South Africa’s Engineering News Online reports that telecommunications company MTN (News - Alert) Business has launched its upgraded Gallo Manor data center, which recently was extended and improved. According to Engineering News Online reporter Henry Lazenby, “R80-million systems upgrade and expansion project is one of the largest ‘live’ upgrades undertaken in the southern hemisphere.” As per the report, the Gallo Manor data center is a key cornerstone of MTN Business, and its hosting infrastructure was amongst the first for the South African market when it was initially launched more than a decade ago.
Speaking to Engineering News, MTN Business managing executive Angela Gahagan-Thomson (News - Alert) told reporter Lazenby, “This facility had been instrumental in driving our business model and will continue to do so into the future due to, among other things, its location, infrastructure magnitude and size. A substantial upgrade investment into Gallo Manor was a key objective of ours in 2011, to ensure our customers can take full and immediate advantage of technology innovation such as cloud computing, virtualization and convergence.”
The report indicates that with this extension of data center’s footprint by 2,000 sq. m, the company is preparing to make the data center its main hosting and cloud services site in the country. According to Engineering News Online, the new data rooms are already 80 percent occupied and the largest of these rooms hosts 30 percent of Internet content in the country.
According to DatacenterDynamics, the Gallo Manor data center is built to Uptime Institute and Telecommunications Industry Association (News - Alert)-942 standards. Using DC feeds to power the data center has improved its overall efficiency, significantly saving data center power and cooling cost. Consequently, added Jones, “Old chillers were replaced with new hybrid air cooling towers and extra power capacity was installed with a redundant diesel generator to ensure the datacenter’s uptime in the case of a grid failure.”
Additionally, the data center security was beefed up, as well as the management system. As a result of this expansion, the Gallo Manor now comprises six main data centers and 11 third-party hosting sites. However, the work does not stop here. The report suggests that MTN is working on adding another 500 sq m in the future.
In other industry news, recently data center power distribution company Server Technology was instrumental in helping GoGrid establish its newest data center in Amsterdam, which went live this January. The company helped GoGrid deploy a three-phase 400 V solution, a custom power distribution unit (PDU) from Server Tech that supported GoGrid’s specific international power requirements, as well as enabled it get to market quickly. Recently, Server Technology (News - Alert) was named to CRN's 2012 Datacenter 100 list for its intelligent cabinet PDUs. According to the supplier, its intelligent cabinet PDUs are known for being the "standard-bearer of the industry with unmatched quality, reliability and performance." The company claims to hold the largest number of patents in this industry.
Ashok Bindra is a veteran writer and editor with more than 25 years of editorial experience covering RF/wireless technologies, semiconductors and power electronics. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.Edited by Carrie Schmelkin