Metronode starts data centres in Melbourne, Perth

National floorspace doubles in two cities

The BladeRoom modular data centre will initially be used in the Melbourne facility before being rolled out across new facilities in other capital cities.

The BladeRoom modular data centre will initially be used in the Melbourne facility before being rolled out across new facilities in other capital cities.

Leighton Holdings (ASX:LEI) subsidiary Metronode has ramped up plans to more than double its data centre technical floorspace across Australian capital cities, with construction due to commence on Melbourne and Perth facilities next week.

The first phase of the expansion project, announced in January, would result in $100 million combined funding for the two data centres, with technical floor space of 1146 square metres in Perth and 7000 square metres in Melbourne. The combined additional floor space in the two cities would alone nearly double the 10,000 square metres of floor space currently tenanted by Metronode in all major capital cities.

A second facility in Canberra is on its way to development approval, while further facilities are also planned in Adelaide, Sydney, Auckland and Brisbane as part of an expansion plan due to be finalised by next year.

An eighth data centre in Wollongong has also been slated, pending contractual negotiations.

Both facilities in Melbourne and Perth are expected be constructed by September this year.

Computerworld's Australian data centre directory.

Despite construction just beginning in Melbourne, the modular BladeRoom data halls (pictured) have been load-tested in the UK and transported to Melbourne for installation at the facility.

Metronode general manager, Malcolm Roe, told Computerworld Australia the final flight capacity, or revenue potential, of the Perth facility was expected at $40 million.

“We’ve got good tenant demand,” he said. “Our current facilities are fully tenanted, though not all of them are fully loaded. There’s certainly demand across the country.”

Perth in particular is set to benefit from the construction of a new, 4800 kilometre submarine cable linking the city to Singapore. The cable, announced by Metronode’s parent company this week, would provide latency speeds averaging 28 milliseconds between the two regions, with the new Perth data centre forming the termination point. It would then link to the terrestrial network of another Leighton subsidiary, Nextgen networks, for a total latency of around 48 milliseconds between Singapore and Sydney.

However, Roe said the data centres would remain agnostic of fibre providers.

The facility in Perth is expected to hold 480 30-kilowatt racks with a three megawatt total IT load.

Competitor and whole-of-government facilities panel member Enterprise Data Corporation has announced a similar doubling of floorspace.

Follow James Hutchinson on Twitter: @j_hutch

Follow Computerworld Australia on Twitter: @ComputerworldAU

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