Tomorrow’s Data Centers: Mother Nature Cools Best

Air vs. Water

 

CHARLES DOUGHTY
Iron Mountain

Charles Doughty is Vice President of Engineering, Iron Mountain, Inc.
We’re all familiar with Moore’s Law, stating that the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles approximately every two years. Whether we measure transistor growth, magnetic disk capacity, the square law of price to speed versus computations per joule, or any other measurement, one fact persists: they’re all increasing and doing so exponentially. This growth is the cause of density issues plaguing today’s data centers. Simply put, more powerful computers generate more heat which results in significant additional cooling costs each year.
Today, a 10,000 square-foot data center that is running about 150 watts per square foot costs roughly $10 million per megawatt to construction, depending on location, design and cost of energy. If the approximately 15 percent rate of data growth of the last decade continues over the next decade, that same data center would cost $37 million per megawatt. A full thirty percent of these costs are related to the mechanical challenges of cooling a data center. While the industry is experienced with the latest chilled water systems, and high-density cooling, most organizations aren’t aware that Mother Nature can deliver the same results for a fraction of the cost.

The Efficiency Question: Air vs. Water

Most traditional data centers rely on air to direct cool a data center. When we analyze heat transfer formulas, it turns out water is even more efficient at cooling a data center, and the difference is in the math, namely the denominator:


With the example above, the energy consumed by the 10,000 square-foot data center creates over 5 million BTUs of heat rejection. Using the formulas in the figures above and assuming a standard delta T of 10 degrees, this data center would require more than 470,000 cubic feet per minute (CFM) of air to cool that facility, but only 1,000 gallons of water per minute. In order to cool this data center, the system would need between 150-200 horsepower to convey that many cubic feet of air per minute, but only 50-90 horsepower to convey 1,000 gallons per minute – roughly 462 times more efficient! If analyzed on a per cubic foot basis – one cubic foot of air to one cubic foot of water, water is actually about 3,400 times more efficient than air.

Physics 101: The Thermodynamics of the Underground

However, for an underground data center, there’s more at work. In a subterranean environment, Mother Nature gives you a consistent ambient temperature of 50 degrees. (So to begin with, you don’t have to depend on cooling systems as much since it is cool to start. Then you can get further efficiencies by using an underground water source or aquifer.)
The ideal environment for a subterranean data center is made of aquifers, or stone that has open porosity like basalt, limestone and sandstone; aquicludes, such as dense shales and clays, will not work as effectively. In a limestone subterranean environment, heat rejection can increase from 4 to 500 percent because of the natural heat sink characteristics of the stone. The most appealing implication here is that the stone can manage the energy fluctuations and peaks inherent to any data center. (the limestone absorbs heat which further reduces the need for cooling)
As the water system funnels 50 degree water from the aquifer to cool the data center, the heat is rejected into the water which is then funneled back about 10 degrees warmer. Mother Nature deals with that heat by obeying the second law of thermodynamics which governs equilibrium and the transfer of energy. For the subterranean data center operator, this means working within the conductivity of the surrounding rock, thus it is important to be knowledgeable of the lithology and geology of the local stratus, along with understanding, the effects of a continuous natural water flow and the psychrometric properties of air.

The Cost of Efficiency

Of course, there are other data center cooling strategies being used aside from the subterranean lake designs including well systems, well point systems and buried pipe systems to name a few. Right now, well systems are being used in Eastern Pennsylvania to cool nuclear reactors producing hundreds of megawatts of energy with mine water. Well point systems are generally used in residential applications, but the concept doesn’t scale well without becoming prohibitively expensive. Buried pipe systems are used quite a bit and require digging a series of trenches backfilled with a relatively good conductive granular material, but beyond 20-30 kilowatts, this method does not scale well.
How much cost do each of these methods incur? An underground geothermal lake design will cost less than $500 per ton, while well-designed chill water systems range from $2,000-4,000 a ton. The discrepancy in cost is created by the mechanics – in a geothermal lake, there are no mechanics: water is simply pumped at grade. Well and buried pipe systems can cost more than $5000 a ton, and these systems do not scale very well.
By understanding Mother Nature and using her forces to our advantage, we can increase the capacity and further improve on the effectiveness of the geothermal lake design. By drilling a borehole from the surface into the cavern, air transfer mechanisms can easily be incorporated; anytime the air at the surface is at or below 50°, that cool air will to drop into the mine. Even without motive force or air handling units, a four to five foot borehole can contribute about 30,000 cubic feet of air per minute! If an air handling unit is add, the 30,000 CFM of natural flow can easily become 100,000-200,000 CFM. What was a static geothermal system is now a dynamic geothermal cooling system with incredible capacity at minimal incurred cost.

