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APC, IBM Team on Modular Data Center
American Power Conversion (APCC) and IBM have jointly developed the Scalable Modular Data Center, a pre-engineered 500 or 1,000 square foot data center that can be rapidly deployed. The new offering, similar in concept to Sun Microsystems' Project BlackBox, enables users to build a data center in nearly any working environment using IBM Global Services’ capabilities and APC’s InfraStruXure data center architecture.
"Organizations of all sizes are currently experiencing significant challenges as a result of energy-related expenses within their data centers," said Rob Johnson, APC’s president and chief executive officer. "The strategic relationship between IBM and APC will produce a reliable, scalable modular data center that will provide power, cooling, racks, security and management capabilities that directly address those energy challenges. From our experience in marketing products to small- and medium-sized businesses, we designed this solution to specifically meet the customer’s need for flexible infrastructure that can install in virtually any environment and still support the cost-effective addition of components as a business grows.”
January 29, 2007
Verizon to Expand Data Center Network
Telecom giant Verizon told analysts today that the company plans to build additional data centers this year. "We’ve had incredible demand for web hosting all year, and so you’ll probably see us do some more build-outs to try to meet the demand," said Doreen A. Toben, Verizon's Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. "It’s really been an expanding product segment for us."
Toben's comments were made during Verizon's quarterly conference call with securities analysts (full transcript at Seeking Alpha), and she gave no indication of the scope of any expansion. Verizon Business includes the former MCI data center business, which has facilities in Seattle, Atlanta, Houston, Miami, Los Angeles, Richardson (Dallas market). It also includes former Digex faciltiies in Beltsville, Md.; San Jose, Calif. and London, England.
Posted by Rich Miller 
January 29, 2007 | Permalink | Newsletter
RagingWire Builds Own Power Substation
Rising power loads for high-density server installations are prompting some industrial-strength infrastructure upgrades. Today Sacramento-based managed hosting specialist RagingWire Enterprise Solutions, Inc. said it has completed construction on a dedicated onsite 69kV power substation. With a total capacity of 46 megawatts, the substation provides plenty of power to support the growth of RagingWire’s expanding high-density hosting operation, including its recently announced Phase 3 data center expansion, which is engineered to reach over 250 watts per square foot.
"Many providers are turning down client requests to bring in additional data circuits because they simply lack the capacity to handle their clients’ increasing workloads and power needs," said John Hoffman, CEO of RagingWire. "RagingWire has made the necessary investments in our data center facility to support our clients’ current and future power requirements."
Posted by Rich Miller January 29, 2007 | Permalink | Newsletter
Data Center Boom Reaches Smaller Cities
Corporate demand for data centers is likely to remain strong for years to come, and cost issues will lead many companies to build new facilities in smaller markets in the center of the U.S., according to John Boyd, president of The Boyd Company of Princeton, N.J.
Data center projects are "the fastest growing field in corporate site location," according to Boyd, an expert in corporate site location who for 30 years has been helping America's best-known companies plan real estate expansions. Many of these companies will build their own facilities, Boyd said. "The inventory of available sites is extremely low," said Boyd. "We tell our clients to focus on the fundamental cost issues and not to key on existing facilities."
Those cost issues will spur data center development outside of the major Internet markets and "NFL cities" that have thus far been home to the lion's share of major data center projects. In recent months Boyd has released two studies on the cost of operating financial and healthcare data centers in U.S. markets.
In those studies, Boyd has highlighted the affordability of markets like Sioux Falls, S.D., Tulsa, Oklahoma and San Antonio, Texas. "(Corporations are) eager to look at lower cost, highly-secure locations," said Boyd. These findings reflect the priorities for single-tenant corporate facilities, rather than multi-tenant hosting/colo centers or the massive centers to power search platforms for Google and Microsoft.
Posted by Rich Miller January 29, 2007 | Permalink | Newsletter
January 27, 2007
Intel Unveils Advance in Low-Power Chips
Intel has developed a new 45 nanometer processor that represents as significant advance in low-power computing, and IBM is not far behind. The New York Times writes that the new chips have "overhauled the basic building block of the information age, paving the way for a new generation of faster and more energy-efficient processors." An excerpt:
The new approach to insulation appears at least temporarily to conquer one of the most significant obstacles confronting the semiconductor industry: the tendency of tiny switches to leak electricity as they are reduced in size. The leakage makes chips run hotter and consume more power.Intel co-founder Gordon Moore called the advance "the biggest change in transistor technology since ... the late 1960s." Intel said the new chips will have "five times less leakage power than those made today. This will improve battery life for mobile devices and increase opportunities for building smaller, more powerful platforms."
This could explain the announcement earlier this week that Intel has won back Google's business from AMD, apparently by creating custom motherboards to fit Google's demanding data center specs. Google is notorious for its focus on power efficiency in the data center, so that shift makes more sense if it involves the new Intel chips.
Posted by Rich Miller January 27, 2007 | Permalink | Newsletter
January 26, 2007
The Real "Death Star" Data Center
Isabel Wang has a pointer to a C/Net story about LucasFilms' data center in San Francisco. It's a 13,500-square-foot facility that includes a "render farm" - a cluster of computers that work around the clock to process synthetic images - as well as file servers. All told, the center contains more than 3,000 AMD processors. The C/Net story is accompanied by a slide show with photos.
As Isabel notes, the real kicker is the connectivity. The LucasFilm network features 300 10 gigabit Ethernet ports and 1,500 1-gig ports. Every digital artist within the company has a desktop with gigabit connectivity. After all, it takes a boatload of bandwidth to destroy Alderaan or make the Kessel run in 12 parsecs.
