09 September 2014

The new halls at South Gyle will make use of blended evaporative and fresh air cooling technologies.

Pulsant has announced plans to expand its well-established South Gyle Tier 3 data centre site based just outside of Edinburgh.

The managed hosting and colo specialist says it will construct two new data halls consisting of up to 64 racks in each, as well as build and configuration rooms, and secure storage areas. The new facility will feature two-factor authentication security access and will be configurable according to specific customer requirements.

The new halls will complement the existing infrastructure but will feature autonomous mechanical services in order to ensure complete redundancy and increased efficiency is achieved.

Pulsant CTO Matt Lovell says: “The drive behind this strategy is to ensure we deliver cost-effective, highly secure, environmentally sound services to our customers through our technologically up-to-date facilities that deliver maximum uptime, redundancy and support.”

South Gyle is said to be the largest commercial data centre in Scotland. It is supported by more than 30 telecoms carriers, is PCI-DSS compliant, and G-Cloud accredited.

It adds that the new halls will benefit from these features, with direct fibre access to a wide range of service providers and carriers, and will also make use of blended evaporative and fresh air cooling technologies and onsite high voltage network to ensure 2N delivery of power to each rack.

The expansion project is scheduled for completion in February 2015. Lovell says new customers will be able to effectively move right into the new halls once construction is complete, as the infrastructure to support the racks is already in place. “For our existing customers this increase in capacity ensures that they experience no disruption to their service, but will be able to take advantage of the additional racks with ease,” he adds.

Pulsant claims to be Scotland’s largest data centre provider. It hosts the IX Scotland, the region’s dedicated internet exchange, and currently supports 820 racks in two purpose-built redundant data centres, featuring 24-hour a day security and support.

In 2013, Pulsant was awarded the Royal Warrant as a provider of hosted IT and data centre services to the Royal household.