IT services provider Advania has taken additional data center space at one of colocation company atNorth’s facilities in Iceland.

The companies have agreed a deal that will see Advania take extra capacity at atNorth’s ICE03 site in Iceland, a 12MW data center in Akureyri that opened last year.

AtNorth was spun out of Advania in 2017, and the pair have maintained a close relationship ever since. Advania already uses atNorth’s ICE01 site in the Icelandic capital Reykjavík, and also leases space at the company’s data centers in Sweden and Finland.

The expansion onto the ICE03 campus “allows for further geographical separation of their infrastructure and highlights the business’s focus on data security, not to mention the benefits of redundancy and performance optimization,” a statement from the duo said.

"AtNorth’s ICE03 site in Akureyri helps to ensure our data security," said Hafsteinn Guðmundsson, executive director of IT operations and services at Advania.

He said the move will help Advania's customers comply with regulatory frameworks around sensitive data, where information must be stored in geographically different locations. "It is now possible to achieve such separation and mirroring of data domestically by utilizing two of atNorth’s sites in Iceland,” Guðmundsson said.

ICE03 opened last year and offers 2,500 sqm (26,900 sq ft) of space across two buildings. The site could eventually be scaled up to accommodate up to 50MW of IT capacity. It is linked to Iceland’s closed electricity grid which runs on 100 percent renewable hydro and geothermal energy.

“We are delighted that Advania has chosen to expand into our ICE03 data center as part of our long-standing relationship,” said Eyjólfur Magnús Kristinsson, CEO at atNorth. “We are proud to be able to offer increased services where security and connectivity is ensured and carbon footprint is minimized.”

AtNorth has been expanding its data center footprint since being acquired by Swiss investor Partners Group in 2021.

In December it announced it was building a new hyperscale facility in Finland, FIN04, located in Kouvala, 140km northeast of Helsinki. It will offer an initial 60MW capacity when it opens in 2025.

Two of its other Finnish data centers, FIN01 and FIN03 in Vallila and Espoo, were acquired from Advania, while it is building a third 15MW facility in Espoo.

Elsewhere, the company is also building a 30MW facility in Denmark, due to open at the end of 2024. It bought Swedish HPC firm Gompute in August last year, adding another 10MW of capacity.