Facebook’s Prineville, OR data center

By Bill Trüb
From the March/April 2013 issue

Data centers are crucial to operations across countless sectors, from retail to information technology, government to biotech, logistics to engineering. Many consumers, however, have little awareness or understanding of just how massive and expensive these facilities are. Large-scale data centers are known to use the amount of electricity equivalent to small towns and, despite many greening initiatives, some centers release a significant amount of air pollution in the form of diesel exhaust. Furthermore, the amount of security necessary to run a successful data center is enormous due to the highly sensitive information and pricey equipment housed in such storage units. So high are these stakes that the Telecommunications Industry Association has even published a document detailing the minimum requirements for the infrastructure of data centers and computer rooms.

But the business of IT is one that changes quickly. The International Data Corporation claims the average data center is nine years old, which is troubling when coupled with research company Gartner’s assertion that data centers more than seven years old are obsolete. In May 2011, Uptime Institute reported that 36 percent of large companies will exhaust their IT capacities within the next 18 months. Yet according to a “Green Data Centers” report by Pike Research,the global market for green data centers segment of the industry is expected to more than double in size in the next four years. It can be overwhelming to try and keep abreast of these fast-moving, ever-changing, air-conditioned rooms of priceless information.

Greene And The Greening Of Data Centers

In an effort to reduce the shocking levels of diesel exhaust that many data centers emit into the atmosphere, the industry is being proactive in finding environmentally sound operating solutions. Aptly-named Nicholas Greene, writer for www.greendatacenterconference.com, penned “Ten of the Biggest Data Center Trends” at the tail end of 2012. Let’s recap a few of his most notable prognostications.

“Cloud Computing’s still got a long way to go before it’s the world-changing behemoth that everyone predicts it will be, but this year saw more and more organizations finding their way to cloud computing, and loving every moment of it,” writes Greene. “Hybrid clouds took off, and Infrastructure-as-a-Service, Software-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service vendors really came into their own. Unfortunately, the great strides cloud computing made this year are going to have some unfortunate side-effects in the near future. Moving forward; scalability is going to be a huge concern: our current data center infrastructure, powerful as it is, might not be able to handle the increased demands of the cloud.”

Greene continues, “2012 also witnessed the birth of the software defined data center. As a direct result of this, we’ve been seeing an increased focus on virtualization with the configuration of the data center’s hardware dealt with by upper-level software. Software Defined Networking, though still in its nascent stages, has the very real potential to revolutionize the way data centers are operated, with new options for resource optimization, availability, storage, and mobility.”

According to Greene, the push for eco-sensitive options has been a success. “The environment has been getting a lot of love from data center operators this year,” he says. “We’ve been seeing a massive shift towards green computing throughout 2012, with big names such as Apple and Microsoft hopping on the environmental friendliness train. The looming threat of global warming, coupled with the obvious energy savings one accrues as a result of green initiatives (not to mention the good press an organization can receive) have combined to make green IT a near-integral part of data center design.”

Greene gives us the word of the year: “Server racks are becoming denser and denser as many organizations consolidate their data centers in order to save on energy and real-estate costs. Consolidation is the word of the year, as data centers grow smaller and more powerful and energy management turns from a good idea to an integral discipline for data center operation.”

And finally, openness and transparency is where the industry is headed, led by kingpins Facebook and Google. “In April 2011, Facebook founded the Open Compute Project—an initiative which I’m sure that many initially took as a very bad April Fool’s Joke. It wasn’t—and it’s been gaining steam ever since,” asserts Greene. “The notion that data centers should be defined by their software infrastructure rather than their physical hardware seemed novel at the time, but Facebook has demonstrated that it’s got real value. Even organizations that are typically secretive to the point of paranoia, such as Google, have loosened up a bit, giving us some insight into the inner workings of some of their facilities. Maybe one day in the future, Facebook’s ideals will pay off, and we’ll be rewarded with true transparency in data center operations.”

Google Searches, Hits On South Carolina

Speaking of such Internet giants, Google held a groundbreaking ceremony in January in Berkeley County, SC to announce it will expand its operations at the Mt. Holly Commerce Park. The additional $600 million in investment at the site brings Google’s total investment to more than $1.2 billion. The data center in Berkeley County currently houses thousands of servers to support services such as Google search, Gmail, Google+ and YouTube. As Google’s services grows, the company must ramp up its data centers to meet demand.

Google’s data center in Berkeley County, SC. Google is using the rainwater retention pond as another means for cooling its data center.

“Today’s announcement is another big win for South Carolina,” says Governor Nikki Haley. “We celebrate Google’s decision to grow its footprint in Berkeley County with a $600-million investment. When a world-class company like Google decides to expand in the Palmetto State, it shows we are providing the sort of business environment that helps foster success.” Many states aggressively pursue data center business through various tax incentives because data centers are often a boon for local economies.

