Rackspace To Open 10MW Data Centre In London

Rackspace Hosting has confirmed reports last month that it is building a new data centre in the UK, which will have an enviable energy efficiency, and up to 10 MegaWatt capacity, which could more than double the company’s British hosting capacity.

Unlike its current 7.7 MW flagship centre in Slough (opened in 2010), the site will be built by a third party, data centre construction firm Digital Realty, while Rackspace will concentrate on the tech housed in the building’s five halls, which will start to open some time late in 2014.

Rackspace UK data centre

Rackspace can’t say where the building is yet, as it is evaluating two possible locations, North and South of London – however both locations are sufficiently far from Slough to offer a full-strength disaster recovery service.

The move is a “big vote of confidence” in the UK as a location for data centres, said Nigel Beighton, Rackspace vice president of technology. In particular, it expresses Rackspace’s belief the local power infrastructure will be cost-effective enough to build energy-hungry data centres here and make them profitable, despite concerns over electricity generation plans, and uncertainty over green taxes.

“We are opening three 2MW data halls at the end of 2014,” said Beighton. “The other two will depend on demand. We expanded our Slough data centre last year, so we have enough capacity, to take us past the point when it might be needed.”

This first appeared on TechWeekEurope UK.Read the whole story here