The Digital Realty Trust data center in Chandler, Arizona.

Digital Realty Trust has completed the expansion to its data center in Chandler, Arizona, adding 226,000 square feet of the company said today. The expansion nearly doubles the size of the former 365 Main facility at 2121 S. Price Road in Chandler, which already included 293,000 square feet of data center space.

The expansion project began in the first quarter of 2011, and Digital Realty will deliver the first three 1.125 megawatt move-in ready Turn-Key Datacenters in the fourth quarter of 2011.

“Phoenix is a strong data center market not only because of demand from Arizona-based companies, but also because so many companies based elsewhere in the Unites States view it as an ideal location for both primary and backup data centers,” said Dave Caron, Senior Vice President, Portfolio Management at Digital Realty. “Those two factors, along with low cost of power and a pro-business economic environment, have made demand for data center space robust in Phoenix, but the market has long been constrained in terms of data center space. This project in Chandler brings a significant volume of high-quality data center space online to meet that demand, providing critical infrastructure to support economic growth in the Phoenix metro area.”

Digital Realty Trust (DLR) is a real estate investment trust specializing in data centers that owns 97 properties spanning 17.2 million net rentable square feet in 30 markets throughout Europe, North America, Singapore and Australia.

To celebrate the expanded facility, Digital Realty is hosting a ribbon-cutting ceremony and open house on Wednesday, September 21.

Rackspace Offers Hands-on Training for OpenStack – Rackspace Hosting today announced the availability of professional training for OpenStack, delivered by Rackspace Cloud Builders. OpenStack is an open source cloud operating system that is quickly becoming the industry standard for public and private clouds. Hands-on training courses for OpenStack developers and administrators will cover the fundamentals of setting up, administering and troubleshooting OpenStack clouds via real-world situations in a training lab environment. The initial five-day training course, Fundamentals Training for OpenStack, will be offered in Boston before the OpenStack Design Summit, at the Rackspace campus in London, and at the Dell campus in Austin, with additional dates and locations to be announced.

iMemories Selects Phoenix NAP – Phoenix NAP announced today that iMemories, a website for digitizing, storing and sharing personal videos and photos, has selected the Phoenix NAP facility to support its growing technology infrastructure needs. “We are excited to expand our U.S. data center capacity by fully leveraging Phoenix NAP’s modern facility and advanced capabilities,” said Mark Rukavina, Founder and CEO of iMemories. The photo service will offer cloud-based storage and sharing of personal videos and photos through Internet, mobile devices and Web-connected TVs out of the Phoenix NAP location.

Datapipe Facilities Complete SSAE 16 Audits – Managed services provider Datapipe announced today that its San Jose, Calif. and Somerset One and Somerset Two, N.J. facilities have completed SSAE 16 audits. The Statement on Standards for Attestation Engagements (SSAE) No. 16 was finalized by the Auditing Standards Board of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) in January 2010 and became effective on June 15, 2011.”Our clients trust us to manage their mission-critical information and ensure a compliance record that consistently reaffirms the continual security and integrity of their organization,” said Joel Friedman, Chief Security Officer for Datapipe. “Successfully completing the SSAE16 audit in all of our U.S. facilities enables our clients to meet new standards of control governing financial reporting.”

“As we move to keep up with demand, the funding is a big impetus for our continued growth,” said Ian McClarty, president of Phoenix NAP. “Furthermore, as the IT climate changes and evolves, we are going to be in a position to help small , medium, and enterprise-sized businesses meet their needs, be it through a straight colocation space and power scenario, or a different type of cloud-based solution which we will be releasing in the next few months.”

Phoenix NAP worked closely with financial advisors from Franklin Court Partners to secure the funding. After announcing its opening last June, Phoenix NAP has built a roster of tenants including the Make-A-Wish Foundation, Unicorn Media, Net Fusion Services, Slickdeals, Village Voice Media, among others. The company’s 160,000 square foot data center is designed for two 45,000 square foot data halls for a total of 90,000 square feet of raised-floor space.

The Digital Realty Trust data center in Chandler, Arizona.

Wholesale data center provider Digital Realty Trust has begun an expansion its data center facility at 2121 S. Price Road in Chandler, Arizona, the company said today. The company says it is adding 226,000 square feet of rentable space and 13 megawatts of power to the facility.

The Chandler facility was acquired last year as part of Digital Realty’s purchase of the 365 Main portfolio of data centers. The existing building spans 293,000 square feet and is currently 97 percent occupied. Upon completion, the expanded facility is expected to feature more than 31 megawatts of total power.

The Chandler site is Digital Realty’s second data center in the greater Phoenix market. The company also owns 120 East Van Buren, a traditional connectivity hub in downtown Phoenix.

