The New South Wales (NSW) government is going to expand capacity it buys from Metronode for its GovDC data center program.

The government is taking additional data halls at Metronode’s Silverwater and Unanderra (Wollongong) facilities: Metronode will begin construction early this year. The project will help NSW meet a deadline to move all its services into the GovDC system.

Expanding down under

“Metronode has housed NSW government data since the GovDC program began in 2012 at both facilities,” Metronode managing director Josh Griggs said. ”We constructed another data hall in Unanderra in 2015 to provide additional capacity and we are now further expanding both facilities in 2017,” 

All the NSW government’s services must migrated to GovDC by 30 August this year.  

One reason the NSW government has gone with Metronode is the efficiency of its data centers. Three of them – Silverwater and Unanderra in NSW and Derrimut in Victoria - have the NABERS 4.5-star efficiency ratings, as defined by the NSW office of environment and heritage for use by Federal, state and territory government.  

Metronode also won the first Uptime Institute Tier III constructed facility certificate in Australia, and the company is also certified by Uptime Institute for Operational Sustainability. 

“The Tier III Gold Certification and NABERS rating are important because there are some outlandish claims about PUE and Uptime Institute Certification—people who claim to have Tier III facilities without going through the process of having that actually verified.” said Griggs in an interview with Uptime Institute. “Similarly, we believe the NABERS rating is becoming more important because of people making claims that they cannot achieve in terms of PUE.”

Metronode is owned by serial data center investor, the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, which has also invested in Dallas-based Compass Datacenters