Opportunities for the Future

When analyzing and predicting what data centers are going to look like in the future, a recurring theme starts to emerge: simplicity and lower-cost. Because of the cost pressures facing IT departments and CFOs alike, underground data centers using hybrid water, air and rock cooling mechanisms are an increasingly attractive option.
There are even opportunities to turn these facilities into energy creators. For example, by adding power generating turbines atop boreholes, operators can harness the power of heat rising from the data centers below. Furthermore, by tapping into natural gas reserves, subterranean data centers could become a prime energy source, thus eliminating the need for generators and potentially achieving a power usage effectiveness measurement of less than one. The reality is that if you know Mother Nature well, you can work with her – she’s very consistent – and the more we learn, the more promising the future of data center design looks.
 http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2014/03/18/tomorrows-data-centers-mother-nature-cools-best/
Industry Perspectives is a content channel at Data Center Knowledge highlighting thought leadership in the data center arena. See our guidelines and submission process for information on participating. View previously published Industry Perspectives in our Knowledge Library.

Going underground: Will data centers become data bunkers?

Hong Kong is one of the most vertical cities in the world. Like many cities, when it ran out of space, it simply built up instead of out.
But Hong Kong has almost reached its upper-limit for going skyward. And as a financial capital of the world with an incredibly dense population, space is at a premium. That means that large dedicated computing areas, like data centers, have to compete for space with everything else, even though they are in great demand.




The solution for Hong Kong might be to stop building skyward and to start looking under its feet. Data Center Knowledge recently reported that Hong Kong may  dig out rock caves under the city and build new data centers down there. Apparently putting a data center in a deep cave isn't such a bad idea because the naturally cooler below-ground air could help maintain temperatures as long as the cave is properly ventilated.
The biggest problem with the underground concept is likely to be price. It was estimated in the Hong Kong scenario that digging out a tunnel for a data center would cost up to $600,000 per meter. That makes for an expensive project that all but the most profitable data centers would be hard pressed to ever overcome.
But there may be other advantages to building underground. Apparently other underground data center projects are in the works, or even  have been completed in other places, using decommissioned military bunkers as their base of operations. Swedish IPS Bahnhof converted a bunker below central Stockholm into a state-of-the-art data center back in 2008.
The main advantage to using a military bunker, besides the fact that it's already been dug out, is that they were built to survive a nuclear war. Governments looking for the ultimate level of security may want to consider it.
Even with the structure already in place, it will still be expensive to store data in a nuclear-proof  bunkers. Probably credit card companies will take advantage of it. So you can rest easy knowing that in the event of a nuclear war, both cockroaches and your MasterCard bill will survive.

Cavern Technologies builds area’s largest data center underground

Pete Clune, CEO of Cavern Technologies, is pictured in one of the data suites in its underground data center at Meritex Lenexa Executive Park.

