Teraco’s JB5 is an imposing structure alongside the R24 highway east of Johannesburg – quite an achievement given its location alongside several other large buildings that make up the company’s sprawling and still-expanding Isando campus.

JB5, which is located on the eastern end of the campus, is a 30MW data centre that will house Teraco’s first at-scale artificial intelligence workloads. It will house GPUs used by so-called “hyperscalers”, though Teraco can’t name the clients that use its facilities.

Work began on JB5 in late 2022 and is now nearing completion. CEO Jan Hnizdo gave TechCentral a tour of the new data centre earlier this week.

Utilising the “latest environmentally sustainable cooling and water management designs”, the JB5 facility is the eighth data centre development from Teraco built in the City of Ekurhuleni’s “aerotropolis” around OR Tambo International Airport. It has now begun work on JB7, located nearby on the same Isando campus. JB7 will be a 40MW facility when it’s completed in less than two years’ time.

Half of JB5 already has IT workloads running in it, and Teraco has secured commitments from clients to use the rest of the space.

Teraco, which has spent “tens of billions of rand” building its data centres in Gauteng, Cape Town and Durban, said JB5 will be used for both traditional IT/cloud services as well as more power-hungry AI workloads.

Cooling

A closed-loop water-cooling system has been introduced in the new data centre to keep the GPU chips – which produce more heat and consume more electricity than traditional IT workloads – running optimally. The site also makes good use of outside air, particularly in winter for natural cooling, while hot air from the server racks rises quickly through vents throughout the building before it escapes through the roof.

The view across Teraco's Isando campus from the roof of JB5. Image: TechCentral — The view across Teraco’s Isando campus from the roof of JB5. Image: TechCentral

Other key facts about JB5 include:

The site, once completed, will have 30 large generator sets for backup power;
Its 55 000sq m of building structure is serviced by 120MVA of utility power supply;
It has been built in a single phase and includes 12 thousand-square-metre halls; and
It has been built in line with the requirements of global hyperscale cloud providers.

Early construction work has begun on Teraco’s JB7, meanwhile. This data centre will boast 40MW of critical power load. Its development will be funded through a recently announced R8-billion syndicated loan arranged through Absa and other financial institutions.

Teraco's JB5 is nearing completion. Image: Teraco — Teraco’s JB5 is nearing completion. Image: Teraco

The expansion will increase the Isando campus’s capacity to 110MW of critical power load, increasing critical power load capacity at Teraco facilities to 228MW:

Isando campus JB1/JB3/JB5/JB7: 110MW
Bredell campus JB2/JB4: 63MW
Cape Town campus CT1/CT2: 53MW
Durban: 2MW

Another view of JB5. Image: Teraco — Another view of JB5. Johannesburg’s Kelvin power station is visible in the background. Image: Teraco

Key facts about JB7 include:

The 71 000sq m building structure will be served by 68MVA of utility power supply, which is expected to provide 40MW of critical power to clients’ racks;
JB7 will be built in a single phase and is expected to include eight 1 500sq m data halls;
It is being built in line with global hyperscale requirements;
It will feature environmentally conscious designs and monitoring technology to reduce water use and improve energy efficiency; and
Like JB5, it will provide liquid-to-air and liquid-to-liquid cooling for high-density cloud and AI deployments.

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