A containment enclosure inside the huge SuperNAP data center in Las Vegas.

The massive SuperNAP data center was in the spotlight last Thursday evening when it was featured in a report on the CBS Evening News. The story examined the challenges facing the Las Vegas economy due its huge reliance upon casino gaming and tourism, which has led local officials to focus on diversifying the city’s economic base. Switch, the colocation company that built the SuperNAP, is being cited as a symbol of the possible growth industries for Las Vegas. “Nevada now points to Switch as the model of the kind of businesses it wants to attract,” noted CBS correspondent Anthony Mason, who interviews Jason Mendenhall of Switch about the company’s plans for a major expansion in Las Vegas. The section about the SuperNAP begins at about 1:40 into the segment.

This satellite photo provides an overlay of the location of the Switch data center campuses in the Las Vegas area, including the new North Campus announced today.

Switch plans to build a new data center campus in northern Las Vegas, which will add more than 300,000 square feet of mission-critical space for customers seeking redundant IT infrastructure, the company said today. The Switch Las Vegas-North Campus will be located near the intersection of Cheyenne and Buffalo, roughly 15 miles north of the Las Vegas Digital Exchange Campus (LVDEC), the home of Switch’s massive SuperNAP data center.

The new campus accelerates a building boom by Switch, which has already announced plans to construct 600,000 square feet of new data center space at the LVDEC campus in 2012. Both campuses will be built using a modular design developed by Switch, that incorporates many of the design innovations seen at the SuperNAP.

Demand for “Active-Active” Space

The company said the North Vegas expansion will focus on demand for “active-active” environments that allow customers to run operate redundant data centers that mirror data in real-time, providing instant failover in the case of an outage at either location. This approach that requires the facilities to be roughly 15 miles apart to satisfy latency requirements. Companies like Cisco and HP have adopted this approach, building two or more data centers in the same geographic market.

“Our customers are continuing to evolve and adopt the latest enterprise configurations,” said Missy Young, Executive Vice President of Colocation for Switch. “The addition of Switch Las Vegas – North will provide our customers with three separate data center ecosystems that satisfy the latency ranges for Active-Active solutions.”

Switch has developed an Active Resilient Colocation solution for customers interested in taking advantage of the active-active configurations. Switch appears to have anticipated this trend, as stakeholders in Switch have owned the Switch Las Vegas – North property since 2003. The construction timetable for the new project has not yet been finalized.

Modular Design and Construction

The SwitchMOD (shot for Modular Optimized Design) is a standardized design that can be built and deployed in modules from 25,000 square feet to 100,000 square feet of space. The design integrates Switch’s T-SCIF high-density airflow containment systems and WDMD custom cooling units, which can switch between four different types of cooling based on outside conditions.

The SwitchMOD design is also being used for  SuperNAP NV-8 and SuperNAP NV-9 – are part of a major expansion by Switch on land adjacent to the 400,000 square foot SuperNAP, where the company envisions an immense data center hub spanning more than 2 million square feet. The 500-megawatt Las Vegas Digital Exchange Campus could house as many as 31,000 cabinets of servers upon its completion.

Switch has been building a series of colocation centers in Las Vegas since 2000, starting with a series of facilities at what is now the company’s Las Vegas – East Campus.In 2008, when Switch unveiled its plans for the SuperNAP, a 400,000 square foot facility in southern Las Vegas in what is now the LVDEC /Vegas-West campus.

The power spine at the Switch SuperNAP offers perspective on the size of the 400,000 square foot data center in Las Vegas. Switch has begun construction on additional superNAPs on adjacent property.

Barely two years after completing its massive SuperNAP, Las Vegas data center specialist Switch is building again. The company has begun construction on two new facilities on its Las Vegas campus that will add 600,000 square feet of data center space in 2012.

Switch also said today that it has wrapped up $124 million in growth financing with  Citigroup, Intel Capital, Nevada State Bank, Bank of Nevada and City National Bank to support its expansion project.

The two new buildings – to be known as SuperNAP NV-8 and SuperNAP NV-9 – are part of a major expansion by Switch on land adjacent to the 400,000 square foot SuperNAP, which will create an immense data center hub spanning more than 2 million square feet. Switch envisions a 500-megawatt Las Vegas campus, to be known as the The Las Vegas Digital Exchange Campus, that will house 31,000 cabinets of servers upon its completion.

