A look inside Hetzner’s Data Centre Park
As SA’s specialist web hosting company, Hetzner’s principle of only doing what delivers value to its customers has driven the company to innovate by building data centre facilities at new levels of cost effectiveness as well as power and cooling efficiencies. The company retained ownership of all building design & data centre efficiencies, modeling off of Hetzner Online’s award-winning German facilities. Deploying this data centre concept in South Africa means that the company is able to reduce its dependency on power intensive air-conditioning by making use of direct free cooling when ambient temperature allows for it. With this innovative free cooling technology, Hetzner is able to reduce power consumption significantly – an ongoing battle for many data centre facilities.
Climate Control:
Hetzner’s Data Centre Park has N+2 redundancy on all air conditioning units. When ambient temperature allows for it, the facility makes use of free cooling – achieved with their proprietary air conditioning system. This significantly reduces the power consumption and carbon footprint of their data centre. Hetzner anticipates that over an annual cycle, a minimum of 65% of their cooling requirements will come from free cooling. During the South African winter, autumn and spring seasons, the data centre runs on free cooling for up to 24 hours a day. This figure is lower during the summer months, averaging 8 to 10 hours per day, with peaks in excess of 15 hours free cooling per day. During these periods energy-efficient fans move the cooler air via carefully designed airflow channels to where it is needed.
Connectivity:
In addition to customers being able to purchase bandwidth from Hetzner, the company offers a carrier neutral model for Colocation customers, providing complete freedom of choice as to who they use for upstream service providers and point to point connections. EOH Carrier Services, Dark Fibre Africa (DFA) & Internet Solutions currently have a presence in Hetzner’s facility while MetroFibre Networx and Telkom are in the process of installing fibre. Customers are welcome to initiate the installation of additional provider services. Hetzner uses EOH Carrier Services and Internet Solutions as its primary bandwidth providers. Using two network providers significantly increases the data centre’s network resilience. Connectivity is provided through diverse, redundant fibre routes connecting the facility to a 10Gbps fibre ring.
Power Supply:
Fully redundant, physically separated A+B feeds provide power to the facility. A single utility power feed can be disconnected without interruption to service. Hetzner’s Dedicated Server customers using a single power supply option also significantly benefit from this redundancy through the sophisticated static transfer switch design. Should the Data Centre Park experience load shedding or an Eskom power outage, Hetzner’s UPS systems and a standby generator on each feed provides a continual power supply to the data centre. The data centre is able to run indefinitely without Eskom power as the facility has the capacity to hold 53 000 litres of fuel with a diesel refueling strategy in place to ensure its fuel tanks are replenished long before they are exhausted.
Security:
The Data Centre Park has a 24/7 security presence including a patrol team. The facility is monitored by CCTV camera surveillance both externally and internally. Biometric access is installed on all access points, with a mantrap facility at the main entrance to prevent tailgating. A high voltage electric fence and alarm triggers provide perimeter security. Colocation customers enjoy unattended access with our biometric access system, which allows them to visit their servers in the demarcated Colocation area.
Juniper Backbone technology:
Hetzner’s longstanding partnership with Juniper allows the company to offer a high-performance network infrastructure. With the implementation of Juniper’s Virtual Chassis technology, Hetzner is able to increase the redundancy and resilience of its network, allowing for high levels of automation in the provisioning process.
Separate Work & Relax Area:
Hetzner’s Data Centre Park has a separate work area and small meeting room for onsite customers to make use of with beverages readily available. There is also a workroom that provides the basic tools needed for Colocation customers that wish to work on their servers.
Data Centre Visits:
Should there be an interest in Hetzner’s Colocation service, Hetzner is happy to organise a data centre visit. Email requests can be sent to [email protected] or call the company on 0861 0861 08 where their consultants are on stand-by to assist.