“Phoenix is a very important market for Digital Realty Trust,” said Brent Behrman, Senior Vice President, Global Sales at Digital Realty Trust. “Our investment in this property underscores our commitment to the Phoenix area, where we have established a substantial operating platform for supporting our customers in Arizona.”

Construction is currently underway on the expanded building shell, with the first three 1,125 kilowatt Turn-Key Datacenters scheduled to be delivered in the third quarter of 2011. Since the existing building is near capacity, existing tenants with expansion requirements are likely to be among the best prospects to fill the new space.

“Phoenix is a significant data center market with strong demand from many companies that want to locate their IT infrastructure in a location relatively free of natural disasters, with significant fiber connectivity and competitively priced electricity,” said Behrman. “The local power utility, Salt River Project (SRP), provides green options and has a long history of maintaining robust, stable, and low cost power,”

i/o Data Centers Appoints CFO. i/o Data Centers announced the appointment of Jonathan Mauck as Chief Financial Officer. Mauck was previously the Global Head of the Communications Infrastructure team at Citigroup’s Investment Banking Division where he advised technology and telecom companies and raised over $20 billion in capital. “Jon Mauck is an extraordinary talent in the data center industry,” said George D. Slessman, CEO of i/o. “His proven financial discipline and ability to access the capital markets fits well with our commitment to grow with our customers as their IT energy and data center services needs grow.”

Phoenix NAP and Datalink partner. Phoenix NAP and Datalink announced a strategic partnership to meet the growing needs for disaster recovery and business continuity services. “While Phoenix NAP is designed to meet the physical requirements of a disaster recovery location, effective and robust disaster recovery and business continuity solutions necessitate other areas of expertise, and we are thrilled to have an industry leader like Datalink as a strategic partner to offer them,” said Ian McClarty, president of Phoenix NAP.  Minnesota based Datalink offers disaster recovery and business continuity solutions to mid and large-size enterprises.

Microsoft and HP partner for Azure appliance. Microsoft (MSFT) and HP announced their intention to work together on a Microsoft Windows Azure platform appliance that will enable large enterprise customers to confidently and rapidly adopt cloud-based applications as business needs change and grow.   A complete solution will include hardware, software and sourcing components and allow appliance management with HP Converged Infrastructure on-premises or through HP data center hosting services. “Customers want to refocus their resources in managing their business and out-task IT processes like software acquisition and maintenance,” said Sean Kenny, senior vice president, Worldwide Applications and Business Process Outsourcing, HP Enterprise Services. “HP is the only technology company that can combine the Windows Azure platform with the industry’s best people, processes and Converged Infrastructure technology to remove the complexity of migrating applications to the cloud.”

It has turned out to be a good thing that the company built big, because the customer deals have been big as well. Less than a year after the first customer installations at Phoenix ONE, the 180,000 square foot first phase has been sold out, i/o Data Centers said this week.

“We are selling inventory as quickly as we can build,” Anthony Wanger, president of i/o Data Centers. “We’ve sold through 20 megawatts of power in a year. The issue is acceleration. We’re doing bigger deals, and were closing them faster. Clearly, there is more demand here than we generally understood a couple years ago.”

i/o Data Centers began construction on Phoenix ONE’s second phase in late 2009, as the first phase began to approach full occupancy. The phase two construction plan 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.

Wanger said i/o Data Centers now has 350 customers, which are about evenly split between colocation services and wholesale data center suites. That customer base has a beneficial network effect when it comes to exchanging traffic. The company recently performed a study of customer cross connects in its facilities, and estimated that existing customers could save more than $25 million in cross connect fees over the next three years.

“We’ve never charged for cross-connects, and almost all of our competitors do, but it hasn’t been until this analysis was completed that we realized the magnitude of the impact on IT departments,” said George Slessman, CEO of i/o Data Centers.

Intermedia Opens First UK Data Center. Microsoft Exchange hosting provider Intermedia announced that it has opened its first data center in the UK.  Located in Slough, UK this facility will support Exchange hosting customers in the UK, is ISO27001 certified and has completed a SAS70 audit. In 2009 Intermedia tripled its UK customer base with services like hosted Exchange, Office Communications Server 2007, SharePoint and support for BlackBerry, iPhone, Droid and other smartphones.  “By opening this datacenter, we are able to deliver in-country hosted communications that save companies up to 90 percent versus the cost of operating the same services internally,” said Jonathan McCormick, COO of Intermedia.  Like its North American data centers, the UK facility will have redundant Tier-1 connectivity and hardware from Cisco, Dell and EMC.

Stream Achieves LEED Silver. Stream Data Centers announced that they have been awarded LEED Silver certification for its Ready-to-Fit data center facility in San Antonio, Texas. “Stream Realty Partners has been at the forefront of the sustainability movement as an Energy Star Partner and Board Director for the US Green Building Council North Texas Chapter,” said Bill Moebius, Stream’s Director of Energy and Sustainable Operations. “We are excited to continue this commitment through Stream Data Centers’ development projects.”  The 150,000 square foot facility sits on a 33 acre site in Westover Hills, Texas.

