Following the recently completed expansion of its Durban data centre facility, DB1, Teraco is embarking on a further expansion of its CT2 hyperscale data centre facility in Brackenfell, Cape Town.
Rendering of Teraco’s CT2 Phase 2, now under construction.
Teraco’s DB1 is the largest data centre in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal. Located on Durban’s north coast, DB1 is a strategic interconnection hub on the African subsea cable map, with direct access to the Seacom, EASSy, MÉTISS, and soon-to-be-deployed 2AFRICA cable systems that connect the east coast of Africa.
The DB1 facility is connected to the Teraco campus in Isando, Johannesburg, through a number of carriers via diverse regional fibre routes, enabling clients to increase the number of partners they connect with and expand their reach into new markets. Teraco’s DB1 facility offers clients secure colocation and interconnection services and the ability to leverage Teraco’s digital hubs in Johannesburg directly.
The newly expanded facility supports the growing demand from business enterprises and cloud service providers for data centre capacity. With 2.2 megawatts (MW) of critical power load, DB1 now comprises 5 800 square metres of built space accommodating over 700 racks.
Teraco has also started construction on the 30 MW expansion of its CT2 hyperscale data centre facility in Cape Town. The expansion is scheduled for completion in early 2025 and will incorporate environmentally sustainable cooling and water management design.
Like DB1, the CT2 expansion caters for the increasing demand from customers for data centre capacity and offers highly resilient and secure colocation facilities, in line with Teraco’s long-term vision of enabling digital transformation across Africa.
Jan Hnizdo, CEO at Teraco, said the new CT2 facility represents a strategic addition to Platform Teraco. It offers enterprises a scalable platform for IT infrastructure deployment while providing performance, reliability, stringent security, and the widest choice of carriers and network service providers – which is crucial in building a robust interconnection strategy.
“Teraco is committed to growing its capacity footprint across its core hubs. We ensure our clients have the flexibility to scale and take advantage of the digital transformation across sub-Saharan Africa. We continue to invest significantly in the region’s ICT infrastructure and have built out Africa’s largest data centre platform. We take pride in enabling open access interconnection and providing world-class data centre infrastructure for our clients,” he said.
Set to be built over three levels, CT2 Phase 2 will see the construction of four data halls of 5.3 MW, two data halls of 3.1 MW, and a further two data halls of 2.2 MW. The CT2 facility will support a total IT load of 50 MW.
As part of Teraco’s broader Cape Town Campus, CT2 is connected to CT1 with diverse fibre routes and provides enterprises with direct access to Platform Teraco – a rich ecosystem of over 250 network providers, global cloud on-ramps, subsea cable systems, access to over 50 managed service providers, and direct peering at NAPAfrica, Africa’s largest internet exchange point. 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 one of Africa’s most digitally connected cities and home to telecoms, financial services, e-commerce, logistics, retail and many other enterprises. Located at the southern tip of Africa, the city is at the confluence point for major subsea cable systems such as Equiano, ACE, WACS and SAT-3/SAFE. The number of subsea cables landing in Cape Town continues to gain momentum, with the 2AFRICA cable system landing expected soon.
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. This design introduces industry-leading PUE ratios (power used to power delivered to computing equipment), minimising energy consumption and reducing to zero water used in the ongoing cooling process.
CT2 will increase the critical power load capacity at Teraco’s South African facilities to 186 MW, which includes the Isando Campus JB1/JB3/JB5 (70 MW), Bredell Campus JB2/JB4 (64 MW), Cape Town Campus CT1/CT2 (50 MW), and Durban (now 2 MW).
For more information visit: www.teraco.co.za
