An illustration of WindData's planned five-building data center campus in Pflugerville, Texas, which is designed to be supported by wind energy.

The growing focus on “green” data centers has raised the possibility that data center operators might get into the energy business by generating on-site renewable power. A new project in Texas features the opposite approach: a renewable energy company looking to get into the data center business.

WindData has been formed by veterans of the wind power industry, who plan to build a data center campus near Austin, Texas that will be powered by wind farms in West Texas and the Gulf of Mexico. The project is one of the most ambitious efforts yet to make “green” power workable at data center scale.

WindData is a subsidiary of Baryonyx Corp., an energy company run by veterans of Eclipse Energy, a UK firm which developed and then sold a 150 megawatt offshore wind farm. Baryonix was formed in 2009 and began making plans for a data center project in Texas. It hopes to have its first wind-powered facility online by the fourth quarter of 2012.

Vertically-Integrated Operation

Baryonyx envisions WindData as a vertically-integrated operation that builds wind farms to generate energy for use in its data centers. A key advantage to this strategy is the ability to offer long-term deals on power pricing, which drives data center site selection.

“We’re in a position where we can develop wind resources in one part of the state and transport them via the (ERCOT) grid,” said Ian Hatton, CEO of Baryonyx. “We can offer tenants in our data center fixed-price power for the term of the lease. It removes uncertainty about price spikes in the market, and also removes uncertainty from any carbon legislation.”

“The WindData-Baryonyx relationship allows us to implement our unique green power delivery concept,” said Graeme Walker, the CFO of Baryonyx. “It gives us the ability to offer power using a flat fixed cost structure at a very favorable price, with energy costs as low as 4.6 cents per KWh.”

Baryonyx is building a 24 megawatt wind farm in West Texas, which is expected to be ready by the middle of next year. It is also developing two larger wind farms in the Gulf of Mexico, in Rio Grande and Mustang Island.

Developing Property in Pflugerville

For the data center half of the equation, WindData has acquired a 50-acre property in Pflugerville, a northern suburb of Austin. The site has 10 megawatts of capacity available from a nearby substation, which also supports the Dell headquarters campus. WindData also will have the ability to add two substations that would add up to 60 megawatts of power. The area is

The company has drawn up plans for up to five data centers on the property, beginning with a 123,000 square foot building that will feature four 1.25 megawatt wholesale suites across 40,000 square feet of raised-floor space. Power equipment will be housed in a separate room, and the data hall floor will have no columns, leaving more room for IT equipment. WindData is working with Critical Project Services, Cassidy Turley and Cushman & Wakefield on developing the project.

Multiple Renewable Sources

There are a number of data center providers that use utility power that is sourced from wind generation, but only a handful of working data centers that use on-site wind generation to provide power for their servers (see Wind-Powered Data Centers for details), and none at the scale WindData is envisioning.

WindData says it will line up multiple renewable energy sources so it will have power available in periods of low wind. The company plans dedicated generators for each data suite.

But first, there’s the business of lining up tenants. “We’re in discussions with a couple of potential partners that excel in the wholesale market,” said Rob Morris of Cassidy Turley. “We thought this would be a disaster recovery play for Dallas and Houston, but we’ve seen demand from national managed hosting and colo players. We think the long-term power agreements are perhaps the most attractive element of this project.”

But WindData has also worked out an incentive package with officials in Pflugerville, including pass-through tax abatements.

“The potential savings to a tenant who invests $25 million in server equipment in the facility would be up to $150,000 per year in city and county Taxes alone,” said Roy Philips, the COO of Baryonyx Corporation.

If the Austin project succeeds, WindData plans to explore building a second facility near Abilene, an area that might support a data center with on-site wind turbines, as depicted in the illustration below.

The chilled water system at the new Data Foundry Texas 1 data center in Austin, which supports a variety of approaches to cooling.

Edward Henigin is the Chief Technology Officer of Data Foundry, which today announced the opening of Texas 1, the company’s 250,000 square foot data center in Austin, Texas. Data Center Knowledge recently had an email question-and-answer session with Ed about the new facility and some of its features.

DCK:  The Data Foundry team has toured data center  facilities all over the world. What design principles proved to be most useful in designing and building Texas 1?

