CFB Borden to be home to second federal data centre

A military base north of Toronto will become home to a second federal data centre in the coming months, as the government moves to drastically reduce the number of computing centres it has.

Physical and digital security has been a key factor in planning where to place the seven massive data centres, which will serve more than 40 federal departments.

CFB Borden, about 100 kilometres from Toronto, “was chosen for security reasons and because of its proximity to existing power, telecommunications and information technology service providers,” reads a January 2014 internal briefing note from Shared Services Canada. The note, to the president of Shared Services Canada, was released to The Citizen under the access to information law.

CFB Borden was already home to one data centre when the Conservative government decided it wanted to consolidate 485 centres into seven.

Shared Services Canada, the government’s super-IT department, found it could keep the Borden centre open with a few modifications to handle the increased demand as older data centres went off-line.

Crews finished modifying the Borden data centre in March, and it opened in June. The government had previously opened another centre in Gatineau in November 2013. (It is a “non-production” centre that allows the government to test programs before they go live. Borden is a production centre that supports day-to-day operations.)

“Of the 485 existing data centres, only two were found to be suitable for use as transformed, modern and efficient enterprise data centres,” Shared Services Canada said in a statement.

“One of these two happened to be located on a military base and met all of SSC’s location selection criteria ( based primarily on environmental reasons, security reasons, and proximity to existing power, telecommunications, and IT service providers), and provided the additional security benefits associated with being on a military base.”

Shared Services Canada said it will award a contract this fall to build a twin for the Borden data centre.