Iron Mountain's Underground

A Slide show Of Iron Mountain's
Underground And Its Innovative
Room 48 Data Center,
200 Feet Below The Earth
In A Former Limestone Mine.


To view an exclusive slideshow of photos of Room 48, please visit http://www.ironmountain.com/make-every-day-earth-day .

Iron Mountain Incorporated (NYSE: IRM), an information management services company, announced today that one of its underground data centers has been named to IDG’s InfoWorld Green 15, an annual ranking of the most innovative green IT projects. The Green 15 recognizes organizations from around the world that have embraced green technology to drive projects and develop products aimed at boosting energy efficiency, trimming waste, and reducing or eliminating the use or the production of harmful substances.

Average data centers require enormous energy to power and cool stacks of computer servers that must run year round. Seeking to cut this energy consumption for the massive volumes of customer data it manages, Iron Mountain conceived and built “Room 48,” a highly efficient data center located 200 feet underground in a former limestone mine in Western Pennsylvania.

Room 48 is two times more efficient than traditional data centers because it takes advantage of its unique subterranean environment. The mine’s steady temperature of 55 degrees and the sponge-like ability of the limestone walls to absorb heat eliminate the need for typical data center cooling systems that consume large amounts of power and squeeze space.

“We are honored to be named among the greenest IT projects in the world,” said Bill Brown, senior vice president, chief information officer, Iron Mountain. “Our customers require us to manage their digital information in a way that's secure and accessible, but also cost-effective and efficient. Our data centers, and particularly Room 48, provide that security, access and efficiency. Room 48 uses nature’s ‘technology’ and offers a blueprint for creating a new kind of data center that harnesses both technology and unique natural properties."

Room 48 rejects traditional datacenter designs in favor of concepts that reduce the amount of heat emitted inside the room. Among these strategies is a “cool-air containment” configuration that increases cool-air flow between server racks and ceiling vents. The room is also staffed only 20 percent of the time allowing it to utilize motion-sensor, low-heat lighting. Cooling units sit outside the room, which operates at 2-3 degrees warmer than traditional datacenters. These design modifications and others have combined to boost the datacenter’s power efficiency by 50 percent, improve space efficiency by 30 percent and drastically reduce both energy consumption and costs

Iron Mountain finds limestone a natural fit for data center efficiency
Geothermal and subterranean conditions of former limestone mine yield significant savings on cooling

Twenty-two stories below ground, deep within the secure confines of a former limestone mine in Pennsylvania, resides Room 48, Iron Mountain's state-of-the-art underground data center. Designed by Iron Mountain vice president of engineering Chuck Doughty, the facility takes advantage of the natural properties of the subterranean location to help the data storage and security company put a dent in its significant energy costs.

"A major challenge was helping our engineers and equipment suppliers understand the basic physics, thermodynamics, and electrical transformation and distribution of this unique location and how they could be leveraged -- and not just apply typical data center designs that have been used for the last 25 years," said Doughty.

The location's geothermal and subterranean conditions open up opportunities for energy reduction that you wouldn't find in a traditional data center. For starters, the natural temperature of the facility is between 55 and 65 degrees, so Room 48 benefits from free cooling. Ducting above the servers pushes air down naturally, using far less power than would be necessary to blow air upward, as a traditional data center would.

Iron Mountain also employs a cold-air containment strategy, which uses the limestone walls and ceiling vents to cool wires and cables hanging above the server racks to increase cool-air distribution by up to 20 percent. At the same time, air pressure differentials force warm air from the servers up and out through perforated ceiling tiles. Room 48 (which gets its name from its location on the underground facility map) has no need for raised floors found in traditional data centers, thanks to the natural limestone walls' ability to absorb 1.5 BTUs per square foot per hour.

Mother Nature alone isn't responsible for the efficiency gains of the facility. As part of the design, Iron Mountain located the power distribution and air conditioning equipment outside of the facility, resulting in a further reduction in heat while freeing up 30 percent more space for racks.

Room 48 uses motion-sensor, low-power, low-heat lighting to further reduce temperature and costs. Additionally, Iron Mountain opted to purchase run-of-the-mill K-rated transformers and electrical load centers in the data center, the kind you'd find in an everyday electric supply store, rather than pricey electrical equipment typically used in data centers. The company also incorporated readily available, energy-efficient T8 fluorescent bulbs into its lighting scheme.

Iron Mountain's efforts paid off in spades. The company estimates that Room 48 cost about 30 percent less to build than a traditional data center because of its energy-efficient design and use of standard equipment instead of specialty gear. The various efforts to slash cooling save the company hundreds of thousands of dollars annually. Moreover, the natural cooling allows Iron Mountain to boost power in the room to 200 watts per square foot, 50 percent above the 125 watts per square foot used in data centers located in the same underground facility.

"Room 48's design and construction provided a powerful lesson in discarding prior data center design templates and leveraging the natural advantages this unique location provided," said Doughty. "Future Iron Mountain data centers will use the lessons of Room 48 to help design, construct, and operate the most cost-effective data centers, utilizing the geothermal cooling of the underground."