and final phase of its massive new data centre, JB3, at its Isando campus in Johannesburg.
The entire Isando facility, which consists of JB1 (also built in two phases) and JB3, has a combined 40MW of critical power load, 22 data halls and 21 000sq m of server deployment space.
JB3 itself comprises 45 000sqm of building structure, 12 000sq m of data hall space and 29MW of critical power load. JB3 is three times the size of JB1, yet the first phase is already sold out, Teraco CEO Jan Hnizdo said in an interview with TechCentral this week. Deployment by customers in the second phase, which is twice the size of phase 1, will begin in November.
Teraco has already earmarked plans to build another – final – data centre at the now-sprawling Isando site, which it expects to do in the next two or three years. (More photos of the completed JB1 and JB3 data centres are included below, courtesy of Teraco.)
Phase 2 of JB3 will mainly be used by existing customers that are growing their cloud deployments, Hnizdo said. Enterprise (large business) customers are “starting to think like content providers” like Netflix in that they realise it’s best to locate their servers close to where Internet service providers and telecommunications operators peer their networks with one another, he said. This is driving demand for ever-more rack space in Teraco facilities.
JB4 and JB5
It’s also driving up traffic flowing through Teraco’s peering infrastructure, which is housed under the NAPAfrica business. Traffic flowing across NAPAfrica’s platform has jumped from 1Tbit/s in March 2020 – just as the hard lockdown was being imposed – to 2.2Tbit/s now.
Teraco has other data centres in Johannesburg, too. There’s the already-completed JB2 at Bredell – near OR Tambo International airport – and JB4, which is under construction on the R21 route to the north of the airport. JB4 also consists of two phases – 20MW of critical load each – with the first phase ready for service in the first quarter of next year.
CT2, a new facility in Cape Town, will go live in October with 18MW of critical load power; in Durban, Teraco has 1MW facility, which it plans to double to 2MW. JB5, the planned new data centre in Isando, could end up being as big as JB3, Hnizdo said. By then, though, it is likely to have soaked up all available electricity resources in the area.
In all, Teraco plans to spend R6-billion in the next four years expanding its data centre facilities, underscoring the demand from content, cloud providers and enterprises for so-called vendor-neutral (not aligned to any operator) server space. – © 2021 NewsCentral Media
