Top Data Center Stories of 2007 (So Far)

What were the biggest data center news stories of the first half of 2007? I keep close track of which stories grab our readers’ attention, and a review of the most popular stories between Jan. 1 and June 30 identified several key trends.

Google’s data center building boom was the hottest topic, accounting for four of the top 10 slots, while three stories about portable data center strategies made the top 10. The most-viewed story was a quirky item about an effort to build a data center in 60 days, which proved popular on Slashdot and was viewed nearly 30,000 times. Here are the top 10 stories of the first half of 2007, ranked by total page views:

• Building A Data Center in 60 Days (June 12)
• Stanford Center is First Blackbox Recipient (June 23)
• Google Announces $600M South Carolina Project (April 4)
• Google’s Toilet ISP Not So Far Fetched (April 1)
• Google Planning Two Huge South Carolina Facilities? (Jan. 20)
• Google Planning Oklahoma Data Center (April 7)
• Microsoft Mulling Portable Data Centers (April 5)
• Google Picks North Carolina for $600M Data Center (Jan. 19)
• Sun Unveils ‘Data Center In A Box’ (Oct. 17, 2006)
• Wal-Mart Data Centers and the Fight Club Rule (June 3, 2006)

An interesting footnote: the ninth and 10th most-viewed stories were written in 2006 but continue to get strong interest – the launch announcement for Sun’s Blackbox, and our post about the “Fight Club Rule” of data center secrecy.

More than 1,200 different sites linked to stories at Data Center Knowledge. The largest number of readers came from Google searches, followed in order by Slashdot, Yahoo search, MSN search, StumbleUpon, Yahoo Finance message boards, Reddit, Bloglines, Digg and Topix.net.