‘Unbelievable” Cloud Demand Drives Expansion

Switch founder and CEO Rob Roy says the expansion is tied to the growth of cloud computing, which is driving demand for high-density colocation with strong connectivity.

“We have seen unbelievable demand,” said Roy. “Last month Switch installed 5 MVA of delivered UPS to our customers and we expect to see similar growth over the coming months.  This expansion comes at a time when customer demand for our services is showing no signs of an economic downturn.

“Switch is about future proofing the data center needs of our customers,” Roy added. “Beginning construction on SuperNAP NV-8 and SuperNAP NV-9 clearly positions the Switch Las Vegas Digital Exchange Campus as the world’s most powerful data center and technology ecosystem.”

Switch will build SuperNAPs NV-8 and NV-9 as separate buildings. “The initial plan is to build one after the other, but demand could change that equation,” said Jason Mendenhall, Executive Vice President at Switch.  Announcing both buildings gives Switch the flexibility to handle large requirements from fast-growing customers. The site has 80 megawatts of power capacity in place to support the new data centers. Switch is also building a new 200MVA substation to support even higher density environments and lay the groundwork for NAPs 10, 11, and 12.

Big Boost to Las Vegas Economy
Switch’s growth is a welcome development in Las Vegas, where the real estate and tourism businesses have been hit hard by the economic downturn. Switch says it expects to spend roughly $400 million expanding the SuperNAP campus making it the largest active building project in Nevada, supporting more than 3,000 construction jobs and creating hundreds of permanent operational and technical jobs.

“The economic impact of this expansion extends well beyond the construction phase and will lead to technology companies calling the Las Vegas Digital Exchange Campus their home,” said Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval, who attended a recent groundbreaking for the expansion. “Switch’s leadership in the technology industry demonstrates that Nevada is a great place for innovation.”

“The SuperNAP projects located at the Las Vegas Digital Exchange Campus are the cornerstone of a new technology vertical for the Nevada economy at a time when economic diversification is paramount to a more stable future for Nevada,” said Steve Hill, Interim Director of the Governor’s Office of Economic Development. “Switch represents the bridge between economic development and economic diversification.”

Expansion to Use Modular Design
The new data centers will be built using a modular design developed by Switch, which designs its own custom infrastructure. The SwitchMOD (shot for Modular Optimized Design) is a standardized design that can be built and deployed in modules from 25,000 square feet to 100,000 square feet of space. The design integrates Switch’s T-SCIF high-density airflow containment systems and WDMD custom cooling units, which can switch between four different types of cooling based on outside conditions.

Switch has been building a series of colocation centers in Las Vegas since 2000. Its business got a boost in December 2002, when it acquired a former Enron broadband services facility out of bankruptcy. Enron had been seeking to build a commodity bandwidth exchange, and had arranged excellent connectivity for its Las Vegas center. The company was little  known outside its Las Vegas home base prior to 2008, when Switch unveiled its plans for the SuperNAP and its innovative approach to high-density cooling.

The groundbreaking ceremony for Switch SuperNAPs NV8 and NV9, with the existing SuperNAP NV7 in the background. At center are Swith CEO Rob Roy (left of center) and Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval (right of center). Click the photo for a larger version of the image.

One of the T-SCIF high-density cooling enclosures at the SuperNAP in Las Vegas. Switch is expanding its Vegas campus to 2 million square feet of data center space.

The SuperNAP is about to become the Super-DuperNAP. The 407,000 square foot Switch SuperNAP in Las Vegas is already one of the world’s largest data centers. But it turns out that the mammoth facility was just a first glimpse of a much larger vision for the future.

Switch now plans to build another 1.6 million square feet of mission-critical space on land adjacent to the SuperNAP, creating an immense data center hub spanning more than 2 million square feet. In March the company plans to break ground on the first of a series of additional facilities, each between 200,000 and 500,000 square feet. The expanded campus will be known as SuperNAP-West.

Largest Data Center Project Yet
The company envisions a 500-megawatt Las Vegas campus that will house 31,000 cabinets of servers upon its completion, supported by 200,000 tons of cooling. In an era when data center projects are getting bigger and bigger, the Switch expansion would be the largest single-company campus yet.

Switch CEO Rob Roy said the scope of the project reflects the emergence of cloud computing, which is driving “unprecedented demand” from major technology companies seeking large amounts of data center space. “The client needs that are coming to us are moving to this huge scale,” said Roy. “Cloud changes the entire business model.”

