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 said it is also beefing up the Boston data center’s security with additional mantraps and biometric scanners, and gated, access-controlled parking with perimeter fencing. CoreSite received a SAS 70 Type II certification at the data center in March 2009.

“The additional wholesale data center and colocation space will meet the growing demands of our existing customer base and prospective New England enterprises,” said David Dunn, CoreSite’s senior vice president of marketing and business development. “We anticipate having the entire expansion phase completed and ready for occupancy by the end of May 2010.”

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’s Santa Clara data center campus will be built to LEED Gold certification standards and features air-side economization, which reduces energy consumption by using outside air to cool the data center. The ability to use “free air” and other important energy efficient design aspects such as 95%-efficient UPS units, variable-speed fans, and zoned lighting will help to significantly reduce the Santa Clara data center’s Power Usage Effectiveness (P.U.E.). The highly-efficient design supports concurrent maintainability with a 2N UPS configuration, ensuring maximum uptime levels.

“CoreSite Santa Clara will showcase the company’s expertise in delivering high-value, reliable, and energy-efficient data centers from the ground up,” said Billie Haggard, CoreSite vice president of data centers. “The Santa Clara data center design combines what is best for our customers and what is best for the environment in a truly ‘win-win’ scenario.”‘

CoreSite estimates the total three-building Santa Clara data center investment at $350 million upon completion. In addition to the Santa Clara data center campus, CoreSite currently operates two other Bay Area data centers in Milpitas and San Jose, as well as eight other facilities across the United States.

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.

“We continue to see enterprises outsource their growing data center requirements,” commented David Dunn, senior vice president at CoreSite. “Our move-in-ready data center spaces can accommodate enterprises both big and small, and it allows customers the opportunity to license data center space exactly when they need it.”

The expansion space will feature high-efficiency UPS units, variable-speed fans for air conditioning units and branuch circuit montoring to minimize power bills and Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) ratings for the space.

“At CoreSite we are investing in data center design and construction processes that allow us to deliver more efficient data center space to our customers faster,” said Billie Haggard, CoreSite vice president of data centers. “Delivering new data center space capable of achieving lower P.U.E. levels is a CoreSite corporate initiative that will lower our customer’s overall cost of doing business as well as their carbon footprint.”

• 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.

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.

“Each of us at CoreSite thanks John for his years of outstanding service and lasting contributions to the company,” said Thomas Ray, CoreSite President and CEO. “CoreSite and its customers are better for John’s time with our company and we wish him well in his future endeavors.”

Prior to joining CoreSite/, Savageau was CEO of MagicNet in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, where he led Internet infrastructure development and provided data solutions to the rapidly growing mining industry. As a pioneer in technology implementation, he has also held leadership positions at Pihana Pacific, Level 3 International, and Sprint International/Global One.

Dominic Tobin, CoreSite’s VP of Operations, will continue to oversee the operation of Any2 and the company’s distributed exchange, duties he assumed in February of 2009. CoreSite emphasized that it will continue to invest in the technological development and geographic expansion of Any2. CoreSite will continue to develop its Cloud Innovation Center for Excellence (CICE) and explore opportunities to provide a utility for cloud computing companies in CoreSite data centers.

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.

“We take great pride in building out data center space the right way, with strong, redundant reliable infrastructure to provide a reliable, well-connected home for our customers’ mission-critical ICT systems,” said Billie Haggard, Vice President of Data Centers for CoreSite. “Our goal is to design, build and manage our data centers with our customers’ success in mind. We provide them with an environment that promotes and accommodates their future growth and do the job right.”

CoreSite announced its rebranding from CRG West last week, saying 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.

“We grew up as a company that was more asset-focused,” said Dunn. “There wasn’t a grand plan as to what we would become. Now we want to be much more customer-focused, and we’ve increased our staff to reflect this goal. We also want to continue to build more reliable, efficient data centers.”

Dunn said the company continues to see solid if uneven activity in the data center market. “We continue to see pretty good sales,” he said. “March and April were better than May and June. But I think Q3 will be a big one.”

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.

CRG West data centers in Boston, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay Area now have the ability to monitor, power, and secure Verari FOREST Containers. Verari’s 40-foot shipping containers can house more than 2,000 of the company’s BladeRack 2X-Series series, or up to 13 petabytes of storage capacity.

“The Verari FOREST Container solution allows enterprises to maximize flexibility while cutting costs exponentially and boosting performance to new levels,” said Dan Gatti, senior vice president of Worldwide Market Operations, Verari Systems. “When combined with CRG West’s nationwide, ready to deploy data center capabilities, the results are immediate and the savings are significant.”

While CRG West is embracing the potential of container hosting, two other large providers of wholesale data center space remain skeptical. At Tuesday’s Tier1 Datacenter Transformation Summit, representatives of Digital Realty Trust (DLR) and DuPont Fabros Technology (DFT) each expressed reservations about the container model.

Digital Realty senior vice president Chris Crosby called the containers “the industry’s red herring,” saying they make sense for companies building large customized server farms (i.e. Google and Microsoft) but are less practical for enterprise customers. Hossein Fateh, the president and CEO of DuPont Fabros, challenged claims that containers are more economical than “bricks and mortar” data centers.

For more on the pros and cons of containers, check out the Great Debate on Data Center Containers, an in-depth conversation between teams of data center professionals on both sides of the issue.

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.”

“We are pleased to welcome iland’s innovative, virtualized hosting and replication services to our Boston and Northern Virginia data centers,” said David Dunn, CRG West Senior Vice President. “Our company is committed to delivering reliable data center space and providing exceptional access to other networks under one roof.”

CRG West provides wholesale data center and retail colocation space in 11 carrier-neutral data centers in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Northern Virginia, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Washington D.C.

“The importance of low-latency access has increased along with the level of available technology,” said Jeremy Krinn, a member of the Market Data Group at Wolverine Trading. “The pursuit of a latency advantage is equivalent to an arms race. We now measure throughput in nanoseconds. Wolverine knows well the importance of a solid infrastructure and we consider CRG West’s properties to be consistently among the best.”

“The addition of Wolverine Trading speaks volumes to the type of data center offering here at CRG West in New York,” said Joseph Kiaer, CRG West Vice President at 32americas. “For all of our financial customers, we provide the security, access to financial networks and reliable power that they need to run their businesses.”

The CRG West site at 32 Avenue of the Americas is a 50,000 square foot facility that was once a cafeteria but was transformed into data center space last year.

Wolverine is also an equity investor and anchor tenant of 360 Technology Center Solutions, a new disaster recovery and colocation facility in the Chicago of Lombard, Ill. Wolverine has branch offices in New York, San Francisco, and London. 

CRG West provides wholesale data center and retail colocation space in 11 carrier-neutral data centers in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Northern Virginia, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Washington D.C.