Vantage (Next Generation Data), Newport, Wales

Colo-X analysis

The Vantage Newport data centre campus is one of the largest in both the UK and Europe, currently offering some 70MW of constructed capacity and rapidly expanding to over 200MW across the original building and two new adjacent plots.

Originally opened as Next Generation Data (NGD) in 2009 and acquired by Vantage in July 2020. The majority of capacity is being taken up by hyperscale operators of whom Microsoft is one (the site is an Azure Express Route location). However, dedicated halls for “smaller clients” such as British Telecom, IBM or Wipro are an option.  Retail colocation rack space is available in shared halls; LINX, London Internet Exchange an arrival in 2020 but only 8 ports in use by 2022.

Within the UK this is one of only two wholesale focussed campuses away from London and the M25, so offers diversity at scale, as well as servicing the needs of the smaller local market from south Wales or the Bristol/south-west England region.

Vantage Newport facility description

The simply massive (3/4  million square feet) first data centre building was originally designed and built to be a semi-conductor fabrication plant for LG Electronics in the late ’90s, a high profile facility backed with lots of public money.  Sadly this venture collapsed when LG pulled out of the program and the empty building was then handed back to the Welsh Government. The founders of NGD realised the potential of the building for data centre use, especially with nearly 200MW of power available and signed an agreement with the Welsh Government in 2007 with the first customer, British Telecom, going live in 2009.

Built across three enormous floor plates NGD began to develop individual halls for large scale (wholesale) users with each hall supporting several MW of IT load with dedicated plant, built to the bespoke requirements of each client. Customers ranged from Microsoft hosting Azure through to a large American bank and several systems integrators such as Wipro or British Telecom. The overall building size is 750,000 sq ft gross and able to accommodate 22,000 racks.

NGD has a rare 400kV connection to the UK’s Super Grid, thereby avoiding the more distributed lower voltage power networks where faults normally occur, a feature that has allowed the massive expansion of the now underway.

Smaller scale rack services are available either via NGD directly themselves, usually for 10 racks or more (50kW IT load) or via partners for smaller rack by rack users (see Colo-X pictures in listing).

ISO9001, 14001 and 27001.  SSAE16 and PCI DSS accredited.

Recent Developments since 2020

In 2020 Next Generation Data launched a planning consultation for a new four building/8000 sq m/16MW expansion project on vacant land adjacent to the original building and then in 2021 for a fifth building to provide 80MW over 10 data halls.  We believe the fifth building is being constructed for a single user.

In February 2020 LINX, the London Internet Exchange announced it was opening a new peering node in Vantage/NGD which is combined with the first Welsh LINX node in BT’s Cardiff data centre to jointly become LINX WALES.  Its worth poiting out the LINX Cardiff has so far only made limited progress, with 19 ports in use and just 15 participants (LINX has nearly 2000 ports in use across the UK).

Finally in April 2020, despite the impact of the Corona virus, Vantage Data Centres, an American wholesale data centre operator acquired NGD from existing majority owner InfraVia Capital.  This was Vantage’s second acquisition in the European data centre market, having also bought ETIX Everywhere in February 2020 and ETIX also existing have plans for several large scale wholesale focussed campuses on mainland Europe.  Through further acquisitions and organic growth Vantage now operate 26 campuses across North America, EMEA and Asis-Pac.

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