Teraco commences CT2 expansion, increasing critical IT load to 50MW
Teraco: A Digital Realty Company, Africa’s largest interconnection hub and vendor-neutral data centre provider, has announced a 30 megawatt (MW) expansion of its CT2 hyperscale data centre facility in Brackenfell, Cape Town, South Africa. The expansion is scheduled for completion in early 2025 and will incorporate the latest environmentally sustainable cooling and water management designs.
The facility expansion caters for the increasing demand by enterprise customers and hyperscale cloud providers for data centre capacity. The CT2 facility 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 – a crucial component 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.
CT2 Phase 2 construction has commenced with the new capacity scheduled to be available in the first quarter of 2025. CT2 Phase 2 will comprise four data halls of 5.3 megawatts (MW), two data halls of 3.1MW, and a further two data halls of 2.2MW. Set to be built over three levels upon completion, the entire CT2 facility will support a total IT load of 50MW.
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.
As one of Africa’s most digitally connected cities, Cape Town is a logical destination for Teraco’s continued investment into data centre infrastructure on the continent. Cape Town is home to thriving digitally connected enterprises, including telecoms, financial services, e-commerce, logistics, and retail. The city benefits from its enviable location at the southern tip of Africa and is the confluence point for major subsea cable systems such as Equiano, ACE, WACS and SAT-3/SAFE. The abundance 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 PUEs, minimising energy consumption and reducing to zero water used in the ongoing cooling process.
CT2 is the latest expansion to Teraco’s growing data centre platform. It increases the critical power load capacity at Teraco facilities to 185MW, which includes the Isando Campus JB1/JB3/JB5 (70MW), Bredell Campus JB2/JB4 (64MW), Cape Town Campus CT1/CT2 (50MW), and Durban (1MW).
Organisations working to accelerate their digital transformation use Teraco to scale their IT infrastructure dynamically, adopt hybrid multi-cloud architectures, and interconnect with strategic business partners within the Platform Teraco ecosystem of global and local clients.
Key facts CT2
On completion, CT2 will comprise 73,000 square metres of building structure serviced by 90 megavolt-amperes (MVA) of utility power supply.
Strategically located as part of the Cape Town Campus and connected to CT1 with over 6,500 interconnects.
The expansion will add eight data halls, taking the total facility to 16 halls with 18,000 square metres of deployment space.
CT2 expansion significantly adds to South and sub-Saharan Africa’s data centre infrastructure.
The data centre expansion is being built in line with global hyperscale requirements.
It will augment the existing portfolio of ISO9001, ISO27001, ISO50001, ISO14001, PCI-DSS and ISAE3402-certified data centre facilities.
CT2 will feature environmentally conscious designs and monitoring technology to reduce water use and improve energy efficiency.