i/o Data Centers Sponsoring PGA Tour Event

Tee time meets uptime next month, when i/o Data Centers will be a featured sponsor of the annual PGA Tour stop in its home Phoenix market, the Waste Management Phoenix Open at the fabled TPC Scottsdale Stadium Course. As part of its agreement, the data center and colocation services provider will sponsor the i/o Data Centers Pro-Am, to be played Monday, Feb. 22 on the TPC Scottsdale Stadium Course. The company will also be the title sponsor of the i/o Data Centers Corporate Village, which is located near the 17th green and 18th tee.

At first glance, a golf tournament might seem an odd choice as a marketing vehicle for data center services. In fact, IBM has been targeting golf audiences with its IT-related marketing messages for years as a key sponsor of advertising for TV broadcasts of major PGA events.

The PGA tournament hosted by the Thunderbirds also aligns with the focus on community engagement at i/o Data Centers, which operates facilities in both Phoenix and Scottsdale. A portion of i/o’s sponsorship dollars will be donated to Phoenix Children’s Hospital.

With Strong Sales, Phoenix ONE Expands

A view of phase one of the Phoenix ONE data center prior to its opening in June. Construction on phase two is now underway.

i/o Data Centers said today that the 180,000 square foot first phase of its Phoenix ONE data center, which opened in June, is “quickly reaching full occupancy.” The company said it has begun construction on phase two of the massive facility, citing strong demand for its colocation and wholesale data center space.

“Sales activity has been unprecedented,” says George Slessman, CEO of i/o Data Centers. “We are extremely pleased with the demand we have seen so far. Our decision to bring additional inventory online and begin construction of Phase Two comes almost two years ahead of schedule.”

AAA Unit Selects i/o Data Centers

Colocation and wholesale data center provider i/o Data Centers has been selected to operate a corporate data center for AAA Northern California, Nevada & Utah (AAA NCNU). The new data center space will house mission-critical IT systems to support the organization’s 4.2 million members.

“We chose i/o Data Centers because they have the expertise and capability to help us migrate our first data center and support our IT operational needs in a timely manner,” said Kory Jensen, Director of Data Center Services for AAA NCNU. “The team at i/o Data Centers and the facilities they operate more than meet our needs and will help us deliver quality service to our members.”

ThermoCabinet: 2,500 Watts A Square Foot

Last week i/o Data Centers officially took the wraps off its ThermoCabinet offering for ultra high-density high computing. We got an advance look at the patent-pending design when we visited i/o’s Phoenix ONE data center in early June. The ThermoCabinet is sealed for complete isolation of hot and cold air, and can support computing power loads of up to 32 kilowatts per rack – the equivalent of 2,500 watts per square foot. Cool air movies directly from the raised floor into a chamber in the front of the cabinet, then moves through the servers and exits through a hot air chimney at the rear of the cabinet.

The photo above shows the prototype ThermoCabinet installation at Phoenix ONE. The design is also available at i/o Data Centers’ Scottsdale ONE data center.

Ready to Super-Size the Enterprise

A view from the catwalk of the first phase of the massive Phoenix ONE data center, which features a 34-foot ceiling and raised mezzanine for infrastructure.

PHOENIX - The sign above the entrance to the raised-floor area at the Phoenix ONE data center makes a bold declaration in capital letters: “NOT ALL DATA CENTERS ARE CREATED EQUAL.” That’s the corporate motto for i/o Data Centers, and Phoenix ONE is the company’s effort to put an exclamation mark on it.

At 538,000 square feet, the mammoth Phoenix ONE site is one of the world’s largest data centers. The facility opened for business this month, less than six months after i/o Data Centers took ownership of the property, and several substantial customers have already been installed in the first phase, which features 180,000 square feet of raised floor.

But it’s not only the scope of the facility that makes Phoenix ONE distinctive. The huge data center features a number of design innovations:

• A high-density cabinet that can support computing power loads of up to 32 kilowatts per rack (2,500 watts per square foot). The patent-pending ThermoCabinet is sealed for complete isolation of hot and cold air. Cool air movies directly from the raised floor into a chamber in the front of the cabinet, through the servers and then exits through a hot air chimney at the rear of the cabinet.
• A custom ThermoPower strip offering a range of power options for customer cabinets.    
• A thermal storage system that will allow i/o Data Centers to run chillers for its cooling systems at night, when power rates are lower, and then store cold water for use during daylight hours.  
• An enormous rooftop array of solar panels, which will eventually generate as much as 4.5 megawatts of power for the data center – nearly three times the capacity of Google’s rooftop solar array at its California headquarters.
• A variety of energy efficiency features, including low-power LED lighting on the data center floor, ultrasonic humidifiers for climate control, highly efficiency computer room air handlers (CRAHs) using plug fans,  high-efficiency chillers, and perimeter flooring made from reccycled car tires.   

i/o Data Centers says it expects the Phoenix ONE facility to be certified under the LEED ( Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) program from the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC).  

