New Zealand IT service provider Datacom Data Centres is planning to expand its facilities in Hamilton, Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch by 40 percent.

According to Datacom director Tom Jacob, the work will be “the most significant upgrade” to the data centers since they were built, adding 2MW of capacity across the four locations at a cost of NZ$45m (US$30m). The Datacom Group subsidiary, which operates both in New Zealand and Australia, where it has five data centers, says the expansion has been motivated by the significant increase in enterprise and government cloud adoption in the country.

Racking up the racks

The Christchurch facility will see its rack count tripled, and will be upgraded to be both fault-tolerant and concurrently maintainable, as will the Wellington facility, where work is already underway. The latter will also see its capacity increased by 25 percent.

Meanwhile, the Auckland site will get an additional 310 racks, and the Hamilton data center will have a fourth technical floor fitted out, adding 30 percent more capacity.

Auckland (Orbit) and Hamilton (Kapua) data centers are the only facilities in New Zealand to have received the Uptime Institute’s management and operations (M&O) stamp of approval, having been awarded it both in 2014 and 2016.

The certification is given to data center operators following an assessment of their staffing and organization; maintenance and training procedures; planning, coordination, and management, as well as operating conditions.