Primus Telecommunications Canada, a wholly owned subsidiary of PTGi (Primus Telecommunications Group), has announced that construction has begun on a new high density data centre facility in Markham.

This newest member of Primus Canada's national footprint of 8 data centres is designed to Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards, will be certified by the Uptime Institute as a Tier III site, and will offer advanced disaster recovery features.

The first phase of this 30,000 square foot GTA data centre initiative will be a 7,500 square foot pod. The data centre will include an innovative HVAC system that leverages free-air cooling and optimized air distribution to achieve a 50% reduction in energy utilization over their current facility designs, and effectively eliminate the water usage and waste resulting from the HVAC plant that is used in most data centre designs today.

To ensure clients' data is available to them when needed, the new facility will be certified to the Uptime Institute's Tier III Site specifications. To achieve this certification, the site must have multiple independent distribution paths serving the IT equipment, all IT equipment must be dual-powered and fully compatible with the topology of a site's architecture and include concurrently maintainable site infrastructure guaranteeing the highest standards for service availability in the Canadian data centre market.

Each data centre has obtained full Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance, Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants (CICA) Section 5970 Type B and Statement on Standards for Attestation Engagements (SSAE) No. 16 (previously called Statement on Auditing Standards (SAS) 70 Type II).