PEER 1 Hosting has opened its new £45m data centre near Portsmouth, claiming it to be one of the greenest in the country.
The facility is the second data centre PEER 1 has opened in the UK and will enable it to attract more customers from not only here in the UK but right across EMEA, CEO Fabio Banducci told CBR.
The data centre uses technology from a company called Excool for cooling capabilities, which Banducci told CBR has never been tailored to data centre usage before now. It uses a heat exchange system, low-energy fans and water atomisers to keep the systems cool. There is also a secondary chilled water based cooling system on site.
This should give the data centre a Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) rating of 1:1 when the data centre is running at full capacity. The industry average is 1:8, PEER 1 says.
The new data centre uses Juniper networking equipment and features a 10Gbps line connecting it to PEER 1’s other UK data centre in Fleet, Hampshire, which will become more of a secondary, backup facility, Banducci said.
The building the data centre is housed in is staffed 24/7 and offers an Enterprise Building Management System to monitor the infrastructure. The facility also uses biometric authentication, ultra sound technology and coordinated intruder alarms.
The site, a former IBM facility, was selected due to its proximity to London and PEER 1’s existing facility.
"This new data centre represents a significant investment for PEER 1 in the UK and European markets. There is a shortage of green data centre capacity in the region which creates a great potential for growth. We see this state-of-the-art data centre meeting the needs of our customers going forward in an increasingly data rich world," said Banducci.
CBR spoke to Banducci at length last year. You can read the full interview here.