“South Carolina and the Berkeley County community are great places in which to work and grow,” says Data Center Operations Manager Eric Wages. “When Google first announced plans to come to Berkeley County in 2007, we were attracted to not only the energy infrastructure, developable land and available workforce, but also the extraordinary team from the local community that made us feel welcome. Today’s announcement is just a continuation of our investment in the state. Google is proud to call Berkeley County home.”

Google first announced plans for a South Carolina data center in 2007, making an initial investment of $600 million to get the center up and running. In November 2010, Google announced plans to construct a second building at the site, which is now serving traffic.

Google is also involved in supporting science and mathematics programs in South Carolina’s schools. Since 2008, it has awarded more than $885,000 in grants to local schools and nonprofits. It also has helped implement a free, downtown Wi-Fi network in Goose Creek.

“Google has been a great partner, exceeding expectations when the data center was first proposed,” says Berkeley County Supervisor Dan Davis. “They have invested capital, created good jobs and more importantly partnered with local businesses to help them do business better.”

“When our community came together to develop this business park, we wanted to attract leading companies that would establish deep roots and grow,” says South Carolina Sen. Paul Campbell. “Google’s expansion is an example of how Berkeley County can serve the needs of the world’s most innovative and dynamic companies. I hope Google’s growth here prompts other growing businesses to put down roots.”

Facebook ‘Likes’ Oregon

Facebook stores more than 240 billion photos, with users uploading an additional 350 million new photos every single day. To house those photos, Facebook’s data center team deploys 7 petabytes of storage gear every month. But what do you do with an exabyte of digital photos that are rarely accessed? That was the challenge facing Jay Parikh, Vice President of Infrastructure Engineering at Facebook.

The team decided a dedicated data center at its Prineville, OR campus could house older photos in a separate “cold storage” system and would dramatically slash the cost of storing and serving these files. The facility has no generators or UPS systems, but can house up to an exabyte of data.

Last year, Facebook built a 62,000-square-foot data center on its Prineville campus to house its cold storage, which can house 500 racks that each hold 2 petabytes of data, for a total of 1 exabyte of cold storage. Similar facilities will be built at Facebook’s data center campuses in North Carolina and Sweden, Parikh said.

The cold storage data center has no generators or uninterruptible power supply (UPS), with all redundancy handled at the software level. It also uses computer room air conditioners (CRACs) instead of the penthouse-style free cooling system employed in the adjacent production data centers in Prineville.

Most importantly, each rack uses just 2 kilowatts of power instead of the 8 kilowatts in a standard Facebook storage rack. But Parikh said it will be able to store 8 times the volume of data of standard racks. Not many companies face storage challenges at the kind of scale seen at Facebook. But Parikh believes more companies will be confronting these massive storage issues.

“Our big data challenges that we face today will be your big data challenges tomorrow,” he says. “We need to keep coming up with advanced solutions to our storage problems. The most important innovations are the problems people solve before the scale of the problem emerges. I believe big data is one of those problems. And we won’t keep up unless we work together.”

Facebook completed a second huge data center on its campus in Prineville, Oregon in 2012. The facility is similar to its existing 300,000-square-foot data center, Facebook Data Center Manager Ken Patchett announced at a Prineville City Council meeting.

“We believe the construction of the phased expansion of Building 2, and the operation of Building 1, staffing and supplying of the Prineville Data Center will continue to have a positive impact on the Crook County-Prineville economy,” Patchett told the city officials.

The second building in Prineville created up to 450 construction jobs, with the project lasting approximately one year. At the time, Facebook said it would add 10 full-time jobs in Prineville, where it currently employs 54 full-time employees providing building maintenance, security and server maintenance. The Prineville project is Facebook’s first company-built facility, and is optimized from the two-story structure right down to the servers to reflect the company’s vision for energy efficient data center operations.

CoreSite Realty Picks NJ

CoreSite Realty has purchased a 280,000-square-foot building in Secaucus, NJ for a new data center, and expects to invest $65 million to buy the facility and redevelop the initial phase of 65,000 square feet of data center space.

The facility, which will be dubbed NY2, is the company’s first data center in New Jersey and a sign of continuing activity in the northern NJ market. CoreSite already has a site in New York City and the Secaucus facility will mark an important expansion for the provider.

CoreSite is under contract to acquire the building, with the acquisition expected to close in early February. The 280,000-square-foot facility sits on 10 acres of land, which allows additional data center development as the market demands. At full build out, CoreSite expects it will offer 19 critical megawatts of capacity. Construction will start in Q1 2013, with turn-key capacity expected to be available in Q4 2013.

CoreSite intends to ensure the availability of high-capacity and high-speed lit services as well as a robust dark-fiber tether between NY2 and CoreSite’s NY1 location at 32 Avenue of the Americas in Manhattan, enabling CoreSite to provide seamless interconnection across its New York campus.

The company has been aggressively building out data center campuses across America. Focusing on network centric and cloud oriented applications, these data center campuses are network-dense.

