Teraco announces big Cape Town data centre expansion

Teraco has announced plans for a huge expansion of its “hyperscale” Cape Town data centre, CT2, which will see it increasing the facility’s critical IT load from 20MW to 50MW.

The 30MW expansion to the site in Brackenfell in Cape Town’s northern suburbs is scheduled for completing in about 15 months’ time – in early 2025 – and will incorporate the “latest environmentally sustainable cooling and water management designs”, Teraco said.

“The facility expansion caters for the increasing demand by enterprise customers and hyperscale cloud providers for data centre capacity,” it said.

CT2 phase 2 will consist of four data halls of 5.3MW, two data halls of 3.1MW and a further two data halls of 2.2MW. It is set to be built over three levels.

Upon completion, CT2 will comprise 73 000sq m of building structure serviced by 90MVA of utility power supply. The expansion will add eight data halls, taking the total facility to 16 halls with 18 000sq m of deployment space.

CT2 is connected to Teraco’s other Cape Town data centre, CT1, with diverse fibre routes. Clients deployed in either of these facilities can connect directly to AWS Direct Connect and Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute or via Teraco’s Africa Cloud Exchange.

“Cape Town is home to thriving digitally connected enterprises, including telecoms, financial services, e-commerce, logistics and retail,” Teraco said, explaining its decision to invest further in data centre capacity in the Western Cape’s largest city,” the company said.

Subsea cables

“The city benefits from its enviable location at the southern tip of Africa and is the confluence point for major subsea cable systems such as Equiano, Ace, Wacs and Sat-3/Safe. The abundance of subsea cables landing in Cape Town continues to gain momentum, with the 2Africa cable system landing expected soon,” it said.

“CT2 has been designed to put sustainability first and minimise its environmental footprint, incorporating state-of-the-art cooling designs with a closed-loop chilled water system that offers 100% free air cooling.”

Read: Teraco acquires Cape Town site that hosts CT1 data centre

The expanded CT2 will take Teraco’s total critical power load at its facilities across South Africa to 185MW. This includes the Isando campus JB1/JB3/JB5 (70MW), Bredell campus JB2/JB4 (64MW), Cape Town campus CT1/CT2 (50MW) and Durban (1MW).  – © 2023 NewsCentral Media

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