Hyperscale Data Centres: Scale, Speed & Strategy

Teraco completes JB4, its latest hyperscale data centre

Teraco has announced the completion of the first phase of JB4, its new hyperscale data centre addition to the Bredell Campus, Ekurhuleni, South Africa. The new facility supports the growing demand by enterprises and cloud providers for data centre capacity. JB4 offers highly resilient and secure colocation facilities in line with Teraco’s long term vision of enabling digital transformation across Africa. Gauteng is a logical destination for Teraco’s continued investment in data centre infrastructure on the continent. Home to digitally connected enterprises, including telecommunications, financial services, e-commerce, logistics, and retail, the Johannesburg Metropol benefits from its enviable location in the heart of South Africa, which has led to it becoming the hub for connectivity and peering. JB4 represents a strategic addition to Platform Teraco, offering enterprises and cloud providers a scalable platform for IT infrastructure deployment while sustaining performance, reliability, security, and the most comprehensive network choice. The first phase of JB4 comprises 30,000m2 of building structure, 8,000m2 of data hall space, and 19MW of critical power load. Teraco has secured adjacent land and power for phase two expansion, bringing the total critical power load in the facility to 50MW at the end state. The JB4 addition to Teraco’s growing data centre platform takes critical power load capacity at Teraco facilities to 126MW, which includes the Isando Campus JB1/JB3 (40MW), Bredell Campus JB2/JB4 (64MW), Cape Town Campus CT1/CT2 (21MW) and Durban (1MW). This data centre facility dramatically extends Platform Teraco’s capacity in South Africa, according to Jan Hnizdo, CEO, of Teraco. He says, “Forming a vital part of the African IT landscape, Platform Teraco is an essential part of the modern enterprise’s digital transformation strategy with its diverse industry ecosystems and open interconnection marketplace.” JB4 is connected to all the other Teraco data centres through the diverse ecosystem of network operators in the facility, making it ideal for the distributed interconnection-defined architecture of the modern enterprise. Jan says that the majority of enterprise organisations are accelerating their digital transformation strategies and placing a greater focus on cloud adoption strategies. He adds, “Enterprises are looking for the ability to scale as network strategies evolve, and in a world where fast and secure interconnection with strategic business partners is a priority, this is a source of competitive advantage.” Organisations working to accelerate their digital transformation utilise Teraco to dynamically scale their IT infrastructure, adopt hybrid multi-cloud architectures and interconnect with strategic business partners within the Platform Teraco ecosystem of global and local clients. Jan concludes, “The continued increase of cloud adoption in Africa is also being enabled by investments in critical infrastructure, including hyperscale data centre facilities such as JB4. This will enable global cloud clients to service the South African market and the rest of the sub-Saharan African region.”