“CoreSite’s entry into Secaucus is an important step in the execution of our strategy to extend our U.S. platform supporting latency-sensitive customer applications in network-dense, cloud-enabled data center campuses,” says Tom Ray, President and Chief Executive Officer, CoreSite. “Our New York campus is designed to meet performance-sensitive customer requirements supported by our location at the nexus of robust, protected, low-latency network rings serving Manhattan as well as global cable routes to Chicago, Frankfurt, London, and Brazil. Additionally, customers are able to connect directly to service nodes for Amazon Web Services Direct Connect.”

The Secaucus facility follows the launch of CoreSite’s previously announced 15 data center, located in Reston, VA. CoreSite’s national platform spans nine US markets and includes more than 275 carriers and service providers and more than 15,000 interconnections.

The availability of direct connections to high speed networks in NY2 will be of particular interest to financial firms looking to reduce latency and improve performance. Three network service providers have pre-committed to serve NY2, consisting of CoreSite partners Sidera Networks, Zayo, and Seaborn Networks, each of which provides high-performance network support to the financial services, cloud and network communities.

“The new CoreSite data center in New Jersey fits perfectly with Sidera’s growth strategy,” says Clint Heiden, President, Sidera Networks. “This expansion gives CoreSite customers immediate access to over 40 financial exchanges and the Sidera Xtreme Ultra-Low Latency Network.”

In addition to the new facility, the company also announced an Open Cloud Exchange, an initiative looking to offer a range of cloud services to customers. The Exchange will offer best-of-breed partnerships and services from a broad range of providers. It capitalizes on demand for hybrid infrastructures, letting Enterprises, Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and Systems Integrators (SIs) in CoreSite facilities connect directly, via a single resource, to the cloud service providers of their choice. This provides customers with flexible options to securely and easily connect to all types of cloud offerings.

“We’re building the industry’s premier home for cloud services,” says Jarrett Appleby, COO, CoreSite. “With networks—the oxygen for cloud services—as the foundation, adding the industry’s leading cloud providers will create best-in-class scalability, management, automation, software, and many-to-many exchange capability. The Open Cloud Exchange offers our customers enormous provider flexibility, guaranteed performance, real-time monitoring, and easy management of cloud infrastructure services.”

The initial four best-of-breed partners in Open Cloud Exchange are CENX, Rightscale, RiverMeadow Software and Brocade.

• CENX will provide its CENX Automated Ethernet Lifecycle Management software specially designed for CoreSite’s Open Cloud Exchange, enabling easy, single sign-on management of Layer 2 cloud infrastructure services and full MEF CE 2.0 compatibility.
• RightScale, will provide its platform for deploying and manage business-critical applications across public, private, and hybrid clouds. RightScale offers efficient configuration, monitoring, automation, and governance of cloud computing infrastructure and applications.
• RiverMeadow Software will deliver its automated cloud onboarding SaaS developed specifically for migrating servers and workloads into and between Carrier Service Provider Clouds.
• Brocade will provide the hardware infrastructure and switching logic at the heart of the Open Cloud Exchange.

Planned future enhancements include the ability to connect to providers across multiple CoreSite locations within the same metro area; connections between customers and providers in various on-net buildings throughout the country; and the Choice between numerous software and services providers to support performance sensitive customer applications through a marketplace portal. The service is available immediately in seven campuses: Los Angeles, San Francisco Bay Area, Chicago, New York, Northern Virginia, Boston, and Washington, DC.

In addition to this monster of a facility from CoreSite, Northern New Jersey has been no stranger to activity these last few months. Internap announced a 100,000-square-foot project in Secaucus last October, its third in the NY Metro region, to address growing demand. With its supply of data center space in northern New Jersey running low, Digital Realty recently announced construction in Clifton.

Apple Blossoms In NC

Apple currently is building huge new data centers in three states, including the North Carolina iDataCenter. Meanwhile, it is leasing large quantities of data center space in California’s Silicon Valley.

Many of the largest cloud computing providers opted to lease new Internet infrastructure in 2012, according to new data from a veteran market watcher. The report highlights the shifting tides in the “buy or build” decision, in which geography and market economics are contributing to a two-tier infrastructure for many of the largest Internet players, with footprints split between company-built data centers and wholesale space.

Apple, Facebook and Microsoft were among the largest consumers of turn-key “wholesale” data center space in 2012, according to Jim Kerrigan, Director of the Data Center Group at Avison Young. Microsoft leased 12 megawatts of new wholesale space in 2012, with Facebook (10 megawatts) and Apple (8 megawatts) not far behind.

The trend is notable because all three companies have recently been building their own massive data center facilities. Facebook has 1.5 million square feet of data center space that is either built or nearing completion, while Apple has finished its huge iDataCenter in North Carolina and is building new facilities in Oregon and Nevada. Microsoft has built its own server farms in seven sites around the U.S. and Europe over the past 5 years.