Cloud computing is driving more efficient use of server capacity, allowing companies to fill server racks to capacity. In the data center, full racks translate into higher power densities. Roy says this shift toward high-density deployments has boosted business for Switch, which has been a leader in high-density colocation.

Roy said customers planning for long-term growth want to scale their operations without constantly running out of power and space, and scouting new data center locations. “The expansion of SuperNAP-West demonstrates our unique ability to facilitate client growth without current or future concerns around power, cooling, connectivity or space,” said Roy.

Bucking Conventional Wisdom
The scale of the expansion is ambitious, even in an environment where the supply of quality data center space remains tight. But Roy and his Switch team haven’t been afraid to buck conventional wisdom in their approach to data center design and scale.

The company was little  known outside its Las Vegas home base prior to 2008, when Switch unveiled its plans for the SuperNAP and its innovative approach to high-density cooling.

Switch has been building a series of colocation centers in Las Vegas since 2000. Its business got a boost in December 2002, when it acquired a former Enron broadband services facility out of bankruptcy. Enron had been seeking to build a commodity bandwidth exchange, and had arranged excellent connectivity for its Las Vegas center.

Connecting Carriers and Customers
That connectivity plays a central role in the network effect driving Switch’s approach to a campus ecosystem. Switch aggregates the telecom buying power of its customers through SwitchCORE (Combined Order Retail Ecosystem), a carrier-neutral purchasing consortium. Bandwidth providers then compete for business requirments posted by SwitchCORE. Switch says this approach provides volume deals for its carriers, and favorable rates for its colocation customers.

Switch has also developed two custom-built cooling technologies to support power loads of 1,500 watts a square foot:

• A heat containment system known as T-SCIF (Thermal Separate Compartment in Facility). Overhead cooling ducts drop chilled air into the cool aisle, which sits on a slab rather than a raised floor. T-SCIF systems encapsulate each rack, leaving the front open to the cold aisle. The enclosure uses a chimney system to deliver waste heat back into the ceiling plenum, where it can be returned to the cooling units.(see our video tour of a T-SCIF unit).
• Cooling is powered by custom units known as WDMD (Wattage Density Modular Design) that sit outside the building and can switch between four different cooling methods to provide the most efficient mode for changing weather conditions.  (See our video overview of the WDMD).

Switch doesn’t normally disclose the identity of individual customers, but has a client base of military and government customers and large Internet companies. Many customers have chosen Switch because of its focus on cooling high-density racks.

To support those demands, the SuperNAP has a power capacity of 100 megawatts. The site has an additional 150 megawatts available for a current capacity of 250 megawatts, which will be expanded to 500 megawatts as Switch builds additional facilities.

Switch also plans to build up to 500,000 square feet of additional office space at its campus. Here’s a look at a Switch illustration of what the final result will look like.

An illustration of the plans for the expanded Switch campus, with multiple data centers and office space surrounding the current site of the SuperNAP.

For additional coverage of Switch see our Switch SuperNAPs channel

For additional information, check out our SuperNAP Channel and Sun Microsystems Channel. For additional video, check out our DCK video archive and the Data Center Videos channel on YouTube.

For additional information, check out our SuperNAP Channel and Sun Microsystems Channel. For additional video, check out our DCK video archive and the Data Center Videos channel on YouTube.

Switch Communications CEO Rob Roy with one of the WDMD custom cooling units at the Las Vegas SuperNAP during a tour last year.

LAS VEGAS -High on a narrow catwalk alongside the massive cooling units at the SuperNAP, a security guard stops to open one of the four doors lining the side of the unit. As the door opens, a powerful blast of air streams out. “You have to remember to hold on to keep from getting blown off,” said Melissa Young, the Executive VP of Sales Engineering at the SuperNAP, a 407,000 square foot data center facility built by Switch Communications.

The cooling unit is a WDMD – short for Wattage Density Modular Design – a custom-built unit housed outside the data center that can automatically switch between four different cooling options to deliver the most efficient cooling for current conditions. Young says the WDMDs are “built by Switch, for Switch” and not available from any vendor.

The units are part of the customized power and cooling infrastructure at the SuperNAP, where Switch also builds its own power distribution units (PDUs) and remote power panels. Young says the SuperNAP’s generators are also customized to Switch’s specifications by  Detroit Diesel.  

