Blog Downtime Is Suddenly Blogworthy

Until very recently, a major blog could go down for hours – and sometimes even days – without causing a major hubbub. In most cases a “We’re back, my hosting provider sucks!” post would mark the extent of the damage. That’s changed recently, as blogs are taking note of one another’s downtime. Why the change? Competitiveness between blog networks appears to be a factor, as growing networks take the opportunity to note their own reliability while gently laying the smack down on a competing network.

First there’s Paul Scrivens of 9rules fame noting that Uptime Is Vital, while noting a less-than-vital malfunction at Performancing, which was temporarily displaying a MySQL error rather than insightful posts about blogging for profit. “Find a decent web hosting solution that offers 24/7 support, backups and some sort of uptime guarantee,” Scrivs advises, noting the need to “be sure the mysql max user connections setting is raised high!” If he’d really been out to slam Performancing, he would have noted that the MySQL error displays path information that could be useful to hackers. (Turn those error messages off, guys!).

TeleGeography: NYC Has Most Colo Space

TeleGeography has highlighted an excerpt from its Global Colocation Database looking at the size of colocation facilities. Included in the data is a breakdown of the world’s five largest colo markets, as measured by square meters of floor space. A square meter equates to about 10.76 square feet, so we include conversions for U.S. readers used to assessing facilities by square footage. The top markets, according to Telegeography:

1. New York City: 916,851 square meters of colo space (9.86 million SF)
2. San Francisco: 531,071 square meters (5.7 million SF)
3. Los Angeles: 512,215 square meters (5.5 million SF)
4. Washington DC:  485,745  square meters (5.2 Million SF)
5. Chicago: 463,539 square meters ( 4.98 million SF)

The largest market outside the U.S. was London with 247,714 square meters (2.7 million SF) of colo floor space. The report also notes that Asia has the largest data centers, with the average facility featuring 12,831 square meters of floor space (about 138,000 square feet). American data centers average approximately  9,500 square meters (102,000 SF), qccording to TeleGeography.

TeleGeography’s Global Colocation Database, a comprehensive database of 800+ carrier-grade colocation sites in the world’s top 50 markets. In addition to colocation sites, the Database features profiles of more than 170 facility operators and over 250 major bandwidth providers worldwide.

HSBC Gets Approvals for Large NJ Data Center

UK banking giant HSBC Holdings has received approval to convert a former mail order pharmacy facility in Parsippany, N.J. into a 225,000 square foot data center, reports the Daily Record. HSBC (Hong Kong Shanghai Bank) will overhaul the 177,000 square foot former Medco Health Solutions property for use as a disaster recovery facility for its New York financial operations, and add a 46,800 square foot expansion as well. In addition to infrastructure upgrades for servers, improvements to the 22-acre site include security modifications – a 10-foot fence and berm, according to the Record’s report.

This report reinforces two trends – the continuing need for disaster recovery space for Wall Street, and the shift to retrofits of existing sites to data center use, seen earlier this week in announcements by Hewlett-Packard  and the University of Michigan.

Digital Realty Adds Meet-me Room Clients

Digital Realty Trust said today that it has added eight new meet-me room tenants in its carrier hotel facilities in San Francisco, Dallas, Los Angeles and Santa Clara. The new customers included AboveNet, Broadwing Communications, FiberTower, ILD Communications, NetLogic, UnitedLayer, Universal Access and XO Communication. Meet-me rooms are centralized facilities that allow providers in multi-tenant facilities to connect to one another’s networks.

“Digital Realty Trust’s Meet Me Rooms offer companies a truly compelling value proposition: State-of-the-art space in the world’s premier Internet Gateways; an exceptional operations team with an unwavering focus on customer service; and unique amenities such as no-cost cross connections,” said Michael Foust, Chief Executive Officer of Digital Realty Trust.

E Solutions Buys Former Genuity Tampa Center

Tampa colo provider E Solutions Corp. has continued its strategy of growth by buying distressed assets, doubling its data center space at Park Tower by purchasing the Genuity facility at the building from Level 3 Communications. E Solutions original 16,000 square foot data center was acquired at a deep discount from Fourthstage Technologies/Aperian.No terms were disclosed for the sale of the Genuity site, which was built by GTE for a cost of $12 million

Michigan to Invest $15 Million in New Data Center

The University of Michigan will invest $15 million to upgrade leased space for data center use, the school said this week. The 10,000 square foot facility at 1000 Oakbrook Drive in Ann Arbor has been leased for 15 years. The $15 million will go toward adding the necessary power and air-conditioning systems and improving the space to meet the specific needs of the data center. University officials said it would be cheaper for them to buy and upgrade an existing property than to build its own data center from scratch. Michigan requires substantial computing power for simulations in engineering, life sciences and astrophysics, researchers told the University Board of Regents, which approved the funding this week.

H-P Purchases Austin Complex for Data Center

Hewlett-Packard has bought three buildings in Austin for use as a 200,000 square foot data center complex, according to media reports, which note that Austin is the headquarters for Dell, one of H-P’s primary rivals in the personal computing market. The deal includes three buildings in the Freescale Semiconductor campus on Ed Bluestein Boulevard, which had been listed by a local real estate brokerage an offering price of $16.3 million. Austin has become a magnet for enterprise data centers in recent years, with Oracle (2002) and Home Depot.

Colospace Opens Fifth New England Data Center

Managed hosting and colocation provider Colospace has opened its fifth data center in its core New Enlgand market. The facility in Rockland, Mass. will serve disaster recovery clients in Boston and managed hosting customers throughout the country, the company said. The facility was the former home to the American Automotive Association (AAA) of New England, and was refitted for modern data center requirements.

ColoSpace said it leased 20 percent of the data center space before the center’s opening. “Two years ago we began our survey process to determine if a need existed in this part of the state,” said CEO Wayne Sawchuk. “The data was astounding especially for organizations that dreaded driving to Boston and wanted a local alternative for their business. As a result we had companies waiting to move in day one.”

The new facility uses existing dark fiber from the electric utility National Grid (NEESCom) and lit by high capacity communications provider OnFiber. By retrofitting its own facility, ColoSpace was able to customize the property to meet the power and heat management demands of high-density hosting environments. “An area ColoSpace will have as a competitive advantage is cooling and power,” Sawchuk said. “Data centers built five years ago were designed for multiple 4-5U servers and now we’re seeing multiple 7U Blade Server holding ten blades requiring expanded power and cooling. Our vision was to look at the market and quantify how many customers would be standardizing on Blade Servers and other smaller machines in the next five years. Taking this data into consideration and building a facility to meet future demands is where we see ColoSpace staying ahead of the competition.”

Steadfast Plans Data Center at Lakeside Tech

It’s been a good week for the Chicago data center market. In addition to Hostway’s new facility, Digital Realty Trust announced that web hosting provider Steadfast Networks is expanding into a new data center in the Lakeside Technology Center. The facility is expected to be operational this month, according to a release from Digital Realty.

Steadfast Networks provides shared hosting and dedicated servers, and will use the additional space to accommodate growth. The back-to-back announcements of new data centers for growing web hosting companies looks to be an indicator of strong demand in the Chicago area market.