After years of building huge data centers in remote areas, in 2012 the geographic focus shifted back to historic Internet hubs in northern Virginia, Silicon Valley and Chicago. Apple and Facebook have moved armadas of servers to rural locations in North Carolina and Oregon that offer cheap power and cheap land. Cloud builders will continue to do this going forward, but a portion of their infrastructure must always be housed near the Internet’s key intersections, where they can connect with dozens of other networks. Both land and power are more expensive in these Internet hubs, resulting in different economics for large-scale new construction. That’s why the largest wholesale data center providers have a large presence in these markets.

General Motors Gets Specific In Georgia

General Motors announced plans to hire approximately 1,000 high-tech workers to staff its new Information Technology Innovation Center near Atlanta. The automaker needs software developers, project managers, database experts, business analysts and other IT professionals for the third of four centers in the United States.

“Locating this center in Atlanta makes good business sense,” says GM Chief Information Officer Randy Mott. “We can draw from a deep pool of high tech expertise through the surrounding colleges, universities and talent residing in the area.”

“This Innovation Center is exactly the kind of employer we want in the state,” says Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal. “The information age will be with us for a long time, and attracting companies such as GM that are on the cutting edge of manufacturing and technology is a huge win for Georgia.”

Mott is leading a rebalancing of information technology at GM under which the majority of IT work will be done by GM employees instead of being outsourced, which has been the GM model for most of the last three decades.

“We look to the Innovation Centers to design and deliver IT that drives down the cost of ongoing operations while continuously increasing the level and speed at which innovative products and services are available to GM customers,” Mott says. “The IT Innovation Centers are critical to our overall GM business strategy and IT transformation.” The location of the fourth site will be announced at a later date.

Gartner’s View On Cloud Computing

Drue Reeves, Gartner’s Vice President and distinguished analyst, recently outlined five trends that will transform the data center industry for Computer Weekly. Reeves’ expert predictions focus heavily on cloud computing, which requires the use of computing resources (both hardware and software) that are delivered over a network, usually the Internet. The name comes from the use of a cloud-shaped symbol as an abstraction for the complex infrastructure it contains in system diagrams. Cloud computing entrusts remote services with a user’s data, software and computation. Here are Reeves’ five trends, in his own words, for the future of data centers.

• Hybrid IT: Perhaps the greatest effect of public cloud computing on IT concerns operations. IT organizations realize that not only do they need to compete with public cloud service providers (CSPs), but also act as intermediaries between internal customers and all IT services (internal or external). IT organizations are becoming brokers of a set of IT services hosted partly internally and partly externally — that is, of hybrid IT. As intermediaries, IT organizations can offer internal customers the price, capacity and provisioning speed of the external cloud, and the protection and security of the internal cloud.
• Internal clouds: When businesses grow accustomed to consuming IT as a service, IT organizations will be compelled to build internal clouds. Unfortunately, building an internal cloud is hard work and few blueprints exist. Although vendors are building products that will help customers build internal clouds, there is no turnkey solution. IT organizations will struggle to cobble together the necessary pieces to build internal clouds. Nevertheless, building them will be a key data center trend in 2012 because of the need to compete with external cloud computing.
• Hybrid clouds: Hybrid clouds are connections between two clouds, usually an internal private cloud and an external public cloud. They are constructed using software that enables applications and data to migrate more easily between clouds. For example, many applications depend on identity management systems to authenticate users, have gigabytes of data, and have input/output latency dependencies for storage. These attributes often prevent applications from migrating to the external cloud, but hybrid cloud solutions them in unique ways. For example, hybrid cloud software can enable WAN acceleration and VPN connections between clouds that allow IT organizations to keep application services and critical data in the internal cloud, and to move the workload itself to the public cloud. As IT budgets continue to shrink and capital resources remain scarce, hybrid clouds will become a more popular option for augmenting IT capacity and enabling disaster recovery than building another data center or signing a long-term outsourcing agreement.
• User-centric computing: To compete in a global market and retain key employees, organizations often have to accommodate staff who live in remote locations and use personal devices for work. Some organizations are attempting to radically reduce the operational expense of supporting numerous desktop devices for large groups of users with various application requirements. These needs create new challenges for IT organizations to secure data; back up data; support smaller, less functional devices; and support a broader range of devices. Therefore, many IT organizations are rethinking their desktop and mobility strategies and adopting a user-centric, rather than a device-centric, point of view.
• Data center efficiency: Competing with the external cloud requires IT organizations to strive for hyper-efficiency in their data centers. If critical data and applications are to be housed in an internal private cloud, IT organizations must deliver internal IT services in an efficient, cost-effective manner. This requires them to squeeze further costs out of their data centers by virtualizing as many applications as possible, using storage efficiency technologies such as data deduplication, and buying servers that enable them to maximize space and power and to consolidate applications.

