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.

“We’re really excited to have i/o Data Centers on board as a sponsor of the 2010 FBR Open,” said Tournament Chairman David Rauch. “Not only is i/o stepping to the plate in a big way to sponsor one of our pro-ams, our corporate village and an interactive teaching center, but they also share The Thunderbirds’ passion for raising money for charity, in this case Phoenix Children’s Hospital.”

“i/o Data Centers is pleased to work with the Thunderbirds as they host this renowned event and looks forward to raising funds for Phoenix Children’s Hospital,” said i/o CEO George Slessman. “We felt this was a unique opportunity to contribute to the community and be a part of one of the PGA Tour’s greatest venues.”

The Waste Management Phoenix Open (previously known as the FBR Open is the best-attended golf tournament in the world and has raised more than $65.9 million for charities. In 1997 it was the site of one of golf’s most memorable moments, when a 21-year-old Tiger Woods hit a hole in one before a huge crowd at the 16th hole at TPC Scottsdale.

This chart from Mozilla shows the growth of its infrastructure since 2006.

Mozilla has added a second major data center in Phoenix to accommodate the growth of its popular open source software projects, especially the Firefox web browser and Thunderbird e-mail client. The non-profit corporation will house six racks and about 80 servers at the mammoth Phoenix ONE data center operated by i/o Data Centers.

The expansion space in Phoenix will support Mozilla’s primary data center in San Jose, Calif., with production apps running in both locations. The project also has smaller satellite facilities in Amsterdam and Beijing.

Infrastructure for 350 Million Users
“Since 2006, we’ve tripled the amount of data center floor space (and tripled our IT/Ops team), grew our user base 8.75 times and now push 18x the bandwidth,” Matthew Zeier from the Mozilla operations team wrote in a blog post. “Sure, in comparison to other sites, this growth is small. It’s no Facebook. But it’s still a significant amount of infrastructure that supports 350 million users and the world’s most popular web browser (we’re at about one engineer to 43.7m users (or one to 800 servers).”

Mozilla’s Phoenix servers will reside in one of the world’s largest data centers, providing plenty of headroom for expansion as the user base for open source software continues to grow.

Phoenix ONE is a 538,000 square foot facility that integrates solar power and thermal energy storage. The facility, which opened last June, features 180,000 square feet of raised floor space in its first phase. i/o Data Centers has already begun construction on phase II of the data center, which will also be 180,000 square feet.

Use of Solar Power, Thermal Storage
Phoenix ONE is building out 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 thermal storage system 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. (See An Inside Look at the Phoenix ONE Data Center for more).

While power management is critical for data center operators, Zeier said Mozilla had three key items on its checklist:

• Connectivity
• Connectivity
• Power (and the ability to cool it)

“Without #1 (or even #2), game over man,” Zeier wrote. “Carrier neutral data centers are king, Ethernet hand-offs rule and the question is less about how much space I need than it is about how much power I need. i/o Data Center met all three of these requirements and is an easy ‘day trip’ away. By the end of March we will have a number of our most popular websites and services focused on delivering Firefox running out of both San Jose and Phoenix.”

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.”

As part of the expansion, i/o Data Centers is also increasing the capacity of its on-site power substation to 123 MVA. “This will give us additional flexibility to bring another 20 megawatts of UPS online and continue to meet the needs of our customers” said Slessman.

i/o Data Centers’ phase two construction plan for Phoenix ONE includes 180,000 square feet of raised floor, 20 MW of UPS and 36 MW of generator backup. This will bring the facility’s total capacity to 360,000 square feet of raised floor, 40 MW of fully redundant UPS and 72 MW of backup power generation. Phoenix ONE contains more than 57 miles of network cabling and Type I access to more than a dozen telecommunications carriers.

For more information, check out our previous coverage of Phoenix ONE, including a photo tour of the 538,000 square foot building.

“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.”

i/o Data Centers’ operates several data centers, including its new Phoenix ONE data center, which includes 538,000 square feet of space in racks dedicated tenant pods or high-density server cabinets that can support power loads of up to 2,500 watts a square foot.