Cavern Technologies, located in the underground portion of Meritex Lenexa Executive Park, has begun a $10 million, 100,000-square-foot expansion that will make it the largest data center in the Kansas City region.
The company, which has developed 60,000 square feet of underground space since its founding in 2007, will leapfrog ahead of 1102 Grand LLC in Kansas City, now the region’s largest data center with 110,000 square feet.
Pete Clune, founder and CEO of Cavern Technologies, said several factors were driving the company’s growth.
One is the fact that the data-storage needs of Corporate America are roughly doubling every year and a half, Clune said. Cavern Technologies’ more than 90 existing tenants are expanding their data-storage capacity by 30 percent annually, he said.
Another growth driver is the cost and reliability of electric power provided by Kansas City Power & Light, Clune said. KCP&L charges 8 cents per kilowatt hour, about half of what utilities on the coasts charge.
Cavern Technologies charges its tenants based on power consumed rather than square footage occupied. But as part of its unique data center colocation model, Clune said, it developed the concept of data suites, which allow clients to house servers in dedicated spaces rather than on racks in a huge shared space.
Tenants also like the advantages of having their data center space underground, Clune said. Being “a data center without walls,” he said, Cavern Technologies gives tenants the flexibility of moving and expanding their space quicky. It also protects data from natural disasters and offers a 65-degree ambient temperature that helps tenants minimize cooling costs. A remote energy monitoring system and suite-design recommendations from Cavern Technologies’ staff also keep power costs down, said Scott Herron, the company’s vice president of data center operations.
In addition to providing access to multiple KCP&L substations, Cavern offers high-capacity bandwidth from multiple carriers. The data infrastructure is so robust, Clune related, that a London-based company with space in the center reported that it could send data from London to Lenexa to Scotland faster than it can send it directly to Scotland.
“With Cavern’s focus on the infrastructure piece, including the space, power, cooling, security and bandwidth, our client’s IT department can focus on their unique mission-critical business operations,” Clune said.
The model has attracted some of the nation’s leading health care, financial services, legal and tech companies, said Clune, whose son John is president of the company.
They have guided the underground business to full occupancy in its present 60,000-square-foot-space. In addition, the company has secured commitments for 25 percent of the 100,000 square feet now being built out.
The company will finish the year with nearly $6 million in revenue, Pete Clune said, and will be posting $15 million to $20 million by the time the additional 100,000 square feet is fully occupied.
JE Dunn Construction is the contractor for the expansion. Bell/Knott & Associates is providing the data center design, and Gibbens Drake Scott Inc. is the engineering firm.
Bill Seymour, a senior vice president with Meritex Enterprises, which owns the underground park, said he began working with Pete Clune 10 years ago, when he operated a managed services firm at Meritex.
“I never imagined the type of scale Cavern has now achieved,” Seymour said. “Pete and John have proven the concept, done what they said they would do and give the customers what they want.”

http://www.cityutilities.net/business/springnet.htm

After more than a decade of operation, City Utilities is looking to sell off the climate-controlled data center it operates out of the Springfield Underground.
It's not because the facility, known as SpringNet Underground, hasn't been successful - the cavernous space in the former limestone quarry has proved popular with businesses that need a secure place to store computer servers and other equipment.
So popular, in fact, that "we're coming to the point where we're out of space," CU General Manager Scott Miller said.

2006 SpringNet® is a division of CU, which offers telecommunication services. SpringNet® has

 SpringNet Continues Driving Jobs and Revenue for Local Community

Wed, December 04, 2013 | Posted by dcollado

A year has passed since we covered SpringNet in Springfield, Missouri, and its remarkable impact on local businesses and economic development. We recently spoke with SpringNet Director, Todd Murren, and Network Architecture Manager, Todd Christell, to get an update on how the network is progressing.
Demand for SpringNet’s high-speed data services continues to grow steadily. Financial statements for City Utilities of Springfield show the network generated $16.4-million in operating revenue last year against costs of $13.2-million. Better yet, revenues have increased around 3% per year while cost increases are closer to 0.5%. The end result is close to $3 million in annual net income for SpringNet. And all of this comes from a network that only serves commercial and public sector clients because Missouri state law restricts municipal network provision to only “Internet service,” meaning SpringNet cannot offer triple-play packages to compete with incumbent providers.
One of the highlights of SpringNet’s economic development success has been the attraction and retention of travel giant Expedia. After a large national provider failed to deliver on negotiations with the company, SpringNet stepped in to make sure Expedia brought its call center to Springfield. That effort has paid off handsomely for SpringNet and the local community. Expedia now employs close to 900 in the area after announcing in July that it was hiring another 100 employees in Springfield.
Up next for SpringNet is an effort to leverage its fiber infrastructure to create even more jobs. Believing that future job growth will revolve around the advancements enabled by gigabit networks, SpringNet is working with the Mid-America Technology Alliance (MATA) to host a hackathon with partners in Kansas City to explore what is possible between gigabit cities.
As Murren and Christell tell it, someone in Springfield can now send data to Kansas City with a 5-millisecond delay. It’s like they are in same building despite being hundreds of miles apart. This capability spells opportunity for new ways of doing business and delivering services. SpringNet wants to help the gigabit community develop these opportunities.