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Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno, State of New Jersey

By the Business Facilities Staff
From the March/April 2013 issue 

BF: Amazon has announced it will build a $200-million fulfillment center in Robbinsville, the first phase of a major investment in NJ. Do you anticipate that central New Jersey will be a major logistics hub?
KG: Yes, I believe central New Jersey and the state as a whole will continue to develop as a major logistics hub. With more than 38,000 miles of interstates and highways, nearly 1,000 miles of rail freight lines and the nation’s third largest seaport—not to mention access to 130 million consumers within a day’s drive—New Jersey is already a leader in transportation and logistics. Central New Jersey is a great location for companies that need access to world-class infrastructure and transportation networks.

BF: The University Heights Science Park in Newark is gaining international attention, with Biotrial of France establishing its North American headquarters there. What role do Newark’s five universities play in attracting new biotech players to the state’s largest city?
KG: The Science Park is focused on drawing in technology companies that specialize in biosciences and biotechnology, information and communications, environmental and energy technology and advanced manufacturing technology. Home to 35,000 university students, researchers and professors, the research taking place and the highly skilled workforce being trained in New Jersey are the forces behind attracting new global biotech companies to Newark and to New Jersey. The state public research universities that are involved in Science Park—University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ), Rutgers-Newark and New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT)—annually conduct nearly $100 million of research, most of which takes place at their sponsored technology centers in Newark’s University Heights district. Additionally, Essex County College focuses on training the technicians in 11 science and technology fields.

BF: Gov. Christie recently signed the Angel Investor Tax Credit Act, which is aimed at spurring early-stage biotech investment. How does the program work?
KG: The law encourages investment in technology companies by providing a tax credit against corporation business and gross income taxes of up to 10 percent of the qualified investment, up to a maximum of $500,000 per year for each investment. The program is subject to a $25 million annual cap. To be eligible, companies must have fewer than 225 employees, with at least 75 percent of those jobs within New Jersey, and must conduct research, manufacturing or technology commercialization in the state.

BF: Data storage leader CommVault is putting its global headquarters in Fort Monmouth. Are other companies considering locating at the Fort Monmouth site?
KG: At the end of January, the State reached a significant milestone in the redevelopment of the former military installation when the first sale of property was finalized between the Fort Monmouth Economic Revitalization Authority (FMERA) and CommVault. The global technology leader plans to undertake a three-phase project on the 55-acre site in Tinton Falls, including a 275,000-square-foot facility to serve as its worldwide corporate headquarters. Once the three phases of the project are completed, CommVault may create a total of up to 1,500 new jobs in NJ. In addition to CommVault, AcuteCare Health System is also expected to soon call the former Fort home. The company plans to reuse the former clinic as a medical facility, creating 50 new jobs in the near-term and investing a minimum of $5 million. AcuteCare is a privately owned corporation formed in 2002 to establish and manage long term acute care hospitals.

BF: How is the FMERA working to spur development at the former Army base?
KG: The Fort Monmouth Economic Revitalization Authorization Act is creating an environment where companies can invest and employment can grow. FMERA is responsible for filling the 1,127 acres of land, with a focus on attracting technology-based companies. Master broker Cushman & Wakefield continues to leverage the work of FMERA to market the former Fort Monmouth property to attract businesses and investors. The Cushman & Wakefield team established www.fort-monmouth-marketing.com to showcase the property.

BF: NJ purchased billboards at the Super Bowl and President Obama’s inauguration for its “Resilience” campaign. What is the key message of this campaign?
KG: The key message of the “State of Resilience” campaign is that New Jersey is open for business, despite being hit by Superstorm Sandy in October. The objective of this integrated marketing campaign is to share this message with corporate decision makers in targeted top markets, while reassuring companies already invested in the state. New Jersey still remains a prime location for business, and it’s our job to let the world know that. And it’s important to note that not a single tax dollar was spent on this campaign, which is being led by Choose New Jersey, Inc., the state’s nonprofit business recruitment agency in partnership with New Jersey’s private industry sector.

BF: What are the most important steps NJ is taking to improve its business climate?
KG: New Jersey is equally dedicated to attracting new jobs and investment while retaining the businesses that are here. It’s important for us to promote New Jersey’s business advantages nationally and internationally. To do this, we meet with companies across a range of sectors, as well as with site selection consultants to update them on NJ’s business value proposition. In 2010, we created the Partnership for Action. This organization is made up of the New Jersey Business Action Center, the New Jersey Economic Development Authority and Choose New Jersey, Inc. Since its inception, the Partnership for Action has worked with the state government to generate a projected 64,056 new and retained jobs and more than $9.8 billion in capital investment. We also have worked with policymakers on lowering taxes, adopting a single sales factor, eliminating or streamlining the red tape and bureaucracy, and restructuring government to make it easier for our businesses to grow, while also recruiting new businesses to NJ. The bi-partisan Red Tape Commission has succeeded in removing dated regulations, fostering the use of online technology to streamline licensing and permitting applications; it continues to review the state’s regulatory process to remove obstacles that impede growth.