AirTrunk paves the way to net zero emissions by 2030

AirTrunk has announced its commitment to net zero emissions by 2030, with an approach to emissions reporting that has been developed specifically for hyperscale data centre environments. AirTrunk’s 2030 net zero target exceeds the objective set out in the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to 1.5°C by 2050 and covers Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions. AirTrunk Founder and CEO, Robin Khuda, says: “The climate crisis is one of the most important global challenges of our generation. By taking immediate action to reduce our emissions, we are making an important commitment to our employees, investors, customers, partners and communities for generations to come. “As the pioneer of hyperscale data centres in the region, we are also pioneering a global standard for managing net zero emissions in hyperscale data centre environments. It is based on transparency, accountability and customer collaboration, and balances climate ambition with emissions ownership.” AirTrunk Chief Technology Officer, Damien Spillane, says: “It remains our goal to set the industry standard in sustainability across the Asia Pacific and Japan region, and our net zero approach puts us in a position to pave the way in data centre emissions reporting. The approach leverages the strategies and competencies of our customers while enabling interoperable carbon ledgers and ensuring zero double-counting.” AirTrunk is continuing to achieve carbon neutrality for its Scope 1 emissions, as well as the Scope 2 emissions from its corporate head offices. The company will continue to monitor, measure and report its Scope 3 emissions, and develop a roadmap to manage these emissions in the future. AirTrunk’s roadmap to achieve net zero by 2030 for Scope 1 and 2 emissions is outlined in its FY22 Sustainability Report, which also details the company’s achievements and commitments against its planet, people and progress sustainability pillars. Highlights from the report include the following: • Energy efficiency: the achievement of 1.35 annual average operating Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE), which is 20% lower than the Asia Pacific region average, and a year-on-year improvement from 1.37. • Water management: a new water management framework that ensures AirTrunk’s data centre water usage is both sustainable and productive. AirTrunk sets Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE) limits in water stressed areas and has established an innovative water productivity threshold that sets minimum energy saving targets per unit of water use, ensuring that water usage delivers significant energy and carbon reductions.  • Scope 3 emissions: inclusion, for the first time, of Scope 3 emissions across the value chain including emissions associated with embodied carbon, business travel, employee commuting and employees working from home. • Gender diversity: an increase in the representation of women across its employee base to 32.6%, from 27% in FY21. • Sustainable financing: the conversion of AirTrunk’s A$2.1bn corporate loan facility into a Sustainability Linked Loan (SLL) which achieved several milestones including being the largest SLL for a data centre globally, the first for a data centre in APJ, and the first to utilise operating PUE as a Key Performance Indicator. AirTrunk met all its SLL KPIs in FY22.  Each year, AirTrunk will respond to new challenges and opportunities and continue to assess its sustainability strategy and redefine its commitments to ensure a long-term climate view. AirTrunk Chief Operating Officer, Dana Adams, says: “We have made substantial progress on the targets we released in our inaugural Sustainability Report last year, demonstrating our commitment to integrating sustainability across our operations. We will continue to responsibly manage climate risks and opportunities, while engaging with our stakeholders and redefining benchmarks in sustainability.” KPMG has been engaged to independently assure selected sustainability information including scope 1, 2 and select scope 3 emissions as well as carbon offsets. The Assurance Report is included in Appendix 3 of the Sustainability Report. “Together with our stakeholders, we are well-positioned to lead the transformation of our industry to enable a net zero emissions future,” Robin concludes. To download AirTrunk’s FY22 Sustainability Report, click here.

Kao Data appoints Gratte Brothers to support data centre expansion

Kao Data has announced that it has appointed Gratte Brothers as principal contractor for the expansion of its KLON-06 data centre in Slough. The project will see Gratte Brothers build out the IT capacity at KLON-06 to support the expansion of Kao Data’s platform - providing customers in West London with an optimised, sustainable and OCP-Ready facility. The build at KLON-06 will adhere to Kao Data’s high performance blueprint, providing a hyperscale inspired facility that’s placed to support enterprise and large-scale cloud deployments across the West London availability zone. From a sustainability and efficiency standpoint, the facility will include an efficient cooling system, lithium-ion UPS, and be powered by 100% renewable energy. Furthermore, all generators will be powered by hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO), removing 90% of net CO2 emissions. Iain Thomson, Managing Director, Gratte Brothers says: “We are delighted to be partnering with Kao to deliver the technical expertise required to bring this facility to life. KLON-06 provides a perfect opportunity for Gratte Brothers to showcase its commitment to engineering efficient and sustainable solutions, and we look forward to working collaboratively with the team to deliver this project.” “Our partnership with Gratte Brothers demonstrates Kao Data’s commitment to technical excellence in data centre design, build and operations, and will help fast-track the development of KLON-06 in line with customer demands,” says Paul Finch, COO, Kao Data. “Slough is one of the UK’s most important data centre communities, and the expansion of our portfolio within the world’s second largest data centre hub illustrates our dedication to scaling our high performance platform and supporting customers with sustainable, digital infrastructure solutions.”