Henigin:  One important thing we learned was that retrofitting an existing building into a data center requires compromising your ideals. We saw too many “hermit crab” data centers with confusing navigation, odd-shaped rooms, inefficient space utilization, equipment that would be difficult to maintain, and overall poor experiences for customers. We decided early on that in order to achieve our vision of a premium, customer-satisfying data center, we would have to build the building from scratch, with function dictating the form, from beginning to end. By choosing a large “green field” site, we were able to execute on our three main design strategies:

1) Redundant everything. We were surprised by how many big name colocation facilities lacked redundant equipment at various levels of the electrical or mechanical systems. We started with power feeds from two independent substations, and continued with redundant transformers, redundant switchgear, redundant generators, redundant UPSs, all the way down to the co-location floor. All of our redundant equipment can be individually taken out of service, maintained, even swapped out if necessary, while customer load is never exposed to raw utility power. We brought in redundant water and telecom feeds. Some sites consider feeds to be diverse if they are 25 feet apart. Our feeds are 2500 feet apart.

2) Value the human experience. We put ourselves in our customer’s shoes, and wondered: what would we want out of a data center to help us be comfortable and productive? We started with the loading dock up front, because our clients ship and receive a whole lot of equipment and components. We made the navigation as clear and simple as possible so our clients wouldn’t get lost. We added break rooms, showers, and convenient laptop workstations outside of the cold and noisy data hall. Wi-fi blankets the building. Our NOC is staffed 24×7 on site in case anyone needs a patch cable, or a hand with racking a server. Then we added office space that clients could lease for permanent on-site staffing to support their deployments. But customers aren’t the only humans living in the building. We also included features to make our employees and contractors happier and more productive. We designed the security, mechanical and electrical infrastructure for ease of operation and maintenance. The loading dock and front door are monitored by the same security booth – allowing us to not split security between the front and back of the building. Our generators are housed under the roof in individual concrete-encased rooms. The mechanical rooms, electrical rooms and service galleries include extra space to provide an easy working environment for facilities and maintenance personnel.

3) Energy efficient is not optional. The environment demands it, the market demands it, and our board demands it. From motion-sensing lights all the way up to the highest efficiency substation transformers ever built, we selected components and designed the operations to maximize energy efficiency. All pumps and fans are equipped with VFDs, and all sequences are optimized to take maximum advantage of them. We are taking advantage of two different “eco” modes on our UPS modules. The data halls are designed to inherently sequester the hot air, maximizing CRAH efficiency. A PLC-based controls system provides the horsepower required to optimize the biggest potential energy sink, a poorly-run mechanical plant. Altogether, our energy efficiency measures add up to excellent returns to all of our stakeholders.

DCK: At Texas 1 you offer a wide range of cooling options. Does this require any special approach to how and where you will deploy customers who may choose different approaches?

Henigin: We designed our chilled water cooling system to accommodate the various approaches utilized for today’s HPC environments. We work with customers to understand the equipment they need to install on the colocation floor and implement the type of cooling solution that best meets their needs and/or expectations.

DCK: Texas is an active and competitive state for data center services. What do you see as the key differentiators for Austin – as opposed to Dallas, San Antonio or Houston?

Henigin: Austin is located south of Tornado Alley, north of Hurricane Alley, and is on earthquake-free geology. We have low power costs and access to a deep pool of technology workers. World class companies in Austin now have a world-class data center option right in their back yard.

A look at the data hall inside the Data Foundry Texas 1 data center in Austin, Texas, which opened its doors today.

Colocation and disaster recovery specialist Data Foundry has opened the doors to its Texas 1 data center in Austin, Texas. The 130,00 square foot first phase is now operational and the first customers have started moving into the of the 250,000 square foot data center. Data Foundry now operates three carrier-neutral data centers in Texas: Texas 1 and ADC in Austin, and HDC in Houston.

Data Foundry invested approximately $150 million in the facility, with debt financing from JPMorgan Chase supporting some of the construction costs. The data center is housed on a 40-acre property known as the Data Ranch, which provides space for additional data centers in the future. The first phase of Texas 1 has 12 megawatts of electrical capacity, with another 12 megawatts scheduled to come online for the 120,000 square foot second phase.

Experience Built Into the Design

“Texas 1 reflects the culmination of 17 years of experience in owning, operating and using data centers,” said Carolyn Yokubaitis, Co-Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Data Foundry. “Over the years, the Data Foundry team has toured data centers around the world, leading us to envision a facility in Austin that would compete on a global scale. This invaluable perspective is inherent in Texas 1’s flexible and innovative design which will benefit our customers for years to come.”

