Upgrades Planned for LA’s Garland Building

The Garland Building (1200 W. 7th) in Los Angeles, which hosts several data centers, has been plagued by power capacity and reliability problems for several years. Help may be on the way, as the building’s management is promising $30 million in infrastructure upgrades for the 740,000 square foot building. The Internet companies at 1200 W. 7th have been pressing for upgrades since the building suffered major outages in 2005 and 2006.

The impetus for the upgrades is a new lease by anchor tenant Bank of America, which will pay $28 million to continue leasing 83,000 square feet on the lower levels. Real estate sources said the Bank of America lease was the key to a plan by master lease holder Charter Holdings to upgrade the building. Jason Warner of CB Richard Ellis told industry journal Globe Street that Charter Holdings will invest $30 million to upgrade the infrastructure by doubling the size of the central plant and “significantly increasing the building’s power, back-up power and mechanical equipment.”

NPR Features One Wilshire Carrier Hotel

National Public Radio technology correspondent Xeni Jardin featured Internet carrier hotels in a segment that aired yesterday. The piece spotlighted One Wilshire, the huge Los Angeles Internet hub owned and operated by CRG West, the technology real estate arm of the Carlyle Group. The report introduced carrier hotels and the basics of Internet infrastructure to a general audience, but also highlighted the fact that “business is booming” at One Wilshire, according to CRG West’s David Dunn, who said One Wilshire has experienced demand from the emerging market for Internet video games.

Jardin, also one of the anchor bloggers at Boing Boing, used the recent earthquake in Taiwan to illustrate the resiliency of Internet infrastructure, noting that the networks housed at One Wilshire were able to route around the outages within several days of the earthquake. The segment also mentions the possibility the carrier hotels could be targeted by terrorists, an angle that has often turned up in media coverage of this industry. Internet security guru Bruce Schneier contributed a sound clip that placed the terrorist issue in perspective. You can listen here or check out the photos at Flickr.

Some ISPs Spurn 10 GigE Video Peering

Some ISPs are turning away paid high-speed transit traffic from video companies, citing the cost of the equipment needed to upgrade to 10 gigabit Ethernet connections. These ISPs are sticking with slower connections, even though the growing volume of video traffic could create periodic capacity challenges. This trend was noted earlier this month by Bill Norton, a founder of Equinix and leading researcher on Internet peering, who predicts that the surging popularity of online video will bring “a new wave of disruption that potentially dwarfs currently peered Internet traffic.”

“This has become a significant issue NOW because a few of the largest US ISPs are turning away these n*10G Internet video transit customers,” Norton said in a post in the North American Network Operators Group (NANOG), which prompted a lengthy discussion of online video’s impact on network capacity. The topic has become even more relevant in light of the potentially disruptive impact of the peer-to-peer IPTV app Joost (The Venice Project) and NetFlix’ announcement that it will stream full-length feature films.

Several providers, including Equinix, say video growth is driving strong demand for 10 gigabit Ethernet connections, high-capacity pipes that enable providers to move enormous volumes of traffic. But the volume of traffic generated by online video is altering the economics of these connections. In some cases, the financial benefits of big-pipe peering don’t offset the short-term expense of network upgrades needed to support 10 gigabit Ethernet equipment. While the parties can continue to peer over existing connections, the growing volume of video traffic could stress networks and affect performance.

365 Main Unveils Further Expansion

365 Main Inc. continues to expand its network of data centers, adding two facilities in California markets where existing centers are nearing capacity. The San Francisco-based company today announced the acquisition of a facility in Oakland, Calif. and plans to construct a new data center in Vernon, Calif. (Los Angeles market) to meet continuing strong demand for data center space. The announcement comes as the company has sold out its flagship facility in San Francisco and as its El Segundo, Calif. data center, which opened in June 2006, is nearing capacity.

On Tuesday 365 Main closed on the acquisition of an 111,000 square-foot Oakland data center near Jack London Square, which includes 80,000 square feet of technical space with a 30-inch raised floor. Metro PCS Wireless Inc. and T-Mobile USA are existing tenants in the property, which was built in 2001. 365 Main is investing in additional infrastructure for power, cooling, connectivity and security at the property, which is less than 10 miles from 365 Main’s original San Francisco data center. 365 Main says demand for the remaining space in Oakland is significant, and the first lease for a private colocation room has already been signed by GNi, a California-based managed services provider that provides support services for 365 Main tenants and leases space at most of its facilities.

“The demand for high-quality data center space in the San Francisco Bay Area is the greatest in the country, and we’ve simply run out of room at our San Francisco facility,” said Chris Dolan, chief executive officer of 365 Main. “Expanding to Oakland fits all our criteria: existing demand, existing tenants, good location, well-defined pipeline. It’s a strategic move that makes sense for our business, and we look forward to becoming part of the Oakland community.”

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.”