“We are pleased to be able to serve AAA NCNU’s data center needs,” said George Slessman, CEO, i/o Data Centers. “We have engineered our data centers to address the complex IT needs of large enterprise clients like AAA NCNU. Our facilities are designed, built and operated to provide highly reliable power, network connectivity and access control. Companies like AAA NCNU choose i/o Data Centers because of our ability to meet and exceed their specific service-level requirements.”

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.

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).  

“We are constantly trying to innovate,” said Anthony Wanger, president of i/o Data Centers, which is approaching capacity on its Scottsdale ONE data center. Wanger sees in-house research and development as a key differentiator for the company.

Air Economizers in 1999
That focus on innovation dates back to the carrier hotel at 120 East Van Buren in Phoenix, which brought together the team that would later form i/o DataCenters. Fresh-air cooling using air economizers has been a hot trend over the past two years, but the Van Buren facility began using air economizers in 1999.  

After selling 120 East Van Buren it to Digital Realty Trust in a 2006 deal valued at $175 million, i/o Data Centers picked Scottsdale as the site of its first project. The Scottsdale facility hosts corporate data centers from 20 of the largest companies in the Phoenix area, said Wanger. It’s carrier-neutral, offering access to multiple bandwidth providers, and doesn’t charge for cross connects.

Favorable Disaster Profile
i/o Data Centers has tenants who are web hosts and Internet companies. But its bread and butter is the enterprise data center. Phoenix has an attractive disaster risk profile, with no hurricanes and low exposure to earthquakes and tornadoes, making it a favored market for corporate data storage and disaster recovery.

This has helped i/o Data Centers fill the 125,000 square foot Scottsdale facility nearly to capacity in two years. As the company looked for its next property, Wanger was intrigued by a huge facility built as a combined headquarters/warehouse for a water bottling company that went out of business. 

The site had a 69kv electrical sub-station, 18 internal 480v sub-stations and redundant chiller plants and water feeds. Wanger estimates that the existing  infrastructure saved the company about $20 million in site improvements. The Phoenix ONE project is fully funded by a $56 million equity investment in January by Sterling Partners. 

Equipment Galleys
Both the Scottsdale and Phoenix data centers segregate the mechanical, electrical and power (MEP) infrastructure from the IT equipment. UPS systems and cooling air handlers are housed in equipment galleys off the data center floor. Wanger said this is useful for restricting access to ensure that MEP vendors and technicians can’t access IT equipment and vice versa.  

Some of the cooling and power distribution equipment at Phoenix ONE is housed in equipment galleys on a raised mezzanine. This shortens the runs for high-voltage power cabling – an important consideration with a huge data floor – and also creates more floor space for colocation.

i/o Data Centers sells colocation by the rack or cage, as well as enclosed data suites. The ThermoCabinet offers a new approach to airflow containment for high-density cabinets. It shares some features of existing containment systems, but creates a sealed system at the cabinet level – rather than the pod or row – and adapts the concept to a raised floor rather than a slab.

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.

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.”

The Challenges of Solar
Solar power hasn’t been widely used in data centers because of the large amounts of energy required to power the servers and cooling equipment in modern mission-critical facilities. It requires a very large installation of photovoltaic (PV) solar panels to produce even a fraction of the energy required by most data centers. 

The only data center currently powered entirely by PV solar power is AISO (Affordable Internet Services Online), which operates a 1,500 square foot facility in Romoland, California. Intel and Sun Microsystems have tested solar power systems generating 10 kilowatts to partially power data center containers.

PV solar is also much more expensive than grid power. Microsoft has discussed plans to install solar panels at its San Antonio data center, but said such a system wouldn’t be economically feasible in the near future. “As solar technology advances, we anticipate that solar may become a more viable option within a few years,” the company said.

The Key: Thermal Storage 
How has i/o Data Centers made solar viable? The key ingredient is a thermal storage system that will be able to cool the data center for as long as six hours per day, according to Slessman. 

