The whole process took approximately one year from start to finish, with the search for the right location and premises beginning in Spring 2009. By August, the site had been found and planning was underway. The actual ‘kitting out’ of the building then took approximately 18 weeks, most of which was completed over the December holiday period.
Prime objectives
“First and foremost, we wanted to address the needs of our customers,” said Jason Friedler, Head of Hosting. “Demand is growing not only for disaster recovery solutions but also for comprehensive managed hosting with more companies looking to outsource this requirement. The London Hosting Centre - Woking offers an additional 10,000ft² of premium hosting space for Telstra International’s customers worldwide.”
He added: “It also lays the groundwork for our cloud computing strategy by providing us with a dual site, multi-tiered, managed hosting architecture – modelled on the successful experience delivered in Sydney, Australia by Telstra Corporation which we have now adopted for the International market.”
Choosing the right location
After deciding to capitalise on London’s position as a UK Data Centre hub for multinational companies, several factors had to be taken into account when determining the exact site for the new facility, such as strong transport connections and physical geography. For obvious security reasons, the site could not be located near a flood plain or a flight path – which significantly narrowed down the options in and around London.
Just as important was the distance from Telstra’s existing Data Centre in Docklands. The new Data Centre needed to be far enough away to be able to offer full disaster recovery (in the event of a worst case scenario) yet close enough to ensure low latency connectivity between the two centres.
Choosing the right building
“The biggest challenge we then faced was finding the right building,” Jason said. “We needed to find a space that was large enough for our current requirements but with the capability for further expansion if necessary. We also needed a building where the utility suppliers could meet our specific needs.”
The London Hosting Centre - Woking needs a very high level of power density which many suppliers could not provide. This is due to the growing amount of kit going into each rack – a trend that is expected to continue.
“Telstra’s experience in running Data Centres around the world led to specific mechanical and electrical requirements, as we know where single points of failure can occur and we needed to ensure they were avoided,” explained Jason. “We also offer per rack monitoring (which represents a big cost) because we have a number of customers who run their own racks, and this enables us to ensure that no one customer affects any other.”
Choosing the right vendors
Equally critical to the project’s success was choosing the right technology providers to work with. Once again, this was dictated by Telstra’s Data Centre expertise.
Jason concluded: “All our providers are market leading companies whose technology is ‘tried and trusted’ in our existing UK Data Centre network. As a result, we are confident that the suppliers we chose are able to deliver on the stringent SLAs we expect – and which our customers demand.”