http://www.amazon.com/Society-After-Doomsday-Bruce-Beach/dp/0919553206

http://www.radmeters4u.com/beach.htm

 http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/12/04/doomsday-preppers-bruce-beach-interview_n_2237404.html

 AMERICAN BLACKOUT, Nuclear EMP Attack, Nuclear EMP--The Ultimate Cyber Threat, The Sun--The Inevitable Cyber Threat, A Real Life Nightmare Nearer Than You Think.

National Geographic is to be applauded for American Blackout which is essentially a training film to educate the American people about the very real threat posed to their lives by a cyber attack on the electric grid.  If there is any fault or unrealism in the docudrama, it is that the blackout lasts only 10 days, and recovery is achieved so quickly.
In real life, terrorists or rogue states would probably not limit their attack on the nation's electric grid to computer viruses or hacking, as implied in the docudrama.  They would also use other more destructive means--that could cause a protracted national blackout lasting months or years.          
Moreover, Mother Nature can inflict a potentially protracted national blackout.  Regardless of how one weighs the threat to the national grid from terrorists or rogue states--the Sun will, sooner or later, hurl toward the Earth a geomagnetic super-storm, with catastrophic consequences for the national electric grid.  

The only one of its kind out there,

John Galt

May 22, 2013

As a collector of survivalist books and scenarios thru out the years I know the outlines of most are basically along the same lines of thinking which is prepping, how to's and other topics. This book has a different theme which is a Noahs Ark type of book and manual on reconstructing afterwards. If you had to rebuild society from scratch in a scenario like the hero in H.G. Wells 'The Time Machine', in which he had only 2 books to choose from to take with him, which ones would you choose? That question remained but now here is one of the books.

I would recommend getting the CD as well and I have subscribed to the free online newsletter sent as well which I find very informative for news that is related and unreported elsewhere to keep me informed. The dedication this author provides in detailed analysis and his time involved is evident. Not motivated by receiving reward, but promoting his idea of survival for humanity as a whole selflessly at cost to himself in doing so and hassle's from the system, result in an unbiased and serious exercise in discussion in this area that is a first of its kind.

http://www.amazon.com/Society-After-Doomsday-Bruce-Beach/dp/0919553206

 Elizabeth Joyce "Writer - Spiritual teacher"  This book is tragically necessary as a guide for what to do after a major catastrophe, including World War III. Society seems to be in a great age of denial, and not many want to discuss much less think about this subject. Unfortunately we must face the possibility of a situation such as this, and be prepared. If not, we'll be dead, period! How many of us have suffered minor losses, such as electricity, or damages after Katrina and Sandy, hurricanes, flooding, tidal waves, or tornadoes? What and who do we rely on in those times? "The guys" right? You know - the ones who fix the lines, rebuild our homes, or repair our damages. Them - out there - the ones we pay for. Well, in a true Doomsday there may be be no one, it will be up to you and the other survivors.

The dedication this author, and the other researchers involved, provide in a detailed analysis of preparation for what may come, is invaluable. Not motivated by receiving rewards, but the author is similarly promoting his idea of survival for humanity as a whole brings a result in an unbiased and serious exercise in discussion in this area of restarting the world from scratch. That is a first of its kind, for who would truly know how? Your politicians? This book should be a requirement for everyone's book shelf! 

Juan Felipe The author tackles a subject that many people refuse to consider or think about -- the destruction of modern society, most likely precipated by nuclear war, EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse), pandemic, or widespread environmental catastrophe.