At a time when many large data center builders are focused on the industrialization of data center construction using standardization and bulk purchasing from vendors, Switch is charting a different path, building custom equipment to fit its vision for high-density data centers supporting power loads of 1,500 watts a square foot and beyond. It’s a philosophy also seen at Google, which builds its own servers, containers and networking gear.

Growth Beyond Las Vegas?
Can this model scale beyond Switch’s hugely successful data center operation in Las Vegas? Young says Switch is scouting prospective data center sites in other markets, but has yet to decide whether to pursue projects outside Las Vegas.

“We are talking to a number of people about either having us build data centers for them or licensing our technology,” said Young.  

Much of the company’s expertise in extreme-density infrastructure could work in other markets and facilities. But the secret sauce supporting the Switch Supernap goes beyond custom infrastructure. The desert climate and unusually rich connectivity and bandwidth economics have also been huge factors in Switch’s success, and are less portable to other venues.

Fitting Out the SuperNAP 
Bur first, there’s Vegas and the SuperNAP. With the first 45,000 square foot pod nearing capacity, Switch has completed the fit-out of a second pod and says it expects a significant portion of the new space to be filled by large requirements from existing tenants. “We didn’t figure we’d need Sector 2 until early next year,” Young says.

The building includes six of these pods. “Once this building is full of gear, it will be the most densely-packed data center in the world,” she said. As the SuperNAP nears capacity,  Switch plans to build two more facilities on adjacent property.

More Power, Fewer Racks
Young says the SuperNAP’s ability to pack larger workloads into fewer racks offers a compelling value for customers with “Internet-scale” large workloads. “The power and cooling configuration really does change the equation for our customers,” said Young. “The density allows you fewer racks, and companies usually do a (hardware) refresh to take advantage of that.”

Young said many customers find the high-density installations also save on cabling, since there are fewer racks and no need for additional spacing between racks to avoid hot spots.

She said most SuperNAP customers are running equipment at between 8 kilowatts and 17 kilowatts a rack, with one customer at 24 kilowatts. With 100 megawatts of power for the facility, Young said Switch expects to ultimately be able to support 7,000 racks, although that number might edge lower if rack power densities increased. “100 megawatts is a lot of power, but it’s a finite number,” she said. “It’s not a tether to the sun.”

RELATED STORIES:

• A Look Inside the Vegas SuperNAP
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“We now have thousands of cores at the SuperNAP,” Papadopoulos said in this morning’s keynote address at AFCOM’s Data Center World conference at the Paris Hotel in Las Vegas. “It’s a really fascinating facility.”

The hosting arrangement extends the relationship between Sun and Switch Communications, which is already hosting Sun’s Network.com operation in a high-density section of SwitchNAP 4 in Las Vegas known as a T-SCIF heat management system (short for Thermal Separate Compartment in Facility). The T-SCIF uses containment systems to fully separate the hot and cold aisles, allowing the Network.com racks to run at 1,500 watts a square foot. See this video for a closer look at the Network.com T-SCIF installation at Switch.

Sun’s Network.com was an early entry in the online utility computing arena, but struggled to gain traction and is now “in transition” and closed to new users. Sun is developing a next-generation cloud offering, but has yet to provide details of the new service.

Papadopoulos noted that Sun has been developing a platform known as Project Caroline, and recently acquired Q-Layer, a Belgian provider that automates the deployment of both public and private clouds. Sun says Q-layer’s technology will help users instantly provision servers, storage, bandwidth and applications.

Papadopoulos spoke at length about the importance of developers in the cloud ecosystem, noting that many developers are using Amazon Web Services to test-drive new web applications, at least partly out of frustration with delays in provisioning test environments through in-house IT operations.

“I give Amazon credit for having broken through, either through their brilliance or serendipity, and creating something that really works,” said Papadopoulos. “It’s about making things easy and accessible for the developer.

“We always think of the cloud in terms of developers,” said Papadopoulous, who added that the best commercial opportunities may be in helping companies build their own private cloud infrastructure and leverage public clouds in a “hybrid” cloud format. “Where you make money, I think, is in the hybrid cloud. Most enterprises are going to have their own private cloud.”

Papdopoulos said Sun will use the SuperNAP for “aspects of our cloud computing operation,” indicating that Sun may use its own facilities as well.

The 407,000 square foot SuperNAP, which opened its doors in September, will hold up to 7,000 cabinets when it is completely built out. Switch CEO and co-founder Rob Roy reported that Switch has now sold more than 1,100 cabinets. Other sources say that Sun made an early commitment to take space at the facility, perhaps as as many as 200 cabinets.

