iomart plc Leicester Data Centre

Colo-X analysis

Iomart’s Leicester data centre is one of a series of facilities built across the country in the dot-com boom by 186K Ltd and acquired by Iomart in March 2007.  It offers two data halls of around 7000 sq ft able to accomodate nearly 270 racks.  Power per rack light by modern standards, network mostly from Iomart.  Tier2 standard, single generator.

Facility description

Located 1.5 miles north of central Leicester the iomart Leicester data centre has two ground floor data halls and a small office building for staff, with plant located within the building in fairly cramped site amongst other light industrial and commercial buildings. Single 800kVA generator, dual UPS.  Slightly larger site than Iomart’s Nottingham data centre located nearby.

This site and five others were built as part of the fibre network build of Lattice PLC, who at one time ran the national gas transmission network in the UK (originally part of British Gas).  Lattice spent £450m building this network under the name 186k.  In 2002 Lattice merged with National Grid (the electricity tranmission network operator) and the network was disposed of, with the fibre assets sold to Hutchinson3G (to eventually become the start of GEO Fibre Networks) and the data centres along with the 186K name were acquired by a Leeds based internet entrepeneur, Dominic Marrocco who was the vendor to Iomart in 2007.

Technical stats