Here’s how it works: The facility’s chillers cool a solution of water and 28 percent glycol. The thermal storage tank contains Cryogel ice balls, 4-inch polyethylene spheres filled with water. The balls freeze when the system is charging at night,  and then cool the glycol solution during the day. The glycol solution is then pumped through a heat exchanger, which chills water in a separate loop used in the data center.

The first phase of the thermal storage system will come online in October and provide 12,000 ton hours of thermal storage. A second phase will eventually boost capacity to 24,000 ton hours.

Meanwhile, the solar installation atop Phoenix ONE will also be growing. The roof will eventually be covered with more than 300,000 square feet of photovoltaic solar panels.    

“The vast majority of data centers don’t have 4.5 megawatts of power, period, much less 4.5 megawatts of solar power,” said Slessman. “About 5 percent of our power consumption will be offset by on-site solar.

A Sustainable Efficiency Model
This approach works particularly well in Arizona, one of the best locations in the U.S. for solar power. But i/o Data Centers is looking to expand, and is including renewable power in the equation.    

“We want to create a sustainable model for energy efficiency that we can repeat in any market around the U.S.,” Slessman said. “We want to go into markets where solar is plausible, and are looking at states that are power exporters.”

i/o Data Centers President Anthony Wanger says the focus on energy efficiency will likely increase in coming years. ”Solar, nuclear, hydro and natural gas are going to be increasingly favored,” said Wanger. “As they say in hockey, we’re skating where the puck is going.”

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 ICE Cube allows us to leverage SGI’s innovative and environmentally-friendly, modular data center solutions to provide unequaled value to our customers,” said George Slessman, CEO at i/o Data Centers. “By combining SGI’s industry-leading modular data center technology with i/o Data Centers’ world-class infrastructure and service, we are providing a compelling, fully-integrated solution for our customers’ data center needs.”

SGI’s ICE Cube can house 22,400 cores or 11 petabytes of storage in a 40-foot shipping container, and has capacity for up to 2,800 independent servers.

“SGI’s experience in satisfying the cloud computing requirements of the world’s most successful Internet companies gives us unique insight into the demands of the modern data center,” said Tony Carrozza, senior vice president of worldwide sales and marketing at SGI. “The ICE Cube container enables i/o Data Centers to attract new users to cutting edge, energy efficient technologies that lower operating costs, reduce carbon footprint and accelerate time to deployment.”

The massive Phoenix ONE 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.

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.”

The Phoenix ONE project is fully funded following a $56 million equity investment in i/o Data Centers by Sterling Partners, which also backed the company’s first project, the 125,000 square foot Scottsdale ONE data center. The 530,000 square foot facility near Sky Harbor Airport was built in 2005 to house the bottling operations of LeNature’s Beverages, which never fully occupied the building before filing for bankruptcy.

The 31-acre campus currently has 40 megawatts of power and an on-site substation, and will eventually expand its total campus capacity to 120 megawatts. i/o Data Centers has signed a 20-year lease with landlord CBRE Investors, and plans to use the site as both a data center and its corporate headquarters.

Raised access floors are used to support and cool data center equipment, with cold air delivered under the floor and then directed into the data center through openings in floor tiles. In many configurations, cabling is also run underneath the floor. As data centers have increased the power densities of their equipment areas, many have increased the height of their raised-floor area to accommodate additional cooling capacity. Some new data centers are being designed with raised floors of 36 inches, and even 48 inches. Alternate designs place the equipment on a slab and deliver the cooling via overhead ducting.

“Over the last several years we’ve seen increased interest in the use of raised access floors with underfloor service distribution as a way to improve indoor air quality, help make buildings more energy efficient, promote sustainable building practices and achieve LEED certification,” said Bill Reynolds, director of marketing at Tate. “Now, with the slowdown in construction due to the economy, it’s fascinating to see a return to a part of the business that gave us our earliest start – despite market challenges.”