Data Center Build - Site Selection
January of this year, we decided on a bare warehouse as our starting point for our new data center. We had a lot of important criterial. Among the most important criteria we were looking for, here is a list of the most important:
- Proximity to fiber - this is crucial to keep our fiber build costs to a minimum. This new location was 20 feet from the fiber pole, and we can get a splice that goes from Cleveland and another from Akron, and lastly, one from Columbus; this give us the capabilities to have an upstream provider from each major region in Ohio for proper fiber diversity.
- Power capacity and stability - Several data centers we know of in the NEO region has horrible track records with power outages. We loved this location because very few companies were on the substations, and there have been virtually no down time in the recent decade. While we'll have generators and UPS as backup, it's still nice to not require their usage.
- Site expansion opportunity - While our phase one will have capacity for 1000-2000 servers, we liked this site because we could expand into adjoining spaces and continue expanding as we grow with very little effort.
- Proximity to major routes - This might not seem important, but the more people we talked to, the more evident it became that not only has location been a sticking points for our employee expansion but customers needed quicker access to our facility. Our new location on route 18 is right between Route 71 and Route 77 which are two of the most travelled routes in the entire state; making it simple to get to us from any where in the state or surrounding states.
After finding this site there were a couple options that were important qualifiers but not critical. We liked this location because it was tall enough to build a mezzanine which will be crucial as our organization continues to grow and we need more space.
Now I know what some of your critics are going to ask: "what about earthquakes, tornados, tier IV design considerings etc etc"? This data center will be a tier II when it opens and and tier III when we get adjoining space and we can add an additional UPS for a B feed, and at the same time we'll add a second generator which will also be able to handle the second half of the load.
After looking at spaces for months this is easily the best candidate and will be signing a lease more than likely; one step closer to opening our fully owned data center.
POSTED BY Joshua Holmes IN GENERAL ON