Posted by Rich Miller January 26, 2007 | Permalink | Newsletter
Peak 10 Adds Jacksonville Facility
Data center operator Peak 10 will more than double its Jacksonville operation by adding a second data center to support the company’s rapid growth in Florida. The expansion will give Peak 10 nine data centers spread throughout the eastern United States. The company expects the new facility to be completed before the third quarter of this year.
"With our recent acquisition in Nashville and facility expansions or second data centers in four of our existing markets since 2005, Peak 10 is aggressively responding to customer growth and the increased demand for outsourced IT services in all of our markets," said David Jones, president and chief executive officer of Peak 10. "Consistent with our growth strategy, we will continue to aggressively pursue expansion opportunities organically and through acquisitions nationwide."
Peak 10 says it needs additional data center space in Jacksonville to meet current and future demand for infrastructure hosting and managed services. The new data center will be built on the same property as Peak 10’s existing facility.
Posted by Rich Miller January 26, 2007 | Permalink | Newsletter
January 24, 2007
Huge Data Bunker Planned in Louisville
StrataSpace announced this week that it has completed site preparation for a 500,000-square-foot underground data center outside Louisville, Kentucky. StrataSpace, which first announced the project in early 2005, said it has hired CCG Facilities Integration Inc. and The Bick Group to provide architecture and engineering services as it "finalizes the mechanical systems design and tenant spaces."
The StrataSpace facility is 65 feet underground and will house approximately 250,000 square feet of raised-floor equipment space, plus 250,000 square feet of support area for mechanical systems. In addition to security, StrataSpace says tenants can also benefit from low utility rates in Kentucky, as well as the constant ambient temperature of 59 degrees within the facility, which lowers cooling costs.
There have been numerous below-ground data center projects over the years, most of which have converted existing "bunker" facilities to use as colocation centers. Some prominent examples:
Posted by Rich Miller January 24, 2007 | Permalink | Newsletter
$60M Weather Data Center to Wyoming
The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo. will build a $60 million data center in Cheyenne, Wyoming to house a supercomputer for weather research. The project be a partnership among NCAR, the University of Wyoming and the state of Wyoming.
Construction is expected to begin later this year, but the center will likely not open until late 2010 or early 2011. The new center will house "some of the world's most powerful supercomputers in order to advance understanding of climate, weather, and other Earth and atmospheric processes," according to a press release.
The facility will also create 30 new high tech jobs, and local officials hope it will attract future high tech businesses to the area. "It's gonna be just mega for not only Cheyenne's economy but the state's economy," says Cheyenne Mayor Jack Spiker told the AP. "Having an NCAR supercomputing facility in Wyoming will be transformative for the University of Wyoming, will represent a significant step forward in the state's economic development, and will provide exceptional opportunities for NCAR to make positive contributions to the educational infrastructure of an entire state," says William Gern, the university's vice president for research and economic development.
Posted by Rich Miller January 24, 2007 | Permalink | Newsletter
FastServers Expands with Switch and Data
Dedicated server provider FastServers.Net has expanded into the Chicago market, taking space in Switch and Data's Chicago data center, which will provide FastServers with space, power and interconnection services.
"Switch and Data's Chicago data center provides FastServers.Net with the opportunity to expand immediately in this market," states Aaron Phillips, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at FastServers.Net. "Their colocation services and access to other bandwidth providers in one facility made this an easy choice for us."
Posted by Rich Miller January 24, 2007 | Permalink | Newsletter
January 23, 2007
Infocrossing Expands Tempe Data Center
Infocrossing, Inc. (IFOX) has upgraded its Tempe, Ariz., data center with the major power, cabling and cooling capabilities required to double the capacity for high density computing. The technology upgrades allow Infocrossing to increase its capacity to support clients with high-density installations featuring densely racked servers and blade servers.
"We proactively designed this upgrade to ensure the latest infrastructure is in place for today’s new technology developments, as well as the innovation coming in the future," said Infocrossing CTO Dave Leonard. "With Infocrossing’s Tempe data center upgrade, we have expanded our capacity for our clients to maximize densely racked servers, blade servers and other new technology driving their business or providing a competitive edge. We were able to increase the productive capacity of the data center without a physical expansion."
Posted by Rich Miller January 23, 2007 | Permalink | Newsletter
MORE STORIES FROM THIS MONTH:
- APC, IBM Team on Modular Data Center
- Verizon to Expand Data Center Network
- RagingWire Builds Own Power Substation
- Data Center Boom Reaches Smaller Cities
- Intel Unveils Advance in Low-Power Chips
- The Real "Death Star" Data Center
- Peak 10 Adds Jacksonville Facility
- Huge Data Bunker Planned in Louisville
- $60M Weather Data Center to Wyoming
- FastServers Expands with Switch and Data
- Infocrossing Expands Tempe Data Center
- HSBC Finalizes NY Site for Data Center
- The Big Red Button
- Some ISPs Spurn 10 GigE Video Peering
- VeriSign Expands at Terremark NAP
- Three Projects in Works for i/o Data Centers
- i/o Data Centers Plans National Network
- Google News Boosts Data Center Stocks
- Virtualization Helping Save Tax Dollars
- Google Planning Two Huge S.C. Facilities?
- Google Picks N.C. for $600M Data Center
- 'Heat Map' of Disaster-Prone Locations
- Microsoft Confirms Huge San Antonio Center
- Terremark Buys Site for Virginia 'Campus'
- San Antonio Mulls $25M Package for Microsoft
- MySpace and Its Growing Infrastructure
- Data Center World Set for March 25-29
- GigaOm Sees 'Collective Delusion' in Video
- Which is Cheaper: In-house or Colo?
- NetFlix to Offer Streaming Movies
- The Pirate Bay Wants to Buy Sealand
- Will Rooftop Shrubs Cool Your Data Center?
- Equinix Buys Tokyo Center for $7.5M