Long established south coast colocation provider Serverhouse has just opened their largest and most impressive data centre, a new 400 rack/2MW facility on the Segensworth East Industrial Estate, Fareham, adjacent to junction 9 of the M27.

Offering up to four times the capacity of the original Serverhouse Cams Hall site (some four miles to the east) the new data centre is a former EE/Orange regional switch site and has undergone a thorough refit since Serverhouse acquired the site in summer of 2017. Under the new configuration the first data hall will service nearly 400 racks at up to 4kW each on average or a maximum of up to 22kW per cabinet and offers further scope for longer term expansion.

Three fibre networks are already on-site, Vodafone, Virgin and BT and the facility also benefits from a 20 metre tall six-legged telecoms tower. Serverhouse now run their own network on 10Gbs wavelengths between the new site, Cams Hall and up to London Docklands. The Serverhouse network also benefits from a direct Level3/Centurylink transit connection in Cams Hall, so offering complete diversity to Docklands.

Being located only 200 metres from the much larger 8MW/60,000 sq ft SCC data centre also on Brunel Way, Serverhouse would appear ideally located for smaller data centre users seeking a carrier neutral colocation services on a per rack basis in this area, whereas SCC’s focus is on much larger customers and managed services. Both SSE and Level3/Centurylink networks are also available in the SCC facility so nearby to the Serverhouse site for future connectivity options.

The Colo-X data centre data base includes only three south coast based colocation facilities, the SCC site mentioned above and CogecoPeer1’s site 15 miles to the east in Havant on the Langstone Technology Park. The nearest alternatives will be up the M3 towards Farnborough.

Long History

Serverhouse is one of the oldest ISPs in the country and began operations on their original Cams Halls Estate campus in 1997. The two smaller data centres here offer a combined 0.5MW and are of a Tier2 standard, with much lower power density of 2kW/10Amps per rack on average, reflecting their age. In the Walled Garden part of the site Serverhouse offer containerised data centre services with ample room for large satellite dish deployment.

Outlook

Despite being a relatively small operator in the UK data centre market Serverhouse now have an impressive and scalable facility where their team will be able to offer retail colocation clients a level of flexibility and support that larger operators will struggle to match, as well as an attractive commercial price point. Contact Colo-X for more details or pricing.

Colo-X data base update

The Serverhouse Fareham facility is the 106th operational colocation facility in our UK data centre data base which now includes a total of 112 facilities, the balance of six further facilities being announced but not yet operational.

Since 2016 we’ve added 10 new facilities to our data base, four of which have been opened in the M25 market and the balance in the regional UK market (away from the M25). 73% of this new capacity can be found in the London and M25 market.

  • Half of these new facilities are focussed on the wholesale market and half retail. Unsurprisingly given their scale wholesale accounts for just over 70% of this new capacity.

  • The wholesale operators include Gyron, Pure, Zenium/CyrusOne, Stellium and Kao Data Park. These sites can provide up to 400,000 sq ft or nearly 90MW – there is always some degree of estimation as to how much will actually be built and when, but the Kao Data Park in Harlow (up to 36MW) and the newly launched Stellium site in Newcastle (up to 20MW) both offer significant tranches of new capacity.  The Stellium site is a rare example of wholesale in the United Kingdom market away from London and the M25 market.
  • The recently opened retail facilities include a further expansion by aql in Leeds (primarily to house Jisc’s northern shared data centre), the impressive new Telehouse North 2 (with up to    70, 000 sq ft of capacity), Six Degree’s Birmingham facility (based on leased space on the new Pure campus), Datavita’s new Glasgow facility and 4D Gatwick which is very similar in nature to the new Serverhouse site. Including North 2 we have 160,000 sq ft of capacity from these new retail operators, or 30MW.
  • 2018 should see further new capacity brought to the London market including Interxion’s long awaited Lon3 site which at 20,000 sq ft of net technical capacity is the same as their Lon2 site (which opened in back in 2012). In the M25 market wholesale operator Virtus are expected to bring both Lon3 and Lon5 into production at their Slough and Stockley Park sites.
  • Colo-X estimates for total UK data centre capacity now add up to just over 550MW or 4.25m square feet.