All of these organizations continue to work together to find new ways to improve our economy and market our key messages, so that every company knows what we can do for them in New Jersey.

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Photo: Facebook

This announcement comes from Jay Parikh VP of infrastructure engineering at Facebook:

We’re thrilled to announce that Altoona, Iowa, will be the home for Facebook’s newest data center.

For most people, Facebook is something pretty simple. It’s a service you visit every day to connect with the people and things you care about. But behind the scenes, Facebook is a global service of immense scale and complexity—over 1 billion people use Facebook every month, and every day there are more than 2.7 billion Likes and over 2.4 billion content items shared with friends.

In the coming years, as our service continues to grow and people share and connect in more ways, we need to make sure that our technical infrastructure also continues to scale. Our goal is not just to deliver you a fast, reliable experience on Facebook every day—we also want to help make connectivity a universal opportunity. Our data centers are essential for making that happen.

Altoona will be our fourth owned and operated data center, and our third in the United States. (The others are in Prineville, OR; Forest City, NC; and Luleå, Sweden.) The facility will feature the same Open Compute Project server designs and innovative outdoor-air cooling system that our others do, but it will also incorporate evolutionary improvements to the building design, networking architecture, and more. When complete, Altoona will be among the most advanced and energy efficient facilities of its kind.

We’re excited to have found a new home in Iowa, which has an abundance of wind-generated power and is home to a great talent pool that will help build and operate the facility. We plan to break ground this summer and expect to begin serving user traffic in 2014.

We’re especially appreciative of all the partners who helped make this project happen. Facebook’s mission is to connect the world. Thanks to Iowa, we’re building the global infrastructure to bring the next billion people online.

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Digital Realty’s Turn-Key Flex solution is a modular approach to delivering secure, enterprise quality data center space to meet customers’ just-in-time requirements.

Digital Realty Trust, Inc., a provider of data center solutions, announced that it has signed a new Turn-Key Flex℠ lease with RenderWurks, a provider of large-scale server farms that can be used for animation and computer generated visual effects. The lease, signed in the second quarter of 2013, is for space at a data center in Dallas, Texas.

“RenderWurks is a pioneer in the server/rendering farm industry and we are pleased to welcome it to our portfolio,” said Andrew Schaap, vice president of sales at Digital Realty. “Our flexible solutions will allow RenderWurks to provide its customers with a solution that is both scalable and cost effective. It is exciting for us to be part of the early-stage growth of such a dynamic firm and industry.”

“Digital Realty’s state-of-the-art data center will make it possible for us to accommodate the rendering needs of our customers across a range of verticals—animation, computer-generated visual effects, engineering and architecture,” said Jeremey Poe, marketing manager for RenderWurks, and its sister company TruSurv Hosting Solutions. “The way business is done today, we have to provide a solution that is flexible and will allow our customers to grow or shrink their services as their processing and data storage needs change on a per project basis. Texas offers the best economic value for us and our customers, and Digital Realty brings that final piece to the table.” RenderWurks and TruSurv are both subsidiaries of TTHS Holdings, LLC.

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The designation of Corridor Park as a primary data center site will be a useful recruiting tool for the area.

The Tennessee Valley Authority and Deloitte Consulting have approved TVA’s first metro-area primary data center site in the Corridor Park in Knoxville. To be considered a metro site, the location must have at least 10 acres, a minimum of 5 megawatts of power capacity and diverse fiber optic feeds available.

The selection process is part of TVA’s Economic Development target industry recruitment efforts. Knoxville is one of only 20 available data center sites designated as “primary ready for development” in the TVA service area.

“Having this site identified as a primary data center location gives the Knox County area an advantage in the highly competitive site selection process,” said John Bradley, TVA senior vice president for Economic Development. “We are glad to work with the Knoxville Chamber, local utilities and other community, state and regional leaders to actively market these sites to companies as part of our global economic development recruitment efforts.”

Doug Lawyer, vice president of economic development for the Knoxville Chamber, believes the designation will be a useful recruiting tool for the area.

“I look forward to touting the advantages of the Knoxville site to intensive capital investment and high wage prospective data center end users,” Lawyer said. “Thanks to TVA and my local utility and development partners for helping us along in this process.”

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Built in the 1870s, the art deco structure in Lexington will be the new home of Indatus and Mocura. (Photo: Jim L. Patterson, Copyright 2006)

Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear  has announced that two companies, Indatus and Mocura, both under the ownership of ICIM Corporation, plan to move from New Albany, IN to new headquarters set up in Louisville. Indatus and Mocura will create 100 new jobs and establish a tier-2 datacenter with a full network operations center and staff in the renovated historic building.

“We welcome Indatus and Mocura as new corporate citizens in Kentucky, and we realize just how significant headquarters are for our economy, bringing not only top-level jobs, but proven leaders and innovators to our communities,” said Gov. Beshear.

