A former mine built into the side of a dolomite mountain in the Ozarks will house backup data for thousands of financial institutions. Jack Henry & Associates (JKHY), which provides IT automation and processes ATM and debit card transactions for 8,700 banks and credit unions, will house its backup data center in
The Mountain Complex [1], a mission-critical facility located just outside Branson, Missouri.
The Mountain Complex is a 3 million square foot storage center complex, with about 300,000 square feet of space under development as mission-critical data center space. Jack Henry will consolidate disaster recovery operations from six sites around the country, CEO Jack Prim told
local media [2].
The Mountain Complex has offered co-location and off-site data storage for about a year through an alliance with CenturyTel. The facility is above ground and built in the side of a mountain, allowing for a constant 65 degree temperature without some of the challenges associated with underground facilities. The site has 34-foot ceilings, and doesn’t allow trucks or trains inside to protect air quality, according to the company web site.
The Mountain Complex joins a growing list of underground data center facilities seeking to attract disaster recovery business. They include:
- StrataSpace [3], a 500,000 square foot underground data center outsider Louisville, Kentucky.
- The SpringNet Underground [4], as 56,000 square foot data center located 85 feet underground in a limestone cave near Springfield, Missouri.
- Cavern Technologies [5], a 200,000 square foot facility near Kansas City that is 125 feet underground.
- The InfoBunker [6], a 65,000 square foot ultra-secure underground data center in Iowa, built in a decommissioned Air Force bunker.
- The Westlin Data Center [7], which provides 40,000 square feet of underground data center and office space in Lake Conroe, Texas.
- The Bunker [8] is a 10-year old ultra-secure colo facility built in a former nuclear bunker in Newbury, England.
- Iron Mountain has a data center within its huge underground records storage facility [9] near Pittsburgh, previously known as the National Underground.
- Mountains West Exploration Inc. [10] (MXWI) entered the data center business last month with the acquisition of Secured Digital Storage, and plans to develop former military ammunition bunkers as ultra-secure storage.
Rich Miller is the founder and editor-in-chief of Data Center Knowledge, and has been reporting on the data center sector since 2000. He has tracked the growing impact of high-density computing on the power and cooling of data centers, and the resulting push for improved energy efficiency in these facilities.
Article printed from Data Center Knowledge: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com
URL to article: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2007/12/11/ozark-mountain-data-bunker-gets-tenant/
URLs in this post:
[1] The Mountain Complex: http://www.omuvs.com
[2] local media: http://www.sbj.net/article.asp?aID=91113746.87185802.1032629.78072902.4046794.148&aID2=79424
[3] StrataSpace: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2007/Jan/24/huge_data_bunker_planned_in_louisville.html
[4] SpringNet Underground: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2007/Apr/04/missouri_data_bunker_gets_hospital_tenant.html
[5] Cavern Technologies: http://caverntechnologies.com/drecovery.html
[6] The InfoBunker: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2007/May/21/infobunker_nuke-proof_iowa_data_center.html
[7] Westlin Data Center: http://www.westlin.com/
[8] The Bunker: http://www.thebunker.net/
[9] huge underground records storage facility: http://www.computerworld.com/databasetopics/data/story/0,10801,87797,00.html
[10] Mountains West Exploration Inc.: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2007/Nov/09/mountains_west_buys_bunker_storage_firm.html
[11] Rich Miller: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/author/richm/
Click here to print.
