Though electricity availability
in Nigeria may be the bane for other data centres and enterprises, but this
appears not be the case with MainOne Data Centre subsidiary, MDXI.
According to the General Manager
of MDXI, Mr Gbenga Adegbiji, in spite of the worsening electricity supply in
the country, the MDXI data centre is achieving almost 100 per cent power uptime
availability, with a surmountable over 90 per cent of that power coming
directly from the national grid.
He stated this while reacting to
a report published in the media that was quoted to a data centre operator who
complained that power is a key problem across Africa and that Nigeria’s power
issues are on a larger scale and more constant than experienced globally.
Adegbiji debunked the myth that
power hungry industries such as data centres cannot successfully operate in
Nigeria, claiming its company has enjoyed 90+ per cent power uptime since 2015
and that it is poised to achieve 95 per cent availability in 2018, based on a
growing partnership with a local power distribution company.
During an interview at the data
centre recently, Adegbiji stressed that the MDXI facility was purpose-built to
mitigate all challenges that global businesses may have in a Nigerian data
centre.
He mentioned that before
constructing the data centre, the company realised 24×7 power supply was a
critical challenge for businesses requiring high availability collocation
infrastructure within Nigeria and invested in a direct private connection to
the National grid through the newly-privatised Eko Electricity Distribution
Plc.
“We recognised the crippling
impact of downtimes, the peculiarities of the Nigerian power environment as an
albatross that had forced many companies to relocate outside Nigeria and
ensured MDXI was established with the most robust electricity power and back-up
arrangements, in line with the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA)
ANSI/TIA-942, the leading Telecommunications Infrastructure Standard for Data
Centres.
“Though, we made provision for
the full complement of generators and diesel tanks with capacity of over
100,000 litres to secure the data centre’s operations and guarantee 99.995 per
cent availability, we also partnered with Eko Disco and co-invested in a
dedicated 33KV feeder and line connection to the National Grid through the Ajah
sub-station.
“Connecting directly to the grid
provides us access to multiple power generating plants and guarantees backup in
the event that one power plant goes down. This was a capital investment of
hundreds of millions in substation equipment and dedicated power lines which
bypass all ‘last-mile’ challenges encountered in electricity distribution. This
has guaranteed an increase in power availability at the data center from 50 per
cent average commercial power availability to between 95 per cent and 98 per
cent,” Adegbiji said.
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