Photos: Inside NTT’s new Johannesburg data centre

NTT Ltd, the parent company of Dimension Data, on Wednesday took journalists through the first phase of its giant new data centre facility in Gauteng, called Johannesburg 1.

The data centre, which technically is in the City of Tshwane (in Samrand, north of Midrand), consists of two phases of 6MW of IT load each, with the first phase now nearing completion.

The facility will have a total capacity of 12MW covering 6 000 sq m once it is fully built. The first phase is already sold out, company executives told TechCentral during Wednesday’s tour.

Johannesburg 1 Data Center – yes, it’s spelled the American way – is part of NTT’s expansion in Africa, with the company promising further data centre builds in Cape Town and Nairobi, Kenya.

“The facility will cater to hyperscalers and enterprises, providing them with an opportunity to use NTT’s full ICT stack of services, including managed hybrid cloud, network management, collaboration, security and application monitoring,” NTT said in a statement. Dimension Data will operate as NTT’s partner for the data centre, selling access and enterprise IT service related to the facility.

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The new site’s technical infrastructure is supported by N+1 UPSes, N+1 generator backup and highly redundant cooling systems. It uses a closed-loop chilled water system with air-cooled chillers, meaning that the water running through the cooling systems isn’t evaporated. This reduces the threat of potential drought water restrictions and allows the data centre to achieve low power usage effectiveness and water usage effectiveness, it explained.

Although NTT hasn’t provided the exact cost of building Johannesburg 1, it said it is in the region of €100-million to €120-million, or between R1.8-billion and R2.2-billion.  – © 2022 NewsCentral Media

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