KIOXIA announces EDSFF E1.S SSDs for hyperscale data centres

KIOXIA has announced that it has expanded its portfolio with the addition of the KIOXIA XD7P Series data centre NVMe SSDs. Designed for hyperscale and general server applications in the new Enterprise and Data Centre Standard Form Factor (EDSFF), XD7P drives are the second generation of KIOXIA’s E1.S SSDs with Open Compute Project (OCP) data centre NVMe SSD support, following its KIOXIA XD6 Series. “Hyperscale needs of density, power, performance and serviceability are driving PCIe 5.0 E1.S as a form factor, and the OCP data centre NVMe SSD specification V2.0 for the data centre,” says Ross Stenfort, hardware storage engineer, Meta. “The KIOXIA XD7P Series SSD supports these storage technologies, to enable the next generation of hyperscale needs.” XD7P Series data centre NVMe SSDs deliver overall improved performance, achieving nearly one to two times the sequential write performance when compared to their predecessors. These drives are designed to PCIe 4.0 and NVMe 2.0 specification, and PCIe 5.0 with maximum interface speed of 32GT/s per lane is under development. Hence, XD7P will be released initially as PCIe 4.0 SSDs. PCIe 5.0 SSDs will be released based on customer demand.  Based on KIOXIA’s fifth generation BiCS FLASH 3D flash memory technology, the XD7P Series utilises a proprietary KIOXIA controller, which can be adapted to customer needs. The E1.S form factor will be available in heights of 9.5mm, 15mm and 25mm with heat sink options. Capacities will be available up to 7.68TB with 1DWPD endurance. “Next generation cloud and edge platforms need to tackle the challenges arising from thermal and signal integrity requirements,” says Frederik Haak, Senior Manager SSD Marketing, KIOXIA Europe. “With the XD7P Series, KIOXIA’s new generation of E1.S form factored data centre PCIe and NVMe SSD offers an excellent choice for cloud and system architects with focus on future proof platform design.”

Evolution partners with Warburg Pincus to develop sustainable data centres

Evolution Data Centres (EDC) has entered into a programmatic joint venture with affiliates of Warburg Pincus (WP) for the development of sustainable hyper-scale data centres in the fast-growing cloud markets within Southeast Asia. As part of the venture, WP will be committing capital from its maiden asset-level Asia real estate fund, which successfully closed with committed capital of $2.8 billion in late 2021. EDC was founded by a team of executives with over 25 years of experience in the Asian Data Centre market and an extensive track record, having deployed more than 640MW of capacity and led more than $1bn of digital infrastructure transactions in the region. Evolution was established to address two key challenges: the lack of quality and scale of data centre capacity in emerging Asian markets, and the critical need for sustainable infrastructure in the region. Darren Webb, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of EDC says, “I am delighted to announce our new partnership with Warburg Pincus. It is great to have the backing of such a credible investor who shares our passion for building and operating hyper-scale, sustainable data centres across multiple high-growth markets in Southeast Asia. This funding will help us realise our vision of being the leading sustainable data centre provider in the region.” “Warburg Pincus has an outstanding track record of investing in Asia real estate and digital infrastructure. We look forward to drawing on their wealth of experience in undertaking large-scale capital expenditure programs in the region as we embark on our next stage of growth.” comments Ed Martin-Sperry, Co-Founder and Chief Investment Officer of EDC. www.evolutiondatacentres.com www.warburgpincus.com

STACK Infrastructure and ESR partner

STACK Infrastructure and ESR have announced a joint venture to develop a 48MW data centre site in Incheon, Korea. STACK and ESR will jointly develop and deliver a 48MW facility in Incheon in Seoul’s western suburbs. Power to the facility has been secured from KEPCO and construction of the single building will commence in Q1 2023 for delivery of ready for service capacity in Q4 2024. The facility will be operated under the STACK brand. The development is strategically located with robust access to power and network, offering scalability and reliability for higher rack densities and floor loading specifications. The partners will develop a facility incorporating the latest environmentally friendly design supporting industry-leading PUE and building standards. This data centre will enable hyperscalers and enterprise clients to address their evolving requirements in Korea and the APAC region more broadly. “STACK’s opening of a fifth APAC market in 12 months, expanding on our recent developments in Melbourne, Canberra, Perth and Tokyo, enhances our focus on our customers’ strategic requirements by establishing a scalable presence in existing and emerging tier one data centre markets,” says Pithambar (Preet) Gona, STACK’s Chief Executive Officer - APAC. “We are excited about our partnership with ESR, which illustrates our ability to work with market leading real asset managers, leveraging our combined expertise to the benefit of our customers”. “ESR’s strong regional capability and experience in tier one data centre markets ensures we are well-positioned to help develop facilities across critical hyperscale locations,” says Diarmid Massey, CEO of ESR Data Centres. “Partnering with STACK enables us to leverage an outstanding global operating platform and innovative capital solutions to target hyperscale customer growth in key markets.” This milestone follows the recent announcements of STACK’s entrance to the APAC market with the opening of its Singapore regional headquarters, its first 36MW campus in Inzai, Japan and expansion into the Australia market with 124MW in Melbourne, Canberra, and Perth. The strategic nature of ESR’s partnership with STACK and ESR’s previously announced data centre land acquisitions in Japan and Hong Kong, as well as the recent first closing of ESR DC Fund 1, a maiden fund with over $1 billion of equity commitments, continue to demonstrate ESR’s commitment to new economy investment and the development of a range of environmentally friendly and industry leading data centre solutions regionally. www.stackinfra.com www.esr.com

