Colocation Services

The FirstNet Durban data centre is certified to ISO/IEC 27001 and ISO 9001. Teraco certifications are scoped per campus, so we confirm the evidence for the specific site you choose.

Yes. Multi-site designs are common, for example FirstNet Durban paired with a Teraco site in another metro. We design around your RPO, RTO and connectivity, and can add BaaS or DRaaS.

FirstNet offers colocation in its own data centre in Durban, which FirstNet owns and operates, and in partner Teraco facilities in Isando (Johannesburg), Cape Town (CT1 and CT2) and Riverhorse (Durban). FirstNet Durban suits a Durban or KwaZulu-Natal presence and a FirstNet-run facility. Teraco suits customers who need Johannesburg or Cape Town, a dense ecosystem of carriers and cloud on-ramps, or data centres in more than one city for disaster recovery.

You can rent as little as one rack unit. Small footprints of 1 to 9U are available in shared racks, quarter-rack (10–11U) and half-rack (about 20U) blocks are available for moderate needs, and dedicated, lockable 42U full racks are available for larger or more security-sensitive deployments. Larger installations can take several racks or a private cage. Equipment in a shared rack is physically separated from other customers' equipment, and access to it is supervised.

A full rack comes with a base power allocation of about 2.2 kVA, delivered over redundant A and B feeds. Power use is metered continuously, and if you consistently need more you can add capacity in increments of about 1.1 kVA, typically up to about 3.3 kVA per rack. Very dense equipment may need to be spread across several racks to stay within per-rack power and cooling limits. Your equipment list and power draw are checked before your space is allocated.

Remote hands is on-site help for basic tasks on your equipment when you can't be there yourself, such as rebooting equipment, checking cables and doing visual inspections. In FirstNet colocation, remote hands is an optional service backed by the 24×7 Rapid Response team. At Teraco sites, FirstNet coordinates the work with Teraco's on-site staff, so you still deal with one support contact. It reduces how often your engineers need to travel to the data centre.

FirstNet colocation is carrier-neutral. You can take FirstNet dedicated internet access, MPLS or SD-WAN links straight into your rack, or order cross-connects to other carriers, fibre providers and service partners on site. At Teraco facilities, cross-connects can reach the NAPAfrica internet exchange and cloud on-ramps such as Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute and AWS Direct Connect for private, low-latency connections to the cloud. FirstNet arranges the ordering and installation of these cross-connects.

Colocation projects usually take several weeks of planning, especially when new connectivity or equipment moves are involved. The process covers solution design, contracting, preparing the rack and power, installing your hardware and provisioning network links. Cross-connects typically take from a few days to a couple of weeks. Before handover, FirstNet tests A/B power failover, environmental monitoring and network connections. If you have a fixed deadline, such as a lease ending, share it early so feasibility can be checked.

The Durban data centre is a purpose-built Tier III-standard facility designed, owned and operated by FirstNet. It has fully redundant UPS systems, backup generators with enough onsite fuel for more than 24 hours at full load, N+1 cooling and environmental monitoring. Security includes 24×7 on-site guarding, biometric access control, CCTV and fire suppression. The site is certified to ISO/IEC 27001 and ISO 9001, and has diverse fibre paths from multiple providers.