CoreSite Plans Expansion in Boston Area

Data center and colocation service provider CoreSite will expand its data center in Boston.

CoreSite will expand its Boston data center located at 70 Innerbelt Road in Somerville, Mass., adding 12,000 square feet of space in the second quarter of 2010. The new space will be capable of cooling high performance computing environments, and will feature access to CoreSite’s Any2 Northeast Internet exchange.

The announcement continues the growth at CoreSite, a provider of wholesale data center and colocation space that recently completed an expansion project in northern Virginia and is adding data center space in Los Angeles and Silicon Valley.  

CoreSite Santa Clara Project Due in Early 2010

The first phase of CoreSite’s data center campus in Santa Clara, Calif. will be completed in the first quarter of 2010, the company announced today. The project, which was announced in May 2008, was initially scheduled to be open in 2009. But its arrival will help add inventory to a tight market for data center space in Silicon Valley, where several large projects were postponed due to the impact of the financial crisis.

Phase one of the CoreSite development will feature 50,000 square feet of data center space and eight megawatts of electrical capacity. CoreSite’s long-term plans include two additional 180,000 square foot data centers on the campus, which will have a total power capacity of 49 megawatts at completion.

CoreSite Expands in Los Angeles

The interior of CoreSite's Los Angeles data center. The company said today that it is expanding its footprint by 2 megawatts.

Colocation and peering provider CoreSite continues to expand its data center footprint. Just a week after announcing an expansion in northern Virginia, the company says it is also planning a 2 megawatt expansion of its Los Angeles data center at 900 N. Alameda. The additional capacity is scheduled to be delivered in the first quarter of 2010.

The project will address growing enterprise demand for wholesale “move-in-ready” data center space in downtown Los Angeles, according to CoreSite, which says the new space could be delivered as either a private data center suite for a single enterprise customer, or partitioned to allow cage-to-cabinet colocation.

Roundup: CoreSite, NaviSite, Verari, 3Com

Here’s a roundup of some of some of this week’s headlines from the data center and hosting industry:

• CoreSite plans 6 megawatt expansion in northern Virginia.  National data center and colocation provider CoreSite announced Tuesday that they are planning a six Megawatt expansion (PDF) of their northern Virginia data center.  Other initiatives planned for this site include water-side economization, variable speed fan air conditioning units, 95% efficient UPS units, Tier II generators and zoned lighting.  When completed later this year the site will offer a total power capacity of 12 Megawatts.
• NaviSite awarded GSA contract for Managed Hosting. NaviSite announced that it has received a General Services Administration (GSA) schedule contract allowing it to sell a full range of managed hosting and infrastructure services to U.S. federal government agencies and all branches of the military. NaviSite Chief Revenue Officer Brooks Borcherding said “the new GSA contract is a significant milestone for NaviSite as it allows us to extend the benefits of our enterprise class infrastructure solutions to government clients.”
• Verari Systems offers up to 26 Petabytes in 2nd generation FOREST container. Verari Systems announced two storage related items Tuesday by integration of a 2TB hard drive. The first was increasing the total storage capacity of a FOREST container, up to 26 Petabytes.  The second was supporting up to 1.3 Petabytes of storage per platform in Verari’s BladeRack 2 X-Series. The Verari FOREST recently won the 2009 Uptime Institute’s Energy Efficient Products: Facilities category.  The 2TB drives for the FOREST container and BladeRack 2 X-Series blade platforms are available immediately.
• 3Com’s H3C sets new performance standard. 3Com announced Tuesday their H3C S12500 large core/data center switching platform. Results from Tolly Group and Spirent TestCenter validate the unmatched performance of the platform. 3Com Senior vice president Saar Gillai said “3Com set out to develop an industry-leading large core/data center switch with its H3C S12500 platform that delivers on the reliability, security, scalability and performance required to meet the demands of today’s network operations.” Testing categories included performance and efficiency, advanced video support, ultra resiliency and reliability.

John Savageau Departs CoreSite

Data center and colocation service provider CoreSite announced today that Chief Technology Officer John Savageau has left the company to pursue oportunities in the cloud computing sector. Savageau joined CoreSite (then known as CRG West) in 2004 and led the company’s operations team and served as architect of CoreSite’s Any2 Internet exchange.

Savageau is leaving to “devote more time to thought leadership and the development of cloud computing initiatives,” CoreSite said in a statement. “CoreSite looks forward to opportunities to collaborate with Mr. Savageau in his private endeavors in these areas.” Savageau has written about his interest in cloud computing on his blog at Pacific-Tier Communications, a separate company Savageau founded in 2004.

CoreSite Opens New Space in Chicago

The interior of the new CoreSite data center expansion in Chicago.

CoreSite (formerly CRG West) has completed 20,000 square feet of new space at the company’s Chicago data center at 427 South LaSalle Street, the company said today. The new space, located in the heart of the financial district, will accommodate demand for data center space in downtown Chicago. It expands the existing footprint at the LaSalle Street site, where CoreSite has about 30 existing data center and colocation customers.

The new space is supported by 2N emergency generator back-up power as well as an N+1 cooling and UPS configuration. It features a raised-floor design with a return-air plenum, allowing for hot aisle containment to maximize energy efficiency.

CRG West Rebranding as CoreSite

Data center developer CRG West is rebranding itself as CoreSite, the company said today. The new name reflects the national scope of the company’s operations after several years of active expansion in its data center footprint.

“It’s something we’ve been working on for about a year,” said David Dunn, Senior Vice President of CRG West/CoreSite. “We’re going to be a little different going forward. We’re going to continue to maintain our unique position in offering both wholesale data center space and collocation services, as well as peering through either direct connections or our Any2 exchange.”

CRG West initially focused on West Coast carrier hotels, owning and operating One Wilshire in Los Angeles and the Market Post Tower in San Jose. The company, a unit of the private equity firm The Carlyle Group,  has since expanded by acquiring and developing  additional sites, and now has 11 data centers in seven geographic markets – Los Angeles, San Jose,  Boston, Chicago, New York, Miami  and Washington D.C./Northern Virginia.

CRG West, Verari Partner on Containers

CRG West has expanded its initiative to host data center containers, announcing this week that it streamline deployment of Verari Systems’ FOREST containers in its data centers.  CRG West, which recently announced a similar agreement to support the HP POD container, appears to be the only wholesale data center provider pursuing the container market with enthusiasm.   

By providing plug-n-play infrastructure and security for containers, CRG West hopes to tap a market for companies that are interested in using containers for rapid expansion, but have run out of power or cooling capacity needed to install containers at their existing data centers.    

“Traditional brick-and-mortar data centers are becoming an increasingly less optimal solution for many enterprise customers because of the rising costs associated with building and powering them,” said Mark MacAuley, vice president of Strategic Accounts, CRG West.

iland Expands in Two Cities With CRG West

iland Internet Solutions, a Houston provider of colocation and hosted VMware solutions, is expanding to the East Coast in CRG West facilities in Boston and Northern Virginia, the company said today. The new locations will offer virtualization-enabled solutions and applications to iland’s customers, as well as the ability to replicate data across the country.

iland will offer offer traditional colocation, managed storage and disaster recovery at both sites. The expansion gives iland’ “Virtual Data Centers” in Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas, Boston and the DC area.

“We strategically select the cities that have a growing demand for bandwidth-intensive services and applications, and we select key, state-of-the-art buildings within these cities, such as CRG West’s facilities, to house our hubs according to the highest industry standards,” said Scott Sparvero, CEO of iland Internet Solutions. “This guarantees iland customers the most secure and robust network and cost-saving opportunities.”