Horizon Adds Space in Dallas Market

Horizon Data Center Solutions has leased space at 2440 Marsh in Carollton, Texas

Horizon Data Center Solutions has expanded its new data center in the Dallas market, leasing 12,500 square feet of additional data center space in Carrollton, Texas, the company said this week. Horizon recently reported active growth in its first data center, a 25,000 square foot facility in a Digital Realty Trust (DLR) building at 4025 Midway in Carollton. The new lease is a second property Digital Realty owns in Carrollton at 2440 Marsh Lane.

The expansion by Horizon continues the active growth for managed hosting, colocation and web hosting providers in the Dallas data center market. Horizon says it anticipates adding a third Dallas-area data center. The company says its customers include a large private medical center, energy and financial services companies and “one of the world’s largest entertainment companies.”

CI Host Leases Dallas Space for Data Center

The Dallas data center boom continues. CI Host has become the latest hosting provider to expand in the Dallas market, leasing space in two properties to house a data center and a new corporate office, according to the Dallas Morning News. CI Host has leased 60,156 square feet in two buildings at 7505 John Carpenter Freeway and 7410 Ambassador Row, real estate broker Colliers International said today. CI Host has an existing data center in Dallas as well as facilities in Chicago and Los Angeles.

The list of providers expanding in the Dallas data center market includes ViaWest (Dataside), Colo4Dallas, SoftLayer, Switch and Data, Savvis, CyrusOne and Telx. And that’s just this year.

Horizon Reports Growth in Dallas Market

A new data center provider in the Dallas market says it is experiencing strong growth and making plans to expand. Horizon Data Center Solutions leased 22,000 square feet of space at a Digital Realty Trust (DLR) building in Carrollton, Texas.

Since opening for business , the company says it has “several large IBM installations, some major Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementations, and the signing of three Global 250 companies and a major hospital.” Horizon is already making plans to lease space for a second data center that will open later this year, followed closely by a third that will open in 2009.

Horison says it recently commissioned a $2 million private fiber ring from AboveNet that will allow the company’s clients to conduct real-time replication for disaster recovery and continuity between data centers. The first two nodes of that ring went online this month.

ViaWest Plans Fifth Site at Dallas Infomart

Colocation provider ViaWest has begun construction on a new data center at the InfoMart carrier hotel in Dallas, which will be the company’s fifth facility at that location, and the sixth in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metro area.

The new data center, which is scheduled to open in the fourth quarter of this year, will be the Denver-based company’s 16th data center, giving it a raised floor footprint than 260,000 square feet of data center space in Texas, Nevada, Colorado, Utah and Oregon. The company has grown through acquisitions of Fortix and Dataside.

Ike Update: The Planet Up, But Galveston Down

Thousands of web sites hosted at The Planet remained online throughout Hurricane Ike, which battered Houston as it moved inland. Utility power is out in much of the Houston area, but The Planet’s two data centers in north Houston switched to generator power without incident and have experienced no service interruptions.

“Operations inside our data centers continue to be normal and without incident,” reported Eric Bush, Data Center Supervisor at The Planet, who provided regular storm updates on the company’s customer forum. “Ticket volume continues to be normal. Our technicians are working tickets as if it were a normal day.”

Local networks didn’t fare as well.

Houston Data Centers Brace for Ike

Hurricane Ike as seen from the International Space Station (NASA photo).

As the Texas coast braces for a direct hit from powerful Hurricane Ike, data center providers in Houston are making last-minute preparations to ride out the storm and maintain service for customers. Ike is currently projected to make landfall near Galveston Bay early Saturday as a category 3 hurricane, packing sustained winds of 115 miles an hour. The biggest concern is the potential for a huge storm surge that could inundate coastal areas. 

For data centers, the major concern will be power, and the likelihood that utility power will be interrupted by the storm. The Planet has two data centers in Houston, but both are on the north side of town, away from Galveston Bay. Those facilities house more than 10,000 servers, and the company is “covering every base to ensure that we are fully prepared to continue service to the greatest extent possible,” The Planet’s Kevin Hazard said on a customer forum.