Inside the Phoenix ONE Data Center

The Phoenix ONE facility is like a data center, only bigger. The new flagship colocation center for i/o Data Centers takes many aspects of data center operations and extends them, whether in the vast expanses of raised-floor hosting space or the industrial-strength power and cooling plants. Our photo gallery offers a closer look at Phoenix ONE and its infrastructure.

Solar Power at Data Center Scale

Solar power has finally reached data center scale. Phoenix IT infrastructure provider i/o Data Centers is installing a huge array of solar panels on the 11-acre roof of its new Phoenix ONE data center. The company says the photovoltaic panels will generate up to 4.5 megawatts of power to supplement the energy needs of the massive facility.

The installation planned for Phoenix ONE will dwarf all previous efforts to integrate solar power into a working data center. Its output will be nearly three times the 1.6 megawatts produced by the solar panels covering the roof of the Googleplex.

The first phase of 5,000 solar panels in Phoenix is scheduled to be operational in January, and will generate 500 kilowatt-peak (kWp), the company says. The array will be expanded in four additional phases during 2010 to reach a total capacity of 4.5 megawatts-peak.

That’s just a fraction of the 80 megawatts of power capacity that the 538,000 square foot Phoenix ONE data center will need upon completion. The solar power is also expensive, costing about 18 cents per kilowatt hour to generate in a market where grid power is 7 cents.  

Time-Shifted Cooling
But Phoenix ONE plan capitalizes on another wrinkle in power pricing: the differential between the daytime and overnight rates. The solar plant will be combined with an on-site thermal storage facility to create a time-shifted energy efficiency system.

i/o Data Centers will run its chillers at night when power is cheap, and then tap the thermal storage “battery” to provide much of the facility’s cooling during the day, reducing its power usage when electricity is most expensive. The solar power panels will further lower Phoenix ONE’s reliance on utility power during peak hours.         

“If we can generate 3 megawatts during the day, combined with our thermal storage, we can shave our power costs by about 50 percent,” said George Slessman, the CEO of i/o Data Centers. “Anything I can do to move my power consumption to off-peak hours is going to save a lot of money. Solar is the renewable approach that works best during peak daytime power pricing.”

Combining Colocation and Containers

Colocation and data center services provider i/o Data Centers has deployed an SGI ICE Cube data center at Phoenix ONE facility, the companies said this week. The 538,000 square foot Phoenix ONE project doesn’t officially open until next month, but i/o Data Centers is beginning some customer installations. 

i/o Data Centers joins a short list of providers of colocation providers who offer infrastructure support for data center containers, and is the first to spotlight SGI, the server vendor previously known as Rackable Systems. CRG West is partnering with HP and Verari Systems to offer hosting for their data center containers.

Combining containers and colocation can provide rapid expansion for companies that need to expand their data centers but are out of power or cooling capacity at their existing facilities. Containers can live outside but still require an external source of power and security.  i/o Data Centers supplies a secure infrastructure for the ICE Cube that includes conditioned power, temperature-controlled space and network connectivity.

The World’s Largest Raised Floor?

The new Phoenix ONE data center will have 460,000 square feet of raised floor.

As a leading vendor of tiles for raised floors, Tate has helped customers install more than 450 million square feet of its products. But i/o Data Centers’ new Phoenix ONE data center will be its largest installation project ever in a single data center facility, with a raised-floor area spanning more than 460,000 square feet.

The massive project will be completed in three phases, with the first 180,000 square feet scheduled for completion by June 1. This will be followed by a second and third phases of 180,000 and 100,000 square feet, respectively.

“We are fortunate to be profitable, well-capitalized and growing despite the economy,” said Anthony Wanger, president and founder of i/o Data Centers. “There was no question that we would incorporate raised flooring into our Phoenix ONE data center and we knew that industry-leader Tate was the right choice for a project of this magnitude.”