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Colocation and managed hosting provider PEER 1 Hosting (www.peer1.com) announced on Tuesday that it has opened a new $40 million, 40,000 square-foot data center located in Toronto, Canada, saying the facility will be the company’s first to offer colocation, dedicated hosting and managed hosting under one roof, and will mark the first time Peer 1 offers all three in Canada.

Peer 1 says the new Toronto facility is the most efficient PEER 1 data center to date, and was built with power density, reliability and security in mind. The company says the facility was constructed in four sections, each as a separate Performance Optimized Data Centre, or POD, enabling the company to cost-effectively manage the facility’s growth.

The WHIR has covered the construction of this particular facility in stages, through a series of videos appearing on WHIR tv. Click here to view the most recent WHIR tv video of PEER 1's Toronto data center construction.

According to financial observers, the facility is opening slightly ahead of schedule. Pre-sales will open February 1, with a move-in date in March. The company reportedly hoped to sell between 15 and 20 percent of the facility’s capacity before it opened.

Each of the four PODs will include space for about 270 cabinets, or 7,500 servers. The first will include 7,500 square feet of data center space and 8,000 square feet of office, inventory, network and storage areas. It was built on-budget for the capital cost of $10 million.

“The Internet is a vital platform for our customers, and it continues to grow,” says Fabio Banducci, president and CEO for PEER 1 Hosting, quoted in the press release. “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.”

Financial observers expect the facility to generate between $25 million and $30 million annually once all four phases are deployed and operating at utilization rates of roughly 70 percent, depending on the mix of services.

According to PEER 1, the new facility uses a variety of efficient products and technologies, including a redundant critical cooling infrastructure that uses a local well as its primary water supply, along with 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,” says Ryan Murphey, vice president of facilities and data center operations for PEER 1 Hosting, also quoted in the press release. “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.”

Each of the three remaining PODs will be built out as demand requires. The facility is PEER 1’s third data center in Toronto, and the company’s 17th facility worldwide.

The company is hosting event in Toronto on Wednesday, January 27, to celebrate the opening of the facility. Check out the WHIR on Thursday for coverage of the event.