The property is registered as a historic building for art deco design in Kentucky.  It was also the original headquarters of Four Roses Bourbon, home to the Miller Paper Company, and, most recently, Bridges and Smith Paint Company.

Renovation of the historic site, touted as the “Gateway to Whisky Row” is estimated to be completed by late December 2013. The project also includes the refurbishing of 9,000 square feet on the first floor available for lease to a retail or restaurant space, as well as renovating 9,000 square feet of basement space.

Indatus is a 22-year-old, privately-held company, with products that have been in the “cloud” (running at least partially over the Internet on a remote server accessed by the user with a browser) for more than 10 years. These products and services are leading the way in cloud-based technologies, software and communications systems.

Mocura is an 18-month-old sister company to Indatus, which covers three areas of products and services that are solely focused on enterprise-level apps and data gathering.  The company’s market-ready mobile applications, custom-developed mobile applications and mobile device management tools utilize existing SaaS cloud architecture to manage data. Mocura grew more than 1,000 percent in the last 12 months and is quickly becoming a major player in the rapidly changing mobile business process arena.

“This project is such a great example of what happens when motivated government agencies and institutions work together with common purpose,” said Dave Durik, CEO of Indatus. “We are just extremely excited and honored to be the recipient of the attention.”

“This is exciting for Louisville and the Commonwealth of Kentucky because of the new jobs that will be created through this investment in our city and our state,” said Sen. Gerald Neal, of Louisville. “Along with new jobs, our city will also reap the benefits from economic growth and development.”

“It’s great when Louisville and a company both benefit by moving its operations to Louisville and creating new jobs,” said Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer. “It’s even better when they decide to renovate and modernize an older building, augmenting our sustainability practices.”

“The addition of Indatus and Mocura to the East Main Street corridor adds to the increasing density of technology firms in the NuLu, East Main, Nucleus area,” said Eileen Pickett, vice president of economic development for Greater Louisville Inc. “We are thrilled to see this growth and the evolution of the historically booming bourbon district becoming home to the latest innovations in technology.”

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The company cited the state’s low power rates and central U.S. location as key factors in its decision to locate in Nebraska, as well as the array of available incentives. Upon completion, the state-of-the-art data center will employ approximately 30 to 35 associates.

In efforts to create the most competitive business assistance package, the Greater Omaha Economic Development Partnership worked with Gov. Dave Heineman, the Nebraska Unicameral, Nebraska Department of Economic Development, Nebraska Department of Revenue, and City of Papillion and Sarpy County officials. The final package included a modification to the Nebraska Advantage business incentive program to create a large data center option.

“To have Fidelity Investments, an outstanding company, utilize the Nebraska Advantage incentive helps us set the bar for other quality companies weighing location considerations for future data center projects,” said Gov. Heineman.

“Fidelity is pleased to be in Nebraska,” said Steve Scullen, President of Corporate Operations for Fidelity Investments. “The state is an extremely attractive market for data center expansion and we’d like to thank Governor Heineman and other state, regional and local officials for being so cooperative and such great partners throughout this process. We believe the site we’ve chosen will provide us with the flexibility to build to our specifications in a location that will accommodate our needs now and in the future.”

Fidelity has committed to and expects to invest a minimum of $200 million to construct and outfit the data center. Fidelity will start construction immediately and expects the new facility to be operational in 2014. The design and construction of the facility will be in accordance with Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards and will be designed to attain LEED certification.

“This project and the associated infrastructure are significant to Papillion’s growth,” said Mayor David Black, Mayor of Papillion. “Not only are we adding a good business and industry, but the water and sewer extensions can help accelerate the natural growth in the western part of our jurisdiction.”

Fidelity becomes the first firm to use the “Tier 2 Plus-Large Data Center” provision contained in the recently amended Nebraska Advantage Act. During the 2012 Legislative session LB 1118 was passed, creating an additional Tier 2 to the Nebraska Advantage incentives and providing benefits for large data center projects.

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The growth of cloud computing is spurring increased demand for data center space in North America, according to a survey commissioned by Digital Realty and reported by Data Center Knowledge. The growing interest in cloud adoption, along with the resumption of planned expansions that were deferred due to the economy, points to robust growth ahead for the U.S. data center industry.

Ninety two percent of IT decision makers at large companies said they will “definitely or probably” expand their data center footprint in 2012, the highest number in the six-year history of the survey by Digital Realty, which is the largest operator of data center facilities. By comparison, 70 percent of respondents said they had expanded their data center operations over the past two years.

Ironically, the industry expansion comes at the same time the U.S. government is continuing its aggressive effort to consolidate its data centers, and has again increased its target for the number of facilities it expects to close, according to Federal Chief Information Officer Steven VanRoekel.

