Virtus, the UK-based provider of colocation services, has announced that construction work has started on LONDON2 – its new flagship data center in Hayes, West London. This ‘green’ data center will deploy a ground breaking fresh-air, evaporative cooling technology which will dramatically decrease energy consumption. The LONDON2 data center further reduces environmental impact by using 100% green power.
The facility will deliver 65,000 square feet of net customer data center space comprising six data halls, all capable of being subdivided allowing colocation clients to have anything from a cabinet in a shared space to their own suite or data hall with dedicated power and cooling. The new cooling technology would bring the site’s power usage effectiveness (PUE) below a value of 1.2, which would yield substantial TCO reductions for Virtus’ colocation clients. Construction is scheduled to be ready for client occupation in the summer of 2014.
Green data center
The new site will deliver 11.4MW of IT power. In addition, the site has extensive client office space, board rooms and meeting facilities particularly aimed at the growing community of Virtus’ clients such as IT Managed Service Providers (MSPs), systems integrators, digital media, financial institutions and enterprises.
By using the most advanced, fresh-air, evaporative cooling technology, solar panels, ground water from its own well, chimney racks for heat extraction, highly efficient UPS systems, and other innovative technologies, Virtus LONDON2 will be a very energy efficient data center premises. On top of that, the LONDON2 data center will use 100% green power, from renewable sources and heat pumps to re-circulate heat generated by the IT equipment into communal areas.
The LONDON2 data center is located in a fiber rich area and when opened, will immediately offer a wide choice of carriers (more than 10, of which 4 are Tier 1) offering diverse connectivity services enabling low-cost, low-latency, high-speed and high-quality access to different networks, internet exchanges, and customer locations globally. In addition, the high-speed low-latency connections between Virtus’ LONDON1 data center in Enfield and its LONDON2 data center in Hayes, will allow them to operate as one common market place.
