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Technology: Data Centers Popping Up Everywhere
The exuberance over cloud computing is translating into a booming business for data centers. It seems like Google is announcing weekly plans for a new data center to be opened in new locations — last month: three in Asia, one in Oklahoma, and another in Ireland. Matt Dunne, Google Community Affairs director, commented that the new operations are being opened at “Google Speed”.
Of course it isn’t only Google and the trend for opening new data centers isn’t focused on just one geographic area, although some areas are seeing more than a fair share of activity. Many of the locations are chosen for cost saving reasons, like cheap electricity or a cheap pool of educated workers. But even in expensive Silicon Valley, new data centers are popping up everywhere.
Silicon Valley’s local newspaper, the San Jose Mercury, reports that eleven huge new data centers have moved into the valley over the last four years. These include one operated by DuPont Fabros which occupies 360,000 square feet, one by Vantage of more than 18 acres, and another by Digital Reality Trust that occupies 1.8 million square feet spread across 22 separate buildings. While Silicon Valley real estate is expensive, the proximity to high-tech corporate headquarters and the mild climate is making Silicon Valley a popular place for locating a data center.
The cost of this data centers averages $1000 to $1500 per square foot.
The DuPont Fabros facility alone houses tens of thousands of servers and is backed up by 32 diesel generators fed by two 50,000-gallon fuel tanks. The cooling system has 16 chillers and two 500,000 gallon tanks filled with chilled water.
Larry Owens, customer maanger at Santa Clara’s Silicon Valley Power, said that “Ten years ago, most companies had their servers and their data centers inside their own facilities. But demand for data and connectivity and trafficking outgrew the space they had. These new independent buildings started to appear that were suited for data center operations.”
The Mercury quotes Rich Miller, editor of Data Center Knowledge magazine, as saying that “The cloud isn’t this big fluffy area up in the sky. It’s buildings filled with servers and generators.”
