Pulsant Announces Expansion Of ‘Largest Commercial Data Centre’ In Scotland

Pulsant, a specialist in cloud computing, managed hosting and colocation, has expanded its South Gyle tier 3 data centre site, based just outside of Edinburgh, with the construction of a new facility.

The expansion project includes the construction of 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.

Dedicated Internet exchange

Pulsant claims to be the largest data centre provider in Scotland with its South Gyle facility being the largest commercial data centre in the country. 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.

Matt Lovell, CTO, Pulsant, said: “This expansion is part of Pulsant’s overall growth strategy, which includes upgrading and growing our existing data centre sites.

“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.”

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

South Gyle is supported by more than 30 telecommunications carriers, is PCI-DSS compliant and G-Cloud accredited. 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.

Lovell added: “The decision to expand our existing site means that new customers can 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.”

The expansion project is scheduled for completion in February 2015.