Compare data centres

What a useful facility comparison can prove

This table compares facts that can be traced to the directory record. It shows the operator, facility type, locality, operating state, published technical fields and the date the evidence was checked. Those fields are enough to expose important differences, but they are not a purchase recommendation. Current space, available power, cabinet density, cross-connect lead time, service price and contract terms require a direct operator response.

Begin with the role the site must perform. A network exchange location, a primary compute site, a recovery site and a small edge deployment can favour different buildings. Write the protected workload, required date, acceptable interruption, data-location rule, network dependencies and growth stages before reading the table. This keeps a large published capacity or familiar operator name from displacing a requirement that matters more to the service.

Start with a worked comparison

These examples open two records without adding them to browser storage. They are starting points for a research question, not preferred pairs. Replace either record with a facility from your own shortlist when the useful question changes.

• Compare a downtown Toronto interconnection facility with a Markham siteto see why building role, connectivity and published redundancy should be considered separately.
• Compare two Quebec operating records in different local settingsand then open the sources to confirm which claims apply to a building and which describe an operator portfolio.
• Compare a published campus record with an established Calgary facilitywhile keeping requested campus scale separate from current customer availability.

Read the evidence in the right order

First, confirm identity. Check whether the records describe separate buildings, operator presences in one carrier hotel, a campus, or a project that is still in development. Next, compare the source and check date. An older operator page can still be useful, but it should trigger a new question before a commercial decision. Then review each technical field and its source. An unlisted value is an open item. It does not mean zero and should not be scored as a failure.

Finally, turn the differences into a request list. Ask for current service voltage, available capacity, maximum supported density, cooling envelope, generator and UPS arrangement, carrier access, delivery route, maintenance windows, access controls and expansion rights. For a recovery design, identify shared utilities, fibre routes, cloud services, identity systems and operating teams. Two addresses do not create resilience when they depend on the same failure path.