Papadopoulos praised the SuperNAP’s approach to high density computing,  using part of his keynote to present a video of the facility’s cooling system, which foregoes computer coom air conditioners (CRACs), venting hot exhaust air into a large ceiling plenum that returns the air to custom cooling units located outside the building, known as WDMD (short for Wattage Density Modular Design). See our video overview of the WDMD cooling units.

We had an inside look at the SuperNAP this summer, and shot video of our tour of the massive facility while it was under construction, as well as two of the key technologies featured at the SuperNAP: the T-SCIF containment system and WDMD cooling units. Switch Communications and APC by Schneider (a major vendor for Switch’s facilities) recently put together a video offering a look inside the completed SuperNAP facility. This video runs about 9 minutes.

For more news about the SuperNAP, visit our Switch Communications channel. For additional video, check out our DCK video archive and the Data Center Videos channel on YouTube.

When the first phase of the SuperNAP opens on Sept. 1, it will be one of the world’s most unique data centers, with the ability to cool racks exceeding 20kW of power load. When the facility is completed, it will cost more than $300 million and be able to host 7,000 customer servers.

The SuperNAP will have no raised floor, no computer room air conditioning units (CRACs) inside the data center, and no use of liquid cooling – in fact, virtually no water in the entire building. The massive facility is the ultimate expression of an alternate view of high-density data center design, formulated by Switch Communications CEO and co-founder Rob Roy.

“My feeling is that when people see this, they’ll say that this is the answer going forward,” said Roy. “With our new design, we may be able to get to 2,000 watts per square foot. We’re very excited about what we’re doing.”

Data Center Knowledge recently got an inside look at Switch Communications’ Las Vegas operation, including the ultra-high density hosting area of its existing SwitchNAP facilities, where several prominent Internet companies are running banks of racks at 1,500 watts a square foot using Switch’s high-density T-SCIF heat management system (short for Thermal Separate Compartment in Facility). See this video for a look inside a T-SCIF for Sun Microsystems, which hosts its Network.com utility computing platform at Switch.

We also had a tour of the SuperNAP facility, which was in the late stages of construction, and got a look at the custom central cooling units that Roy says will take air cooling to unprecedented levels of efficiency and flexibility. The units, known as WDMDs (for Wattage, Density, Modular Design) have four coils to allow different approaches to cooling in different conditions. See videos of our walk-through at the SuperNAP and a closer look at the WDMD cooling units.

Until very recently, Switch has flown under the radar in the data center industry. After starting with a small facility tucked between stores in a south Las Vegas strip mall, Switch has quietly built and filled six data centers in Las Vegas with a list of marquee customers.

The SuperNAP marks the coming-out party for Switch, which will now use the enormous footprint to offer its high-density solutions to a broader world of clients seeking to solve difficult power and cooling problems.

The SuperNAP takes Switch’s data center design concepts to the next level. Roy believes the facility will set a new standard for data center management, and expects that its innovations will ultimately be widely adopted by competitors.

“We expect that our competitors will try to replicate our design,” says Roy. “But they can’t build one like it for another two years. So we have two to three years, and by then we will have 1 million square feet. We have the ability to build three more of these on this site, each at 400,000 square feet.”

Does the SuperNAP represent the future of high-density computing? Or is it a unique opportunity enabled by Switch’s unusual bandwidth access and the Las Vegas climate?

Switch which may eventually explore opportunities in other markets, but not before it builds out its full footprint in Las Vegas, where it has advantages in climate and fiber access that aren’t easily duplicated. Roy says bandwidth pricing and telecom relationships are key differentiators for Switch, and that volume pricing has allowed the company to attain significant savings for customers.

In 2002 Switch acquired a former Enron Broadband Services facility in Las Vegas, which had exceptional connectivity due Enron’s efforts to build a commodity bandwidth exchange. Switch says it now has more than 20 backbones running through its bandwidth hub.

“Connectivity wise, there’s not another building in America that comes anywhere near what we can do,” said Roy, who said Switch’s access to fiber backbones is “like pulling up to the Alaska pipeline to get your gasoline.”

“We have direct relationships with (connectivity providers) worldwide,” said Roy. “We’ve really created eight years of amazing relationships with these guys. Those tools are important in the data center and it doesn’t come up that much in our industry. When you go to industry events, all everyone talks about is the infrastructure in your data centers.” Continue on next page …

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