About Canada
Canada pairs a mature enterprise economy with strong expectations about where regulated data physically sits, which makes it a market enterprises enter deliberately rather than by default. Toronto carries the country's financial services and interconnection weight, Vancouver provides Pacific transit and a natural pairing with United States West Coast metros, and Kelowna adds interior redundancy away from the coast.
Zenlayer operates 5 data centers across those three cities: Toronto (3), Vancouver (1), and Kelowna (1). Canadian inventory is certified to SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001. Bare metal cloud (BMC) is enabled at two of the five sites and Cloud WAN reaches one, so deployments here are built as compute and private backbone footholds rather than full-stack edge builds.
Data residency demand is the reason most teams place workloads in Canada instead of serving the country from across the border. The Canadian nodes sit on the same software-defined backbone as Zenlayer's United States footprint, so teams run Toronto, Vancouver, or Kelowna as the in-country tier and keep the rest of the estate in US metros.
Compute in Canada
Bare metal cloud (BMC) is Zenlayer's compute product in Canada, enabled at two of the five Canadian data centers. Bare metal is the usual choice in this market because it keeps the workload, the disk, and the tenancy boundary inside a named Canadian facility, which is what most residency reviews actually ask about.
Common Canadian workloads include transaction processing and reporting systems for financial services teams in Toronto, regional API endpoints serving Canadian users, in-country storage tiers for applications whose front end runs elsewhere, and database replicas held in Canada as the resilient copy of a primary hosted in a United States metro.
Enterprise hardware
Intel Xeon Scalable. Up to 384 GB RAM. NVMe and SSD storage tiers.
Premium network
100+ Tbps backbone with dynamic, latency-optimized routing.
Instant provisioning
Deploy via Terraform, REST API, or the point-and-click zenConsole.
Flexible billing
Hourly pay-as-you-go with discounts for longer commitments.
Networking in Canada
Cloud WAN is the network service currently enabled in Canada, reaching one Zenlayer site and stitching Canadian compute into the same global software-defined backbone used across the rest of the network. It carries private, policy-controlled traffic between the Canadian node and other Zenlayer regions without crossing the public internet.
IP transit, Cloud Connect, and CDN are not currently enabled at the Canadian sites, so teams that need public transit or direct hyperscaler on-ramps generally pair a Canadian footprint with a United States node and extend it north over Cloud WAN. Toronto's interconnection ecosystem and Vancouver's Pacific position make both cities workable handoff points for that design.
IP Transit
Blended carrier routes tuned for the lowest real-world latency.
Cloud Connect
Private, dedicated links into AWS, Azure, GCP, and Oracle.
Cloud WAN
Software-defined backbone spanning 290+ points of presence.
Edge protection
Layer 3 and 4 DDoS mitigation with real-time traffic filtering.
Colocation in Canada
Zenlayer's Canadian footprint is 5 data centers: three in Toronto, one in Vancouver, and one in Kelowna. The Toronto sites sit in the metro that concentrates Canadian carrier and financial interconnection, Vancouver covers Pacific transit toward the United States West Coast, and Kelowna adds interior capacity that is geographically separated from both coastal metros.
Colocation is not currently an enabled service at the Canadian sites, so customers who need to rack their own hardware are usually served from a United States footprint with Canadian bare metal alongside it. Where a deployment genuinely has to be Canadian, the practical route is managed compute in Toronto, Vancouver, or Kelowna rather than customer-owned cabinets, with Cloud WAN carrying traffic back to the wider estate.
Carrier-neutral
Access to 400+ carriers and major regional peering exchanges.
Flexible power
Standard and high-density rack configurations on request.
Secure access
Biometric entry, CCTV, and 24/7 dedicated remote hands.
Rapid turn-up
Cage-to-production cross-connects in days, not weeks.
Cities in Canada
Toronto
YYZCanada's financial capital and the country's densest enterprise and carrier interconnection market.
Kelowna
YLWBritish Columbia's Okanagan valley hub, serving inland Western Canada between Vancouver and the Rocky Mountains.
Vancouver
YVRCanada's Pacific gateway and a trans-Pacific cable landing point bridging North America and Asia.
Data Centers in Canada
5 totalToronto
Canada's financial capital and the country's densest enterprise and carrier interconnection market.
3 DCs
Toronto
Canada's financial capital and the country's densest enterprise and carrier interconnection market.
| Services | ||
|---|---|---|
| NA-Toronto1(Hut8)YYZ1 |  | ColoBMC |
| NA-Toronto2(Cologix_TOR1)YYZ2 | Cologix Canada | Colo |
| NA-Toronto3(Cologix_TOR3)YYZ3 | Cologix Canada | ColoCloud WAN |
Kelowna
British Columbia's Okanagan valley hub, serving inland Western Canada between Vancouver and the Rocky Mountains.
1 DC
Kelowna
British Columbia's Okanagan valley hub, serving inland Western Canada between Vancouver and the Rocky Mountains.
| Services | ||
|---|---|---|
| NA-Kelowna1(Hut8)YLW1 | | ColoBMC |
Vancouver
Canada's Pacific gateway and a trans-Pacific cable landing point bridging North America and Asia.
1 DC
Vancouver
Canada's Pacific gateway and a trans-Pacific cable landing point bridging North America and Asia.
| Services | ||
|---|---|---|
| NA-Vancouver2(Cologix_VAN3)YVR2 | Cologix Canada | Colo |
FAQs
Common questions about deploying compute, networking, and colocation infrastructure in Canada.
Where are Zenlayer's data centers located across Canada?
<p>Zenlayer operates 5 data centers in Canada: three in Toronto, one in Vancouver, and one in Kelowna. Toronto holds most of the inventory because it anchors the country's carrier and financial services interconnection, Vancouver covers Pacific transit and pairs naturally with US West Coast metros, and Kelowna provides interior separation from the coastal cities.</p>
What cloud and network services are available in Canada?
<p>Bare metal cloud (BMC) is available at two of the five Canadian data centers, and Cloud WAN reaches one site. IP transit, Cloud Connect, CDN, and colocation are not currently enabled in Canada, so the Canadian footprint is best understood as an in-country compute and private backbone tier rather than a full-stack edge location.</p>
Should enterprises choose Toronto or Vancouver in Canada?
<p>It depends on the traffic. Toronto is the common default for financial services, enterprise applications, and anything that needs to sit near Canadian carrier interconnection and the eastern United States. Vancouver suits Pacific-facing workloads and deployments paired with US West Coast metros. Teams that need a resilient in-country pair run Toronto as primary with Kelowna or Vancouver as the second site.</p>
How does Canadian data residency shape deployment design?
<p>Residency reviews normally ask where the data is stored and who can reach it, not where every service tier runs. The practical pattern is to place the data-holding tier on bare metal in a named Canadian facility, keep application and analytics tiers wherever they already live, and carry traffic between them over Cloud WAN rather than the public internet.</p>
How does a Canadian footprint fit alongside Zenlayer's United States estate?
<p>The United States is Zenlayer's other North American market and carries the larger footprint. Most Canadian designs are the in-country tier of a wider North American estate: regulated data stays on bare metal in Toronto, Vancouver, or Kelowna, while transit, delivery, and hyperscaler on-ramps are handled from US sites and linked back privately over Cloud WAN.</p>
Deploy Infrastructure in Canada
Talk with Zenlayer to design a Canadian deployment that keeps regulated data in Toronto, Vancouver, or Kelowna and links it privately to a United States footprint.