Phoenix NAP adds TW Telecom. Phoenix NAP announced that tw telecom (TWTC) has established connectivity within the Phoenix NAP facility, and is offering its industry-leading Business Ethernet services directly to clients of the data center for their enterprise networking needs. “We are pleased to connect customers to this and other datacenters throughout the Phoenix metro and the country to help deliver greater storage efficiencies to our customers,” said Ron Martin, Vice President and General Manager for tw telecom in Phoenix. Phoenix NAP also recently announced that Cox Business has expanded their fiber infrastructure in Arizona and that the two companies were strengthening their alliance to provide expanded security, redundancy and data center accessibility options for small and medium sized businesses. In January 2010 Cox announced plans for a $70 million Phoenix data center.

The exterior of 120 East Van Buren in Phoenix.

It’s power-up time for Digital Realty’s Internet gateway properties. Just a week after announcing a power upgrade of its St. Louis data hub, Digital Realty Trust said Monday that it has completed a multi-year project to bring significant additional power capacity to 120 East Van Buren, the company’s Internet gateway in Phoenix.

Digital Realty (DLR) said it had worked with utility provider APS to boost the power capacity to 31 megawatts at 120 East Van Buren Street, a 287,500 square foot data center facility.

“Completing this project to bring additional power to 120 East Van Buren is the culmination of a multi-year revitalization plan for the property,” said Brent Behrman, Vice President, Global Sales at Digital Realty Trust. “Since acquiring the property in 2006, we have worked closely with customers in the building to determine their needs, and it was clear that additional power was needed. APS has been a great partner in this process, and the result is a nearly five-fold increase in the electrical power at the property.”

“These efforts position 120 East Van Buren as an engine for economic growth in Arizona, providing critical infrastructure for the critical IT systems of companies requiring data center capacity in the Southwest,” Behrman added.

With the expansion of electrical capacity, Digital Realty Trust is now planning to convert an additional 30,000 square feet of redevelopment space into Turn-Key Datacenter space to meet customer demand.

“Demand for data center space is strong in Phoenix,” said Behrman. “By redeveloping this space at 120 East Van Buren, we will bring a significant amount of raised-floor data center space to market to address these requirements.”

A screen shot from a virtual tour of the PhoenixNAP data center.

The data center tour is an integral part of the sales process for colocation and hosting space. But in a difficult economy and tight budgets, traveling around the country to scout data centers isn’t as simple.

So the developers of Phoenix NAP decided to bring the data center to the client. The company has created a data center virtual tour that allows visitors to “walk through” a full 3D visualization of the layout for the  data center, which is scheduled to open this spring with a first phase of 45,000 square feet and will eventually include 160,000 square feet of data center space.

Phoenix NAP isn’t the first data center provider to use 3D virtual tours as a presentation tool. IBM used the virtual world Second Life to simulate elements of a server room for its Project Big Green launch in 2007, and later offered a Virtual Network Operations Center that used Second Life to let customers manage servers through the 3D interface.

But Phoenix NAP Interactive has taken a more comprehensive approach to the virtual data center tour, working with GSD Software to model its entire data center building within the virtual environment. That includes 3D representations of fiber trenches, mechanical and electrical distribution equipment, security systems, and room layouts.

“One of the things we wanted to do was really showcase our designs and functional layout to any potential clients or interested individuals, while being mindful of travel costs,” said Jordan Jacobs, director of operations for Phoenix NAP. “Not everyone can jump on a plane to Arizona for an initial tour, and with Phoenix NAP Interactive, they don’t have to.”

The virtual approach also allows data center operators the ability to offer a vision of a finished data center while a facility is in the construction phase. Phoenix NAP is in the late stages of its construction process (which it has documented on its Data Center Builder blog), and expects to be operational by March. 

The application, which requires a 3D plugin, can be used in a guided tour format, with in-world avatars for both prospects and Phoenix NAP staff, or users can explore the space on their own. Some experience with virtual worlds or online gaming will come in handy in navigating the 3D environment. The good news: walking into walls is much less painful with your avatar than  on a real tour.        

Here’s a video providing an overview:

“We are excited that our parent company, Cox Enterprises, is making another economic investment in Arizona, in the Phoenix metro area,” Steve Rizley, senior vice president and general manager of Cox Communications Arizona, told the BizJournal. “Not only will this give an injection of investment in the Deer Valley community, but will also help strengthen Cox Communications’ services with enhanced security and reliability.”

Phoenix has been an active data center market in recent years, driven by its favorable disaster profile and growing requirements for disaster recovery from companies on both coasts.