DataVita makes senior appointment to lead international push

DataVita has appointed James King as its new Business Development Director to lead its ambitions for international growth. A chartered accountant with a background in corporate and project finance, James joins from the Scottish Futures Trust where he was an associate director. He previously held roles at accountancy giants EY and PwC. While at the Scottish Futures Trust, James established the Host in Scotland initiative, which aims to raise the profile of Scotland as a location for data centre facilities on the world stage. James’s experience working with global partners in the data centre and subsea infrastructure sectors will see him lead DataVita’s plans to build on its domestic success by attracting companies with international data centre requirements to Scotland.   Danny Quinn, Managing Director at DataVita, says: “Scotland has great potential to follow the likes of Ireland and Sweden an become part of the international data centre market, encouraging multinational companies and hyperscalers to base their regional European data centre services here. We see James as a key contributor to our plans on this front with his experience at Host in Scotland, building on the expertise within our current team.” James adds: “Having worked alongside Danny Quinn and his team for many years, I have been able to see first-hand how dedicated DataVita is to its clients and providing a first-class service with a very keen focus on sustainability. The company’s Fortis data centre facility is unrivalled in Scotland - and arguably the rest of the UK - in terms of its green and security credentials and I am really excited to build on its success to date.” www.datavita.com www.hostinscotland.com

Lincoln Rackhouse and Principle Real Estate Investors acquire Atlanta data centre

Lincoln Rackhouse has announced the acquisition of a key data centre located in the heart of Atlanta's high-tech corridor. The strategically located data centre is an enterprise-grade, highly secured facility, ready to be deployed to customers' specific design and power requirements. The 185,000 square-foot facility sits on a 38-acre parcel with more than 7MW of capacity, and a design to expand to over 13MW. Furthermore, the site can support a separate 30MW ground-up data centre development, ideal for today's hyperscalers and operators. According to Data Centre Hawk, Atlanta's data centre market continues to grow due to the favourable business climate, competitive colocation and cloud environments, reasonable power costs, low natural disaster risk and robust connectivity. The city has cultivated a tech hub, with more than 55 colocation providers and enterprises calling it home. “We're proud to partner with Principal Real Estate Investors in a market that's quickly become one of the most robust data centre regions in the US,” states Martin Peck, Executive Vice President, Lincoln Rackhouse. “Our plan is to begin the immediate development of additional turn-key critical floor space, that will ultimately align and address our customer's current and future expansion needs.” “This acquisition of a high-quality asset in such a dynamic market provides an excellent addition to our portfolio of data centres,” comments Ben Wobschall, Managing Director, Portfolio Management for Principal Real Estate Investors. “We're thrilled to be able to bring immediate availability and expansion to accommodate our customers’ growth in the South East.” St. Louis based Ascent will continue to provide facilities management, engineering and construction services to the site. Marketing and leasing will be provided by Digital Crossroad and CBRE's Atlanta based data centre solutions team.