The government now expects to shutter at least 1,200 data centers, or about 40 percent of the 3,133 IT facilities identified in the latest update on the consolidation. The government is on track to close 525 data centers by the end of 2012, including 215 that were shuttered in 2011. That marks an acceleration of the project, as the administration originally expected to close 137 data centers in 2011. A listing of facilities that have been closed or are targeted for closure is available at Data.gov. However, a new $500-million data center for the Social Security Administration is expected to be built near Frederick, MD in the coming months.

Wyoming Opens Window to Data Hub

The Microsoft Corporation’s announcement to construct a $112 million data center in Cheyenne, WY marks a notable milestone in Wyoming’s economic diversification efforts, and it’s a clear sign that our state’s emerging presence on the digital industry landscape is gaining ground.

Behind the lead of Governor Matt Mead who first stated his goal to recruit data centers during his campaign, Wyoming has aggressively pursued technology as a target industry that someday may be mentioned in the same breath as agriculture, energy and tourism when talking about our state’s signature industries.

This is only possible because of the close working partnerships developed during the past six years with the Wyoming State Legislature, the governor and local economic development organizations throughout the state, as well as our relationship building efforts with technology companies and site selectors.

The Wyoming Business Council has collaborated with local economic development leaders to showcase our state’s enviable assets such as a cool climate, robust fiber, low-cost and redundant electricity and access to available shovel-ready sites that lower the total cost of operation for digital business. In addition, this local and state economic development team has worked together with the governor and the legislature to create unique incentives that set us apart in this highly competitive market.

In the case of the Microsoft decision, the result of this group effort produced an incentive package comprising up to $5 million from Governor Mead’s Data Center Recruitment funds, used at the sole discretion of the governor to entice data centers, and $5 million from a Wyoming Business Council Business Ready Communities (BRC) Managed Data Center Cost Reduction grant through applicant Laramie County.

Through Cheyenne’s local economic development agency Cheyenne LEADS, Laramie County will use the $5 million from the governor’s fund to build infrastructure to include roads, water lines, sewer work and fiber installation to lower the upfront costs for Microsoft’s selected location; Laramie County will use the $5 million BRC grant to assist with utility and connectivity costs.

In addition to the above state incentives, Wyoming offers a data center sales tax exemption. Combined with our other benefits such as no corporate or personal state income tax, and workforce development training funds, Wyoming has a compelling cost reduction incentive package that is appealing to this industry by careful design. Without these incentives and our infrastructure investments, the Microsoft project – and future projects of this caliber – would not be possible, and we must give credit to the legislature and the governor’s office for having the foresight to work with the Business Council and the local economic development community on ensuring we’re ready to compete in the digital industries.

Although Cheyenne was the final location decision, Microsoft identified Evanston, Laramie and Rawlins as very real possibilities until just months before the final decision was made. Economic development officials and local leadership in those communities worked through the same process with Microsoft as did Cheyenne LEADS, and Microsoft officials made note of the pride displayed from each community during the 10-month site selection process. The professionalism, understanding and sincerity by all communities involved made the entire state look very good to the company and made it easier for Microsoft to select Wyoming over competing states. From a local economic development standpoint, this announcement illustrates how important it is to have shovel-ready property available for economic development.

With the successful recruitment of the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center to Cheyenne in 2007 and the presence of other data centers such as EchoStar, Ptolemy Data Systems, T3Media (formerly Thought Equity Motion) and Green House Data calling Wyoming home, the recent Microsoft decision punctuates this work; but now, it’s time to go to work on the next one.

TVA Identifies 20 Sites Ready for Data Center Development

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is undertaking a Data Center Ready-for-Development Sites Initiative as part of its Megasites program.

Twenty sites in the TVA region have been identified by Deloitte Consulting as being ready for development as data centers (see map below, with full information on the sites available at datacenters.tvasites.com).

The strategy behind this program is similar to the Megasites program in that it identifies what target companies are looking for and then finds sites where much of the due diligence on those attributes has already been done. The Megasites program is a multi-year economic development effort designed to make it easier for large industries to find an optimal location that is ready for use. A third-party consultant (McCallum Sweeney Consulting) has identified locations that offer large developable acreage, have access to utilities, are close to interstate highways and railways, and can supply a plentiful labor force. Megasites help companies save time and money and reduce their risks in locating in the region.

The TVA’s web pages for the potential data center sites feature a GIS presentation of the available property as well as demographic information about the labor force available to the location and a snapshot of consumer spending and businesses in the area.

For example, TVA and Deloitte identified a 92-acre site in an industrial park in Huntsville, AL as a prime location for a future data center. The TVAsites.com web page for the site indicates that a Phase I Environmental Report already has been completed for the site, which is a vacant parcel that can be purchased.

To assess the available labor force for the Huntsville site, visitors to TVAsites.com can enter in a specific geographic radius or an estimated drive time (in minutes) and be served up a workforce report according to the specs. The same coordinates/requirements can be entered to generate customized reports on consumer spending and related businesses in the target location.

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