MySpace Shifts to Peering For Video Delivery

When MySpace decided to use an in-house solution for delivering streaming video to its 75 million users, it was a blow to VitalStream, the content distribution network (CDN) and video delivery provider which relied on MySpace for a third of revenue. Within a week, VitalStream announced that it had been acquired by Internap for $217 million.

The winner in the MySpace technology shift was Equinix, whose peering capabilities were a major factor in the social networking hub’s decision to lease space in the new Equinix data center in Los Angeles.

“MySpace’s (video streaming) announcement was all about the value of peering in an Equinix facility,” Peter Van Camp, CEO of Equinix, said in the company’s recent analyst briefing. “MySpace wants to manage their own content distribution, so they are moving to more of a peering model in the way they deliver their content. By being in our data centers and next to all these other networks, they can get their content onto these downstream networks, which is really what the CDNs did for them.”

Power Woes Continue at LA’s Garland Building

Tenants at the Garland Building (1200 W. 7th) in Los Angeles have been enduring a difficult week. On July 24 the building lost all power for the second time in less than a year, as an automatic transfer switch and UPS backup system failed. The resulting outage made headlines, as it knocked MySpace off the Web for an extended period. Then on July 28, the Garland building suffered *another* loss of power, which was attributed to a “dead short” that occurred while the building was on generator power.

The outages have been especially difficult for Dreamhost, a growing hosting provider which colocates servers in two facilities within Garland (Switch & Data and Alchemy). Dreamhost had been struggling with network problems when the July 24 power outage hit, and has had rolling performance problems ever since. The Dreamhost team maintains a weblog, and today it provided its frustrated customers with a lengthy chapter-and-verse timetable of the problems, titled Anatomy on a(n Ongoing) Disaster.

As Dreamhost’s Josh Jones explains, the repeated outages at 1200 W. 7th are related to power capacity issues and the cost of redundancy.

One Wilshire Upgrades Power After ‘Disruption’

One Wilshire, the most wired carrier hotel in Los Angeles, “experienced a disruption” July 13 in one of its electrical distribution systems, according to landlord CRG West. A post on the NANOG list indicates the issue occurred on the 12th floor. “The building’s backup generators came online without delay and ensured the uninterrupted delivery of power to essential building services and to the building’s community of communications service providers,” CRG West said in a statement to tenants (available on the CRG web site as a Word doc).

“No injuries were sustained related to the disruption and the disruption was isolated to a small area within the building,” CRG West said. “However, as a precaution the fire department requested that the building not open for full occupancy on Friday July 14. Following extensive review, tenant access to the building was restored Friday evening July 14.”

Internap Expands Operations at 365 Main LA

Internap Network Services (IIP) announced today that it has leased 7,500 square feet of data center space in 365 Main’s new Los Angeles data center in El Segundo. The expansion will help Internap meet the IP traffic routing needs of an increasing number of large bandwidth customers within the market, as well as offering more customers its bundled colocation and routing management services.

“California is home to a number of companies that deploy bandwidth intensive applications like streaming media, gaming and peer-to-peer networks,” said Bob Smith, Internap’s chief marketing officer. “Extending our footprint allows businesses in the area to take advantage of Internap as an alternative provider for fast, reliable connectivity. Internap’s extension also helps us meet the growing bandwidth demands of our existing customers, particularly those that require a high performance IP solution that optimizes latency-sensitive applications, such as voice and video.”

Digital Realty To Build Out Space in 10 Cities

Technology landlord Digital Realty Trust (DLR) said today that it will launch a large-scale project to redevelop data center space it owns in 10 major U.S. markets. The investment represents a huge vote of confidence in the data center market amid growing demand for premium space. It also allows Digital Realty to capitalize on data center space shortages and rising prices in major Internet cities.

Demand for data center space is growing along with the Internet economy. As television and movie content moves to a digital delivery model, an enormous volume of digital files will need to be stored in data centers to provide “always on” high-speed access. Meanwhile, Microsoft, Google and Yahoo are planning huge infrastructure expansions to deliver online services and applications.

Doigital Realty’s redevelopment projects will create more than 330,000 square feet of advanced data center space, with approximately 40 megawatts (MW) of available UPS load. Sites selected for development include Digital Realty Trust facilities in Northern New Jersey, Boston, Philadelphia, Charlotte, Atlanta, Chicago, Austin, Dallas, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

“Demand for high-quality datacenter space has been strong in each of these ten cities, which makes the timing of these redevelopment projects ideal,” said Chris Crosby, Senior Vice President of Sales and Technical Services at Digital Realty Trust. “Each of these datacenter spaces will offer the world-class technical capabilities that Digital Realty Trust facilities are known for, including outstanding electrical power availability - an increasingly rare commodity in the technology real estate market.”

MySpace Expands Data Center Infrastructure

The fast-growing social networking site MySpace is expanding its infrastructure, and has leased data center space in a brand new Equinix facility in Los Angeles. Once MySpace is fully installed, the agreement is expected to generate approximately $6 million in annual revenues for Equinix.

MySpace.com regularly ranks in the top 10 most visited sites on the Web with more than 75 million users, and is using the connectivity at Equinix’s data centers to expand its high-performance infrastructure. At Equinix, MySpace has access to a critical mass of network service providers, providing flexibility in managing traffic surges and high-bandwidth features such as multimedia streaming.

“By offering a unique, network-rich environment with access to more than 200 networks, Equinix enables us to directly interconnect with the networks serving our end-users, providing a more streamlined path between content and users,” said Aber Whitcomb, CTO of MySpace. “This model not only enhances our site performance, but also enables MySpace to peer with end-user networks and exchange traffic in a way that circumvents the traditional method where content providers were required to pay for transit to reach end-users.”

InterNap to Expand 11 P-NAP Centers

As expected, routing solutions provider Internap Network Services said today that it will upgrade eleven of its Private Network Access Point (P-NAP) locations to address customer’s growing capacity needs in key markets. In addition to the recent completion of its first 10 Gigabit (10G) based P-NAP re-architecture in San Jose, additional upgrades are targeted in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, London, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington DC.

Internap’s P-NAP infrastructure features proprietary route control software, which continuously monitors and redirects customer traffic across up to eight major backbones to optimize performance. As a result, Internap is able to offer 100 percent uptime and overcome various problems that may halt or degrade the performance of real-time Internet applications.

365 Main Gets Tenant for New LA Center

Colocation provider NET2EZ has become the first tenant in the new 365 Main data center in El Segundo, Calif. in the Los Angeles market, the companies announced this week.

“The first tenant is always the toughest one,” said Chris Dolan, CEO of 365 Main, a leading California mission critical data center operator. Dolan said the power infrastructure of the company’s new El Segundo facility makes it an attractive alternative to space in downtown Los Angeles. “We have been aware of some of the problems facing the LA market,” said Dolan. “Many of the high rise facilities can no longer handle the high density demand and the heat generated by it. There have been numerous blackouts effecting downtown LA. With more power demand and the recent outages, it underscores the quality of the infrastructure we have created at 365 Main.”

With the addition of the El Segundo location, NET2EZ is perfectly positioned to meet the recent surge in colocation and internet hosting activity in the Greater Los Angeles market,” said Pervez Delawalla, CEO of NET2EZ. “We have established a very strong niche in the market by providing high availability colocation space and Tier 1 bandwidth at very competitive prices. We can’t afford any downtime. After an extensive review of a number of alternatives, we feel that 365 Main is the right choice to continue our growth.”