Gen-i and Revera today announced site preparation is well underway for the construction of their $60 million enterprise class data center, which will begin later this month, with completion expected in the second half of 2014.

Located in Popes Road, Takanini the new Tier 3 greenfield data center will be one of New Zealand’s largest, housing up to 1200 racks.

The facility will be of modular POD construction with 4 x 100 rack data halls in each POD and a strong focus on sustainability and energy efficiency.

“This is a fantastic investment for Gen-i and Revera, and more importantly, for our clients," says Tim Miles, CEO, Gen-i.

"The new Auckland facility will further increase our capability to deliver the data center and cloud services our clients increasingly need and want.

"We’re already receiving a substantial amount of interest in the new Auckland site from our clients, which underpinned our decision to build.

Miles says the Takanini data center will be an important addition to Gen-i and Revera’s combined fleet of 20 data centers nationwide.

"This is in addition to our recently opened $10.5 million Christchurch data center, planned expansion of Revera’s Wellington data center, and a $2 million expansion to our Dunedin site," he adds.

The new data center represents an investment by Telecom of approximately $60 million, which will be accounted for within the FY15 capex envelope.

Telecom has signed a development agreement with Retail Holdings Limited, who have engaged Hawkins Construction Limited and AECOM to design and build the new facility.

The company says the investment will add considerable momentum to the long-term growth strategies of both Gen-i and Revera, as the two companies meet increased demand from clients looking to relocate their infrastructure or leverage Revera cloud services.

About the Takanini Data Center:

Resiliency:

Tier 3 site built to meet TIA 942-A (2012) standard

The site:

Located upstream from the Otahuhu substation pinch point, the site is zoned industrial with no immediate neighbours, has good multiple road access and low Tsunami risk.

The site is well located for power and very close to Telecom’s backbone network and other telecommunication providers (the data center will be carrier agnostic), while providing sufficient geographical separation from existing Telecom site and other service providers.

The land and layout provide good access and building setbacks to meet high levels of security design.

Design:

A strong focus will be placed on sustainability, PUE and future flexibility. Modular POD construction will be employed with 4 x 100 rack data halls in each POD. The site has sufficient room for 3 of these PODs allowing for ultimate capacity of 1200 racks.

Timing:

Construction will begin this winter with completion in 2H 2014 (calendar year)

Client pipeline:

This Tier 3 site will be utilised by Revera for hosting of All of Government operations, and by Gen-i for enterprise data center clients.