Texas 1’s power system is fed from two independent substations and features an underground power feed enclosed end-to-end in a concrete duct bank. The chilled water system enables flexible cooling solutions ranging from single cabinet deployments up to complex High Performance Computing (HPC) environments. With over 17 network carriers available, Texas 1 offers a wide variety of carrier-neutral options for its customers.

Austin has attracted several large data center projects in recent years, most notably the $450 million facility built by Citigroup in nearby Georgetown, two major facilities for Hewlett-Packard and $126 million Lowe’s data center. The Data Foundry team expects the new facility to help cement Austin’s standing as a destination for data centers.

Boosting Austin as Retail & Wholesale Market

“The opening of Texas 1 demonstrates Data Foundry’s commitment to establishing Austin as a leading market for wholesale and retail data center outsourcing, colocation and disaster recovery services,” said Ron Yokubaitis, Co-Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Data Foundry. “Austin, by virtue of its low disaster incidence and stable climate, is the ideal location for secure and fully redundant colocation of businesses’ mission critical data.”

Data Foundry provides wholesale data center space, colocation and disaster recovery services. Founded in 1994 as Texas.Net, Data Foundry was the first Internet Service Provider in San Antonio and one of the first 50 ISPs in the United States. In 1999, Data Foundry built its first data center in downtown Austin. In 2002, Data Foundry acquired Reliant Energy’s Internet and Data Center Operations in Houston. In 2004, Data Foundry commissioned its flagship 40,000 square foot Data Center and Work-Site Recovery Center in Austin, Texas.

Today, Data Foundry supports more than 1,000 enterprise customers across a variety of industries, including Whataburger, Solar Winds, Sonic Healthcare USA and Smart Financial Credit Union.

The exterior of the Texas 1 data center in Austin, built and operated by Data Foundry.

Demising walls separating customer colocation areas in the Data Foundry Texas 1 data center, which is currently under construction in Austin, Texas.

JPMorgan Chase will provide debt financing for a new data center in Austin, Texas being built by colocation provider Data Foundry, the companies said today. JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. will be the sole lender for the company’s Texas 1 facility, the first segment of a 40-acre, 100-megawatt data center campus known as the Data Ranch. The amount of the funding was not announced.

The first phase of the two-phase project includes 130,000 square feet of data center and disaster recovery space and is planned for completion in the second quarter of 2011. Data Foundry owners Carolyn Yokubaitis, Ron Yokubaitis, Jonah Yokubaitis and Edward Henigin have provided the equity financing and secured all commitment requirements for the funding.

“We are constructing our master-planned data center campus in response to the growth of existing clients and to meet the demand of companies throughout the world that require secure and fully redundant colocation for their mission critical data,” said Carolyn Yokubaitis, co-founder and Co-CEO of Data Foundry. “After an extensive one year process to determine the optimal funding partner, Data Foundry chose Chase due to its phenomenal leadership in the financial sector, competitive pricing, and high quality of service.”

“This financing will enable Data Foundry to build a first-class facility that will allow for long-term growth and expansion,” said Gabe Terrazas, Senior Chase Banker in Austin.

Data Foundry provides wholesale data center space, colocation and disaster recovery services. Founded in 1994 as Texas.Net, Data Foundry was the first Internet Service Provider in San Antonio and one of the first 50 ISPs in the United States.

A sketch of the planned Data Foundry ADC2 data center in Austin.

Colocation and disaster recovery specialist Data Foundry held a groundbreaking ceremony Tuesday for its  Austin Data Center (ADC2), a 250,000 square foot data center on its new Data Ranch campus in Austin, Texas. The first phase of 130,000 square foot facility scheduled to be completed in June of 2011.

The Data Ranch is a 40 acre campus near Austin Bergstrom International Airport. The property has capacity for 100 megawatts of power, end-to-end underground power feeds from diverse substations, and dual diverse entry points for power, telecom, and water; and availability of over 15 telecom providers.

“The event celebrates the community it will serve and the opportunities afforded through its next-generation design and multi-megawatt power capabilities,” said Edward Henigin, Chief Technology Officer of Data Foundry. “This mission critical infrastructure is key to attracting large Enterprise and service providers considering Texas for their expansions.”

“We welcome Data Foundry’s new premium data center building to the Austin area,” states Michael Rollins, President of Austin Chamber of Commerce. “We are confident the data center will serve as a draw for regional and national companies. Austin’s central location away from threat of hurricane and natural disasters, coupled with a large base of high tech talent make this a prime location for a world-class data center.”

