British colocation and managed cloud provider MigSolv (formerly Sentry42) has opened an additional data hall at its Gatehouse campus in Norfolk, northeast of London.

Norfolk is not an obvious location for a data center due to its distance from the capital, but its owners say the region offers cheaper energy and better security – for example, it will never be attacked by terrorists. (Yes, terrorists.)

The 30,000 sq ft of raised floor space at Gatehouse is available immediately.

Security through obscurity
MigSolv’s Gatehouse data center offers N+1 redundancy, 99 percent uptime guarantee, 24 hour on-site support and access to several Tier 1 carriers. The facility is fully compliant with PCI DSS, making it suitable for card payment processing.

But the real selling point here is security: Gatehouse was built 39 meters above sea level, protecting it against flooding. The nine acre site is surrounded by a three meter steel fence with microwave intrusion detection along its entire length. There’s infra-red CCTV throughout.

Inside, the data halls are separated by a massive bomb-proof earth mound; doors are protected with retinal scanners and the cabinets – with electronic locks.

The additional floor space will enable MigSolv to host another 1,200 racks in this environment.

Charles Carden, director at GVA Connect, the specialist data center division of real estate agent GVA, suggested that Norfolk makes a perfect place to hide servers from terrorists.

“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,” he said.

MigSolv actually went as far as to request a report from the Norfolk Constabulary Counter Terrorism Department, which confirmed that the company took all adequate precautions to protect the site.