From today, South Africa has a major new player in data centre services. Breaking free from the legacy architecture norm often followed in the market, Cybernest has unveiled its greatest competitive edge: a custom-built data centre that we believe equals the world's best in capacity, availability and energy-efficiency.
"Altogether we have six data centres in South Africa but Bellville 2, our new data centre in the Western Cape, is one of the most advanced yet seen in this country," says Pierre Marais, acting Managing Director of Cybernest, the newly launched data centre business of Telkom. "Capacity-wise, it is on a par with data centres internationally, with overall availability of 99.998 percent. At the same time, because we followed the recommendations of the Green Grid in key features of the centre's design, it is green IT at its best."
Compliant with the Montreal Protocol, the data centre uses ozone-friendly gases, has eliminated lead batteries and, in line with top centres in the United States and Europe, has introduced the latest energy-efficient technologies, including free air cooling and hot aisle, cold aisle air containment.
"These innovations are important because energy efficiency not only reduces our carbon footprint but translates into greater capacity and cost-effectiveness for our customers and ourselves," Marais says. "In the current economic climate, all companies are looking to cut their costs but relatively few realise the financial impact of inefficient energy usage in IT."
According to Cybernest's research, the single biggest energy cost associated with modern computing is air conditioning and cooling. On average, cooling systems account for as much as 45 percent of IT-related energy usage.
Energy wastage is also rife in legacy data centres as a result of inefficient air flow management. By contrast, Cybernest's Bellville 2 data centre has a power usage effectiveness rating of 1.6
Another differentiator is the precautions made to secure the centre's energy supplies. The Bellville 2 centre has not just one but two incoming power feeds from separate sub stations.
It also has exceptional UPS capabilities. In the event of a power failure from both Eskom supplies, the UPS systems take over the full data load in less than 20 milliseconds, leaving all computer systems unaffected by power outages. The facility can run on UPS without municipal power for as long as required, utilising on-site and off-site diesel storage tanks.
"The current power crisis in South Africa has shown how vital a reliable energy supply is for business continuity," says Marais. "No enterprise needs the data loss and downtime that goes with power outages."
Being purpose built for customer data hosting, another distinctive feature of the Bellville centre is its ready-to-use facilities. Server racks in the computer rooms have been pre-provisioned and all power, cooling and backup systems are fully in place and ready for customers to use.
As for virtualisation, Bellville 2 is built for it end-to-end, and not just at server level," says Althon Beukes, Cybernest's Executive: Infrastructure Operations. "With a fully virtualised, unified and pre-provisioned data centre networking fabric, the centre can provision a new server, storage capacity or connectivity quickly and efficiently."
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