New Hetzner data centre under construction

The new facility, with a hosting capacity of 1200m², can house in excess of 12,000 servers. This will increase the company's national capacity to meet growing customer demand as well as allowing Hetzner to expand its existing product line with the introduction of co-location services to the Gauteng market.

Efficient, economical power usage

Athena Turner, marketing and communications manager for Hetzner, says that with this new development the company is building for growth, ensuring that Hetzner continues to deliver a reliable and long-term value proposition to its customers.

"Hetzner South Africa's building design and data centre efficiencies have been modelled off of Hetzner Online's German facilities, including reducing our dependency on power intensive air-conditioning. Whenever the ambient temperature allows for it, we will make use of direct free cooling which reduces power consumption significantly," comments Turner.

Hetzner Online, one of the leading hosting companies in Germany, has been recognised by global engineering standards firm TÜV SÜD. In 2011 the firm certified that the Hetzner Online Data Centre Park in Falkenstein had achieved the best Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) result ever recorded during certification by TÜV SÜD in Germany.

A strategic location

"This has been a long-term project that we've been preparing for. Sourcing the right location for our facility was paramount. With our data centre in close proximity to fibre routes and a recently built power substation, we're strategically positioned to maximise the benefits of the available infrastructure, enabling us to offer a cost-effective hosting service.

"What's more, the new location has also made multi-homing a reality for Hetzner. Through negotiations with various upstream network providers to find the most suitable connectivity options that will benefit our customers and our growing business requirement, we can confirm that AfricaINX and Internet Solutions will function as our primary bandwidth providers. This will significantly increase Hetzner's network resilience," says Turner.

Turner concludes, "We chose Gauteng as the location for Hetzner's first Data Centre Park as it's our primary market and generates the strongest demand for our services. Our Cape Town customers will continue to benefit from our recently retrofitted data centre at Great Westerford (Newlands) which has adopted many of the same engineering principles."

Hetzner is taking a phased approach with the first of five data centres under construction, in what is to become a sophisticated Data Centre Park.

For further information, go to www.xneelo.co.za/dcpark.