Who on earth would use a data centre in Norfolk?

Announcing the availability of some 30,000 square feet or 1,200 racks-worth of space which is ready for customer install in this operational data centre; Carden explained that, in terms of terrorist threat levels and costs, the Gatehouse data centre operated by MigSolv in Norwich is on a different plane to those in The City and in urban centres.

“With the UK currently on a ‘Severe’ terrorist threat alert, we all know that the capital, London, and other major cities are the key targets. Norfolk on the other hand is not seen to be on any likely target list, and as such is a much lower risk area for highly critical storage and data processing,” Carden continued.

The MigSolv Gatehouse data centre not only benefits from being ‘out of the way’ and not in the line of terrorist threat, it has nonetheless been built to the highest levels of security and sustainability.

Two large data halls are separated by a massive bomb-blast earth mound so that in the very unlikely eventuality of an event at one, the other is fully protected. The perimeter of the nine acre site is protected by a three metre steel fence with microwave intrusion detection along its entire length. Plus, there’s CCTV and infra-red on the outside of the site and biometrics on the inside so there’s no possibility of unwanted visitors to your racks.

“It will be a surprise to many people,” says Carden, “but there’s quite a large technology community in Norwich - meaning that MigSolv doesn’t have to farm out its facilities management or security. The entire site is staffed by MigSolv employees.”

The site is very well connected, with a number of mainstream Tier 1 carriers on site with dual redundant connectivity. And, unlike London, the electrical supply is not in short supply. Norwich has an abundance of power availability and the site also has UPS and generators provided on an ‘n+1’ basis for guaranteed 99 per cent uptime.
Many of the London data centres are in London Docklands which according to the UK Environment Agency is on a 20 year flood-plane (that means on average it floods every twenty years). The Gatehouse data centre is 39m above sea level, in other words the likelihood of flooding is: probably never.

Another big plus for clients of the MigSolv Gatehouse data centre is that the entire site is PCI DSS compliant for the processing and storage of credit card and other financial transaction data. Surprisingly few data centres carry this accreditation. A long list of accreditations and standards employed can be found on the MigSolv website here: http://www.migsolv.com