PEER 1 Hosting (TSX:PIX) today announced the opening of its $40 million data center in Toronto, Ontario. The 40,000 square foot facility marks the first time PEER 1 is offering all three of its hosting solutions – colocation, dedicated hosting and managed hosting – under one roof.

“Our new state-of-the-art Toronto data centre ensures we stay current and provide the fastest and most reliable network to serve our customers, now and in the future, while providing PEER 1 with enhanced flexible capacity to support its own growth,” said Fabio Banducci, president and CEO for PEER 1 Hosting.

The company is building the facility in four phases, with each section built as a separate Performance Optimized Data Centre (POD), allowing PEER 1 to cost-effectively manage growth. Each of the four PODs has the capacity for approximately 270 cabinets, equivalent to roughly 7,500 servers. The first POD, built at an estimated capital cost of US$10 million, also includes 8,000 square feet of office space, and inventory, network and storage areas. The remaining three PODs will be built out in phases based upon customer demand.

The new data center will feature a redundant critical cooling infrastructure using both a local well for primary water supply and a connection to the city’s water system.

“We’re also using redundant high-efficiency Variable Frequency Drive centrifugal chillers to reduce cooling costs and condenser towers with economizers,” said Ryan Murphey, vice president of facilities and data center operations for PEER 1 Hosting. “This enables PEER 1 to lessen the environmental impact of the data center by taking advantage of ‘free cooling’ when the temperature drops below 10C.”

Customer installation will begin in March 2010. This will be PEER 1 Hosting’s third data centre in Toronto and the company’s 17th worldwide.