Data Foundry provides wholesale data center space, colocation and disaster recovery services. Founded in 1994 as Texas.Net, Data Foundry was the first Internet Service Provider in San Antonio and one of the first 50 ISPs in the United States. In 1999, Data Foundry built its first data center in downtown Austin. In 2002, Data Foundry acquired Reliant Energy’s Internet and Data Center Operations in Houston. In 2004, Data Foundry commissioned its flagship 40,000 square foot Data Center and Work-Site Recovery Center in Austin, Texas.

The company operates data centers in Austin and Houston and owns private networks in Austin, Houston, San Antonio and Dallas.

An image from the plans for the new, $150 million Data Foundry data center facility in Austin.

Data Foundry will build a 250,000 square foot greenfield data center in Austin, the company said Thursday. The company, which provides colocation and wholesale data center space, expects to complete the $150 million facility in about 12 months.

Data Foundry said the new data center will have access to 100 megawatts of power from two independent sub-stations. The company said the carrier-neutral data center will be designed to accommodate requirements ranging from a single cabinet up to multi-megawatt deployments.

“We performed extensive site research to locate an existing building in Austin that might suit the needs for our next site,” said Ed Henigin, Chief Technology Officer of Data Foundry. “It became clear that retrofitting an existing building would not allow us to deliver the high level of service that we envision for our new data center, so we have chosen to build from the ground up. We are very excited to be constructing Austin’s first world-class Greenfield data center.”

Austin has attracted several large data center projects in recent years, most notably the $450 million facility built by Citigroup in nearby Georgetown, Texas. Hewlett-Packard is building two major facilities in Austin, while Lowe’s has located a $126 million data center in town.

Providing Internet Services Since 1994
Data Foundry provides wholesale data center space, colocation and disaster recovery services. Founded in 1994 as Texas.Net, Data Foundry was the first Internet Service Provider in San Antonio and one of the first 50 ISPs in the United States. In 1999, Data Foundry built its first data center in downtown Austin. In 2002, Data Foundry acquired Reliant Energy’s Internet and Data Center Operations in Houston. In 2004, Data Foundry commissioned its flagship 40,000 square foot Data Center and Work-Site Recovery Center in Austin, Texas.

Today, Data Foundry supports more than 1,000 enterprise customers across a variety of industries, including Whataburger, Solar Winds, Sonic Healthcare USA and Smart Financial Credit Union. The company operates data centers in Austin and Houston and owns private networks in Austin, Houston, San Antonio and Dallas.

Design of the new Austin data center will be handled by Gensler, while CCG Facilities Integration will provide engineering services for the project. The facility is being built by Holder Construction Company.

F5 announces new Application Delivery Controller platforms. F5 Networks announced new Application Delivery Controller (ADC) platforms, extending the BIG-IP product family. The BIG-IP 11050 platform and a new 8950 hardware appliance round out a new high-end appliance series, featuring higher throughput and enhanced layer 4 performance. F5 is also delivering production and lab versions of its virtual appliance, BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM) Virtual Edition.  “With physical, virtual, and hybrid deployment options for ADCs, customers gain the flexibility to cost-effectively support scalable application delivery while continuing to leverage their existing infrastructure and investments,” said Joe Skorupa, Research VP of Data Center Networking & Communications at Gartner.  The BIG-IP 8950 platform features a throughput level of 20Gbps, while the 11050 boasts 42Gbps.  Both hardware platforms will be available in April, as well as the production and lab versions of the BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager Virtual Edition.

Akamai and Coradiant release software. Akamai (AKAM) and web application performance management provider Cordiant announced the release of Cordiant TrueSight Edge for Akamai, a custom-built software-based product that provides performance visibility into Web applications delivered by Akamai.  The new software product will deliver enhanced capabilities to visualize, manage and optimize the performance of global applications in the cloud which are delivered over the Akamai EdgePlatform, and is available on a monthly subscription model.  “Any method of testing performance from anything other than the actual viewpoint of end-users is flawed. In order to make good operational decisions, IT managers need to be able to see performance in real time, so they know exactly what users are experiencing at any given instant, from any particular geography,” said Lydia Leong, Research Director at Gartner.  Benefits of the new software include real-time visualization of application traffic worldwide, performance measurement as perceived by the end user and executive dashboards with full visibility across all users in real-time.  The Coradiant TrueSight Edge for Akamai product is available today for enterprises through Akamai.

