Servers Australia builds NSW disaster recovery centre

Hosting company Servers Australia has entered into negotiations with Rittal and APC to expand its 800-square-metre disaster recovery facility on the New South Wales Central Coast.

The 12-month-old facility currently housed eight racks of equipment from public and private sector customers, 13 racks of Servers Australia’s own gear, and two empty racks.

Servers Australia’s managing director Jared Hirst planned to deploy an additional 40 to 45 racks within two months, with a view to eventually housing 80 racks with dual-feed access to Sydney.

He said the $500,000 expansion was due to customer demand for a disaster recovery site sufficiently far away from their primary data centres at Global Switch or Equinix facilities in Sydney.

Servers Australia offered co-location services from both those facilities, as well as cheaper offerings from Tuggerah, located 70 kilometres from the Sydney CBD.

“[Customers] need space away from the city,” Hirst said, noting that the five-kilometre distance from Global Switch in Pyrmont and Equinix in Sydney’s south meant both would likely suffer similar effects should a disaster strike.

Servers Australia claimed that its Tuggerah facility had been located to minimise the risk of bushfires, flight paths, earthquakes, floods, chemical factories and fuel storage.

Following the Tuggerah expansion, Hirst planned to put together another new, purpose-built data centre in that area that would allow it to offer services at half the cost of those it provided from Sydney.

The company currently hosted Virgin Blue’s ShopAndEarn website; Victorian community health service MonashLink; and the not-for-profit Aboriginal Employment Strategy.