iXAfrica: Inside a data centre

The need for securing data has been on a steep rise as big corporations guard themselves from the exposure of high insecurity risks or data breaches, hence the need for a data centres.

Securing data has evolved from the prehistoric period to the modern-day ‘Big Data’, Cloud and AI computing.

Data — facts and statistics collected together for reference or analysis — was first stored in cave paintings and engravings in the pre-civilisation period, until industrialisation introduced manual data handling or paper storage.

This transitioned to automated systems, with the development of writing, the invention of mechanical tabulators, and the creation of databases and Structured Query Languages (SQL) in the 1970s.

The rise of the internet and data warehousing in the 1990s, and the explosion of Big Data in the 2000s, further advanced data development and storage up to today, where the focus is on extracting actionable insights from vast, diverse datasets through advanced analytics and machine learning. 

All this information is now stored in powerful computers called servers that host important corporate data, large databases, applications, and multimedia content.

A tour inside iXAfrica data centre in Nairobi showed how this data, which includes customer records and financial information, is used for artificial intelligence, e-commerce, and cloud services.

“For us this is a maximum security prison and the prisoners here are our customer racks, the equipment they host and data they transmit,” said Titus Buleti, the Operations Manager.

“We provide you with space, enough redundant power from two diverse routes, cooling, a connectivity ecosystem and security.”

iXAfrica started operations in 2023 and has maintained a steady rise in securing data for large corporations, among them Kenya’s telco giant Safaricom and American satellite internet firm Starlink.

CEO Snehar Shah says that the facility has onboarded over 30 networks, adding that serving big institutions has been made possible by key engineering advantages and access to an advanced market that has made it easy to work with top brand experts.

“We have all the major players connected to us. We have submarine providers like C-COM, YOC and dozens of ISPs. It is not only limited to wired networks, low orbit satelittes are also becoming an important part of the ecosystem,” Shah said.

The Data Centre, sitting on a 5-acre piece of land, is powered by Schneider Electric company which also manufactures its UPS devices, complementing the need to localize expertise and equipment sourcing.

All this is kept under top-level guard that secures data for customers, creating several checkpoints and highly protected access points through two factor authentications.

“On IT security, which is important, if not more, we have a similar certification that we go through which is the ISO 27001. On the customer’s data we are also registered with the office of the data commissioner,” Shah added.

Operations Manager Buleti added: “We use a 2-factor authentication so I'm the only one authorized plus the engineers and the support staff for customers. All other members of other departments are not authorized.”

The facility has a meticulously wired systems that connect from power sources to the server room or the 'white space' where server racks are hosted.

The mega facility is cooled by an indirect adiabatic cooling system method which uses evaporative cooling to cool air without adding moisture to it by passing air through a heat exchanger.

Here, the heat exchanger has two separate air streams: one stream of warm outside air that is cooled by evaporation, and another stream of inside air that is cooled indirectly by the first stream. 

Buleti says this system allows for efficient cooling and energy saving.

“We can actually cool this space without using water. These are autonomous systems. It changes automatically based on the current load. It could be using free cooling and next moment it’s adiabatic and the DX cooling mode,” he said.

“This system consumes about 1,000 litres per 24 hours.”

To increase the cooling efficiency, the technicians use a hot isle containment method to further secure the server racks and customer equipment in each of the 5 pods in the facility.

As the industry grows exponentially, CEO Shah says that Kenya stares at positive odds of expansion due to international players like Microsoft, AWS and Oracle announcing interests in entering the Kenyan market.

“It’s a matter of time before we see these large regional cloud deployments coming here. We will work with any partner who sees value in what we provide. We will be in discussions with a multiple number of them,” CEO Shah noted.

He intimated that the first phase of the centre named NBO X1 uses 4.5Mw and an expansion for an 18MW NBO X2, which will be three times bigger than the existing facility will soon be underway.

“We also got our second site which is about 40 kilometres from here in Limuru in an industrial part called Tilisi. There we have plans to build a 53mw data centre”.

This comes as Kenya aims to be a mega data centre host in the region to power AI-computing and draw in international corporations.

In 2024, during his visit to the United States, President William Ruto witnessed the signing of an agreement between power producer KenGen, UAE’s G42 and Microsoft to build a $1 billion (Sh130 billion) data centre.

He was optimistic that the project would be 100 per cent powered by renewable energy, tapped from KenGen’s geothermal fields at Olkaria.

Ruto said that later, he would find out that data centres are power guzzlers and that to operate one, an entity requires about 1,000 megawatts (MW) which appeared to be a slight exaggeration.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) says that average data centres are quite small in power terms, with demand between five to 10 MW.

But large hyperscale data centres, which are increasingly common, have power demands of 100 MW or more. This output can power roughly over 16,000 homes or an entire small city.