Huge power demands by data centres in Dublin causing problems.
22 June 2021 – The past decade has seen Dublin grow into one of the largest European data centre destinations. And with the accelerating demand in the region for both colocation and hyperscaler self-build projects, it’s meteoric rise would appear unstoppable….
…unless, that is, power availability concerns get in the way.
The Irish Times has recently reported that Eirgrid, the country’s national grid organisation, may not be able to approve connections for more than 30 planned data centres, most of which are in the Dublin area where power is becoming increasingly constrained.
Clearly, available forwards power suppy is the essential ingredient for any data centre hub to support the IT needs of hyperscalers, regional cloud providers, CDNs, enterprises and manufacturers. They need power and data centres in strategic locations that bring data and services much closer to their users and customers to reduce latency and data transit costs.
So if they can’t all be in Dublin anymore, where’s the next closest destination?
Fortunately, modern data centres are highly interconnected to high capacity dark fibre networks which crisscross country’s, continents and the globe. In this particular case, from both a geographical proximity and network infrastructure perspective, the North West of England is an obvious alternative to Dublin. With a sizeable population of around 2.5 million people, leading network infrastructure providers have recognised the strategic importance of ensuring this region of the UK is well-served by high capacity, low latency fibre.
At the same time, forward thinking regional colocation data centre operators such as Proximity Data Centres have established a bridgehead in the North West region, whereby their facilities are direct points of presence (PoPs) on major networks for making them easily accessible to enterprise customers, CDNs, cloud and mobile operaror providers.
With Dublin in mind, Proxmity has gone a step further by collaborating with Zayo.
The Zayo high capacity network offers low latency circuits and increased resilience for customers requiring multiple connections to cloud services. It connects data centre hubs in the USA, Dublin and now the North West of England following its collaboration with Proximity Data Centres.
The good news is Proximity’s recently opened edge colocation facility in Chester Gates (Proximity Edge 4) is only 135 miles East of Dublin. This can ensure ultra-low latency and low data transit costs between data centres in Ireland and Proximity’s secure, highly connected regional edge colo facilities in the North West of England, and as required, onward throughout the UK via our expanding network of regional UK sites.
Zayo will complete the Dublin to Proximity Edge 4 connection within the next three months.
Proximity is ready, willing and able to help enterprise and service provider organisations relying on future Dublin power capacity to re-allocate any immediate, as well as longer-term, colocation requirements.
Combined, our North West facilities in Chester Gates and nearby Liverpool City Region, offer a total of 6 MW. Therefore, we can help ensure that users and consumers in the Dublin area continue to count on a seamless experience with access to highly responsive and resilient serivces. We rapidly provision and scale compute and storage resources exactly where and when they’re needed, without the risk of compromising IT security and resilience.
Contact Proximity Data Centres for more guidance on how we can help your business bridge the growing power gap across the Irish Sea. In the UK we currently have 6 high quality edge data centres with plans to have a further 14 in the next 18 months. This allows us to offer edge colocation support exactly where it’s needed. One SLA, one contract, one service desk to be within 15 miles of 95% of the UK’s population. Stay tuned for more…
John Hall, Managing Director, Colocation at Proximity Data Centres on 07715 546958 or email [email protected].
