South Africa's newest data centre in Bellville, Cape Town, is among the world's top 10 percent in capability and capacity - but it cost significantly less to build than similar centres in Europe and America. Its operating and lifecycle costs should also be lower because of features such as its exceptional energy efficiency.
"The new Bellville data centre was not only less costly to build than its international counterparts but, being one of the most energy-efficient facilities of its kind, will also save money in the long run," says Pierre Marais, acting Managing Director of Telkom Data Centre Operations.
"When we decided to build this centre, we said we were going to do the right thing for our customers, shareholders, employees and the environment," he says. "That meant doing some juggling: On the one hand, we wanted to do what was right and invest in specific efficiency and functional capabilities; on the other, we had to ensure that our investment was affordable. I think we got the balance right."
Marais cites the Bellville facility's approach to securing its energy supplies - a critical success factor in the data centre business.
"Best practice dictates that if you want to build a data centre today, you'd better make sure you have two independent feeds from different power stations. The problem is that two feeds are not generally available and are very costly to bring in," Marais says.
"A major reason why we chose Bellville as a location, and also why this particular centre was less expensive to build, is that there were already two power feeds from separate power stations. That alone puts us in a very cost-competitive position."
Another example of striking the right balance is the pre-provisioning of exactly 50 percent of the computer space in the data centre. "With half of all the racks in our server rooms pre-provisioned, we can move customers in very quickly," Marais says. "But we haven't gone overboard by pre-provisioning 100 percent because that would not make investment sense."
Similarly, Cybernest elected not to use Tier 4 data centre design, opting instead for Tier 3. "We selected Tier 3 because, from a design and availability perspective, it hits the sweet spot in our market. Had we gone any higher, it would have been at an astronomical cost for a very niche target market. Tier 3 is cost effective, reliable and reduces risk, fitting very snugly into our target market." Tier 3 data centres also appear to be the standard in Europe, currently making up about 50 percent of all data centres and continuously increasing as Tier 2 and 1 facilities are being transformed to Tier 3.
Marais says Cabernet's design decisions were based on extensive research on the world's best data centres, learning from their lessons and capitalising on their successes.
"Our designers went to America and Europe to visit the companies that are running the best data centres in the world, doing data hosting for the likes of Google, eBay and Microsoft. We asked them how they would do things if they had to do it all over again. Then we took their answers and used them to design the new Bellville data centre."
This explains, for instance, why the centre is based on Cisco 3.0 architecture. "This architecture forms the cornerstone for cloud computing and virtualised hosting," says Marais. "The deployed network architecture delivers a unified fabric that enables Fiber Channel and Ethernet access consolidation, as well as a service edge integration capability that in turn enables carrier-neutral access connectivity to the facility. Carrier-neutral access will provide for additional ways to do risk alleviation, assuring us best-in-class access into the data centre."
Another feature gleaned from Cybernest's overseas research is the strong focus on energy efficiency. "Legacy data centres are heavy users of energy, which dramatically increases costs and carbon emissions," he says. Here too, Telkom has been able to leapfrog the legacy centres by introducing a host of new-generation energy-efficient features, including free air cooling, 'hot aisle, cold aisle' air flow management and energy management software.
Says Marais: "With best practices built into every aspect of the Bellville 2 data centre, it is an investment that gives us a competitive advantage which will be very difficult for others to duplicate."
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