Infinidat’s InfiniBox SSA II receives award at the Flash Memory Summit 2022

Infinidat has announced that the InfiniBox SSA II has received a Best of Show Award at the Flash Memory Summit 2022. As the next generation solid state array in the company’s broad portfolio of enterprise storage and cyber resilient solutions, the InfiniBox SSA II was recognised as the Most Innovative Hyperscaler Implementation, demonstrating that the InfiniBox SSA II meets the stringent requirements of the hyperscaler, Cloud Service Provider (CSP), Managed Service Provider (MSP), and Managed Hosting Provider (MHP) customer base. The InfiniBox SSA II stands as the industry’s fastest all-flash storage array with unprecedented low latency and unmatched cyber resilience. “Winning the Most Innovative Hyperscaler Implementation Award at the Flash Memory Summit is another validation that Infinidat has taken the all-flash storage market by storm with our continual innovation,” says Eric Herzog, CMO at Infinidat. “For the most demanding applications and workloads, the InfiniBox SSA II is a state-of-the-art storage solution built from the ground up with the highest levels of enterprise-class performance, availability, and cyber resilience at scale, providing an ideal solution for hyperscale, CSP, MSP, and MHP deployments.” “Hyperscalers, CSPs, MSPs, and MHPs set the bar very high for service level objectives as they provide Storage-as-a-Service (STaaS) for a fast-growing customer base which demands cyber resiliency and continuous access to the storage resources,” says Jay Kramer, Chairman of the Awards Program and President of Network Storage Advisors. “We are proud to recognise Infinidat for its InfiniBox SSA II, showcasing InfiniOps autonomous automation coupled with InfiniVerse AI operational set-it-and-forget-it simplicity. The solution not only exceeds its customer’s SLAs but also provides a 100% availability guarantee, unmatched real-world application performance, and powerful cyber storage resilience.” Launched in April 2022, the InfiniBox SSA II continues to raise the bar in enterprise storage performance, utilising 100% solid state technology for persistent storage, which, when coupled with Neural Cache and the company’s software advancements with autonomous automation, takes groundbreaking performance to the next level. The new InfiniBox SSA II delivers lower latency than any other comparable enterprise storage platform in the industry, delivering an unprecedented 35 microseconds of latency. In addition, the SSA II delivers the same 100% availability, white glove service, and lower total cost of ownership that defines the industry acclaimed InfiniBox customer experience. The company offers a comprehensive portfolio of enterprise storage and cyber resilient solutions powered by a common software architecture across the business’ InfiniBox, InfiniBox SSA II and InfiniGuard platforms, including Infinidat’s cyber storage resiliency solution - InfiniSafe. The InfiniBox SSA II is available with Infinidat’s flexible consumption options, as are all of Infinidat’s solutions, including Storage-as-a-Service with Infinidat’s FLX program, capacity on demand with Infinidat’s Elastic Pricing model, and traditional purchase.

Telecom veterans to drive PowerHouse Data Centers’ growth

PowerHouse Data Centers has announced two noteworthy additions to expand its leadership team. PowerHouse has appointed Luke Kipfer as Vice President of Data Centre Development and Construction and Jarrett Appleby to Data Centre Strategy Consultant and Senior Advisor. The pair will be a pivotal force behind AREP’s PowerHouse Data Centers deployment of next-generation data centres in Northern Virginia. Luke brings more than 15 years of exceptional mission-critical experience leading multi-million dollar data centre design and construction. Before joining AREP, he was Regional Director at Direct Line Global where he oversaw project management and operations for several of the world’s largest hyperscale data centre sites. Luke was also Director of Construction at Markley Group where he managed all aspects of design and construction for New England’s largest colocation, mission-critical telecommunications and data centre facility. Jarrett has successfully led strategic operational change and accelerated the profitability of some of the world’s leading digital infrastructure companies over the past 30 years. He has held a number of senior executive positions including Chief Operating Officer of Digital Realty and Coresite Realty and Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) of Equinix. Currently, he is the CEO of Appleby Strategy Group, a digital infrastructure advisory group that works with leading private equity and technology companies. He has also served as the Senior Advisor to the Blackstone Group for the last four years. “We are thrilled to welcome Luke and Jarrett to the PowerHouse Data Centers team, their expertise is a central differentiator from our competition,” says Doug Fleit, Co-Founder and CEO of AREP. “This is an exciting time for PowerHouse. We intentionally brought them on at the beginning stages to be part of developing and establishing our custom solutions that empower hyperscalers with accelerated speed to market, robust connectivity and dedicated power while bypassing limited land and leasing challenges in Data Centre Alley.”