Terracon selects CoSentry. Cosentry announced that Terracon, an engineering consulting firm has selected CoSentry to provide colocation and data center services.  Terracon will house equipment in the Kansas City CoSentry facility.  “CoSentry continues to add services and capabilities that allow clients to decide how much of their IT or backup IT environment they want to own.  The ability to move Terracon’s backup IT environment to more of a cloud model over time is another unique and significant benefit that CoSentry was able to offer to Terracon that other options did not,” said Doug West, Vice President and General Manager of CoSentry.

The CheckFree project was announced by Zydeco Development, which is seeking to develop much of the remaining space at its huge MetCenter business park as a data center campus. Zydeco said Tuesday that it was launching the second phase of development at MetCenter, and has broken ground on a 150,000 square foot industrial building to kick off the expansion.

In early 2006 Zydeco announced plans for a large data center park within MetCenter. The 550 acre MetCenter campus includes 2 million square feet of developed commercial space. Companies with existing data centers at MetCenter include Digital Realty Trust (DLR), DataFoundry, Waste Management and Progressive Insurance.

“By beginning construction on Building Five on a speculative basis and eliminating the uncertainty associated with the build-to-suit option, we deliver the speed-to-market like no other in Austin,” said Howard Yancey, a principal at Zydeco. “The high quality level of the park and its buildings, as well as the many amenities offered, makes MetCenter the premium option for companies looking to locate or relate in Austin.”

MetCenter has sturdy electrical infrastructure, featuring two 400 megawatt power substations. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which oversees the power grid for the state of Texas, has its corporate headquarters and data center at MetCenter. Zydeco has obtained site plan approvals for more than 1.6 million square feet of additional space in the new phase. The expansion property was purchased last year.

The growth has established a number of Texas cities as destinations for data center site location, which in some cases are now battling one another for new projects. Here’s a look at the Texas data center map and recent developments for Austin, San Antonio, Dallas, Houston and El Paso.

DALLAS
The early growth of the Telecom Corridor in Richardson helped put the Dallas market on the map for data center development. Around the same time, the Infomart was evolving into a major carrier hotel. The city has also benefited from the growth of a vibrant crop of web hosting companies, including The Planet, C I Host, DataSide (Collocation Solutions), SoftLayer, Layered Technologies and Colo4Dallas.

While Dallas is the most mature of the state’s data center markets, it continues to attract new projects, including a planned 1 million square foot data center campus in Richardson by Skyrise Properties, which also recently bought a Ft. Worth data center from Hillwood Development Company. Behringer Harvard recently bought a facility in Arlington.

AUSTIN
The capital city snared one of the largest enterprise data center projects when Citigroup chose Austin for a $450 million facility in Georgetown. It is the latest in a series of corporate stand-alone data center projects the region has attracted. Hewlett-Packard is building two major facilities in Austin, while Lowe’s has a $126 million data center in the works. That’s in addition to Zydeco Development’s proposed data center park and plans by Digital Realty Trust to expand its Austin facility.

SAN ANTONIO
Microsoft’s decision to build a $550 million data center in the Westover Hills area has been followed by announcements of data center projects by the NSA, Stream Realty and Christus Health. The San Antonio Economic Development Foundation said it is working with five other companies looking at San Antonio for new data center sites, including some speculative projects. One new project is driven by the growth of a local success story: Rackspace Managed Hosting will invest $100 million to convert a vacant San Antonio shopping mall into its headquarters, and plans to add 4,000 new employees over the next five years.

HOUSTON
Houston means Big Oil, and many local IT providers have sprung up to support the industry’s needs. But Houston was also home to one of the dedicated hosting industry’s juggernauts. EV1Servers (Rackshack) was founded as a spinoff of local ISP Everyone’s Internet, and the popularity of its $99 servers made it one of the biggest hosting companies in the world by 2003. The market for new data centers in Houston has been relatively quiet since EV1Servers was acquired by The Planet/GI Partners in May 2006. But things heated up in July, when two managed hosting providers based in Houston were bought in separate deals. Vericenter was acquired by Sungard, one of the largest players in the disaster recovery business, while managed hosting specialist Cyrus One was bought by ABRY Partners, a private equity firm that invests in communications industry.

EL PASO
With these other Texas cities all attracting data center projects, El Paso wants to get in on the act. The El Paso Regional Economic Development Corp. (REDCo) has begun promoting El Paso as a destination for data center developments, hoping to attract investment and high-tech jobs. REDco president Bob Cook said his group launched an initiative in January to make industrial recruiters aware of El Paso’s attributes for data centers. Since then, Cook says REDCo has received calls from two consultants and a company searching for data center sites, he said.