“For data center power, we have confirmed our fuel levels and have brought in an additional 10,000 gallons as backup,” Hazard writes. “Backup generators at both data centers and our Houston headquarters are prepared to shoulder the power needs of the data centers and our downtown offices. We pay premium fees year-round with several providers to guarantee that we are at the front of the line if we need additional fuel. With our current fuel supply, we can continuously power our facilities for up to a week without any required backup.” 

Hurricane Ike Threatens Houston

As Hurricane Ike gains strength in the Gulf of Mexico, residents and businesses along the Texas and Louisiana coasts are closely watching the track of the storm. The latest projections from the National Hurricane Center have shifted to the north, putting Ike on track to make a direct hit on Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest city. The NHC emphasizes that its track forecasts often shift as hurricanes approach land, but adds in this morning’s advisory that “in this case it is particularly important not to focus on the exact forecast track since damaging winds extend so far from the center.” Houston is home to several major data centers, including The Planet, which hosts more than 10,000 dedicated and managed servers in its Houston facilities.  

The latest advisories suggest Ike will approach the Galveston/Houston area as a category 3 storm with sustained winds of 125 miles an hour. Some analysts say the storm could reach category 4 strength, as the current internal pressure of about 945 mb suggests a stronger hurricane than the latest wind measurements of 100 miles and hour.  

A good resource for tracking Ike’s progress is StormPulse, which provides a visual display of the latest official updates from the Hurricane Center, including the projected path and strength of the storm. StormPulse also allows you to easily display track projections from the dozen or so computer models analyzed by the NHC to produce its official track. For detailed analysis, the Wunderblog from Jeff Masters of Weather Underground is another useful source. To stay current on local preparations and evacuations, see the Houston Chronicle web site.

$200 Million Data Center Project in Dallas Market

Indianapolis developer Paul Kite Co. is planning a $200 million, 190,000 square foot data center in McKinney, Texas, a suburb of Dallas, according to Dallas-area media. The facility, being built on spec, is part of the developer’s University Centre project, which also includes a grocery store and 350,000 square feet of retail and dining space. The project, known as the DFW Information Technology Gateway will sit between the McKinney Raytheon plant and the Cameron Crossing shopping center.

The developer told the Dallas Business Journal it is interested in building on 55 acres it owns there, but declined to discuss specifics. “I can confirm that we are working on a data center there, but aside from that, there’s not much I can tell you,” said Cody Campbell of Paul Kite Co.

The projects adds to a growing list of projects in the Dallas data center market, including new construction by Research in Motion,  Health Care Service Corp., CyrusOne and Blue Cross/Blue Shield.

Alpheus, Core NAP Expand in Texas

Two Texas providers, Alpheus Communications and Core NAP, announced expansions of their data center networks last week. Here’s some additional details:

• Alpheus Communications is opening a new 5,000 square foot data center in Houston. The new raised floor facility will serve enterprise colocation customers and will include high-density power and hot air containment systems. “This Houston facility completes the initial phase of our planned network of Texas data centers, complementing similar data centers in Austin and Dallas, all of which are interconnected by Alpheus’ fiber optic network,” said Chuck Sweeney, Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing. Alpheus is a joint venture between El Paso Corporation, a fortune 500 energy company, and Genesis Park, LP, a regional, Houston-based private equity firm.
• Austin-based Core NAP has completed the expansion of usable raised floor data center space from 7,500 square feet to 10,000 square feet and an expansion of infrastructure support space to a total of 5,000 square feet to meet increasing customer demand. Core NAP has also moved its corporate headquarters to Research Park Place at 12515 Research Boulevard, Suite 100, Austin, Texas 78759. The company is leasing 5,500 square feet of office space in the building to house its executive and sales teams plus new disaster recovery office space for customers and conference room capacity for business meetings.

$232M Data Center Planned for Forth Worth

Health Care Service Corp. is beginning work on a $232.5 million, 250,000-square-foot data center in the Alliance development in Fort Worth. The new facility is being built to handle anticipated member growth for Health Care Services, the fourth-largest health insurer in the U.S., which has an existing data center in Illinois. The company manages Blue Cross/Blue Shield plans in Illinois, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas that have more than 12 million members.

The data center will employ about 100 workers and is scheduled to be completed in the first quarter of 2010, with computer installations scheduled for May of that year, according to the Forth Worth Star Telegram.