Russian colocation specialist Miran has opened the second phase of its modular data center in St Petersburg, offering space for more than 1,000 additional servers.

The expansion of Miran-2 includes 24 server cabinets at 47U each, supporting power densities between 7 and 14 kW. The data center is backed by a 3.5MW electrical substation and features free cooling that exploits the cold regional climate.

The latest site brings the total number of server cabinets managed by Miran to 190.

The northern capital

Russian data center market continues to grow at approximately 10 percent per year despite the negative impact of low oil prices and Western economic sanctions imposed over the crisis in Ukraine.

Miran has been offering telecommunications services in St Petersburg, sometimes called the northern capital of Russia, since 1999. Today, the company specializes in retail and wholesale colocation, offering dedicated servers, virtual servers, managed hosting, DDoS protection, and networking.

Whereas Miran-1 was a traditional brick-and-mortar facility, Miran-2 consists of pre-assembled data center modules designed to Tier III redundancy specifications, manufactured by local vendor GreenMDC.

“Right now we have successfully carried out final testing: we’ve checked the power distribution systems, uninterruptible power supplies, heat management and air conditioning, automatic inert gas fire suppression and physical security,” Igor Sytnikov, CEO of Miran said.

The cost of the expansion stands at approximately 30 million rubles ($400,000).

The company has already started work on the third phase of Miran-2, which will add another 50 cabinets to the campus. Sytnikov previously said that due to the size of the upcoming project Miran might shift from modular back to traditional construction.