Ark – Spring Park Campus, Corsham, Wiltshire

Colo-X analysis

Ark Spring Park is an ultra-secure data centre campus with five self-contained data centre buildings designed to offer 46MW of IT load over nearly 200,000 sq ft of IT space.  Ark remain focussed on large wholesale data centre solutions with retail colocation space (racks or part racks) only available via Ark’s tenants (ask Colo-X for options).   The high security aspect of the location is further enhanced by the  significant MoD (UK Ministry of Defence) presence in the area.

Ark have 3 active sites across the UK, a second high security campus in Cody Park, Farnborough and 16MW facility in North London dedicated to a single occupier, with 116MW of existing capacity in total.  The company has some 180MW of new capacity under development in three new campuses, two in West London and one in Surrey, the first of which Union Park in Hayes is set to open in 2022.  The company makes much play of its green credentials (eg using gas fired back up generators) and high security status of its sites, with many of the management team having significant experience in working with the MOD and Britain’s security services.

Ark Spring Park facility description

The Ark Spring Park campus consists of five self-contained data centre buildings, the first of which SQ17 went operational in 2010 and the four other buildings known as P1, P2, P3 and P4 are either live or under construction. The campus benefits from five 33kV power feeds, with two providing 40MVA to the first three buildings and three supporting P3 and P4 with a further 48MVA.

As of summer of 2019, three buildings are in operation, SQ17, the original building which opened in 2011 and P1 and P2, each of which is 31,000 sq ft net technical space or 4.5MW of IT load.  Planning has been approved for two further data centre buildings, P3, of similar capacity to P1 and P2 and P4, offering twice the total amount.

The modular design concept offers 6 data rooms in building P1-P3, each hall providing 760kW or 182 cabinets at 4.2kW each. The earlier SQ17 building offers 24 data halls at .5MW each or 12MW in total. The design PUE is 1.2 meaning 200kW of cooling power is needed for each 1MW of IT load.

The Ark campus is on the other side of the road from MOD Corsham, the home of the Global Operations Security Control Centres (GOSCC), the Joint Security Co-ordination Centre and Defence Digital, thus underlying the high security nature of the site.

Ark’s Spring Park campus is one of just four wholesale focussed data centres outside of the London and M25 market and as such is included in Colo-X’s 2021 report on the regional UK data centre market (details under the Consultancy/Research Reports section of this website).

Technical stats