Unlike many other "gloom and doom" prognosticators, however, he believes not only that it will be possible to reconstruct society, but that eventually the result may actually be preferable to the one we live in today. He emphasizes that the focus is on "reconstruction" and not "restoration", since "restoration" would eventually result in the same sort of problems that society faces today.

From Chapter 10: "It is my fervent hope that humankind may learn from its mistakes and develop an attitude of universal charity and concern towards all of humanity, regardless of race, religion, culture or other coincidental distinguishing feature."

And a little later: "The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens."

"The purpose for this book is to be a _How To_ manual for use in a post-cataclysmic recovery period by those who wish to reconstruct society in a just manner to _Build a Better World_ (the slogan of Ark Two)."

The heart of the book is the detailed explanation of LERNs (Local Economy Recovery Networks); how they are formed, what are their functions, and how they interact with other LERNs.

A couple of minor quibbles -- the e-book would be more readable with a consistent font size. Most of the boxes with definitions and supplemental information have a miniscule, almost unreadable font compared to the main body of text. That's probably because they are graphics which do not scale up when the main text size is set to a more readable size. And even within the main text, the font size often changes mid-sentence, although only by a point or two.

By 

Gary E. Weller
Imagine if, one minute from now, a lot of person on Earth disappeared. All maybe 6 billion of us. Doomsday. What would happen to the world without a lot humans? How long would it be before our nuclear power plants erupted, skyscrapers crumbled, and satellites dropped from the sky? What would become of the household pets and farm animals? And could an ecosystem plagued with years of pollution ever recover?

In this book, Bruce explore a world you will never want to see--a world without a lot of people. You are in control. Experience the Aftermath. Rebuild, start over, reboot society, farming, food, life with Bruce Beach on survival after disaster scenarios.

Some people are gonna die and there isn't a whole lot we can do about it.

http://www.lightedge.com/
LightEdge Solutions plans underground data center in KC
The Kansas City Star
Sept. 19--A Des Moines-based cloud computing company owned by the Anschutz Corp. will be the premier tenant in a new SubTropolis Data Center in the Kansas City underground.
The company, LightEdge Solutions, and Hunt Midwest Real Estate Development Inc. have announced a partnership to begin work on a 60,000-square-foot "mission critical" data center.
LightEdge will invest nearly $60 million and add 21 jobs in the computer center, the company said, which will be its fourth data center in the Midwest. An opening is planned for the first quarter of 2014.
The new operation will be in Hunt's SubTropolis, which bills itself as the world's largest underground business complex. LightEdge also will use part of a six-acre exterior equipment yard.
LightEdge said it expects to provide carrier-neutral service for AT&T, Surewest, TW Telecom, Time Warner, Unite and Windstream customers and up to 10 gigabits per second network connectivity. The center is served by KCP&L.
The LightEdge development represents the first phase of what could become millions of square feet for the technology center, Hunt Midwest officials said. They cited the underground's high level of security and climate control as pluses for the operation.

Premier colocation and IT cloud service provider expands in Kansas City market

 in expansive underground data center campus

KANSAS CITY, Mo – September 18, 2013 – LightEdge Solutions, a premier cloud computing, colocation, and consulting company, will add a regional data center at the underground SubTropolis Technology Center (STC) in Kansas City. LightEdge will be the anchor tenant in the first phase of STC, a mission critical data center campus owned and operated by Hunt Midwest Real Estate Development.

The new data center, which will be the fourth data center operated by LightEdge, is the result of a unique partnership between LightEdge Solutions and Hunt Midwest, a full-service real estate development company. LightEdge is owned by Qwest founder Phil Anschutz and Hunt Midwest is one of multiple entities owned by the Lamar Hunt family.

“The relationship between LightEdge and Hunt Midwest translates into the convergence of financial strength, best-in-class hosted IT services, experience with hybrid cloud environments, a highly secure and protected location, and low kW power costs compared to other areas of the U.S.,” said Jim Masterson, chief executive officer of LightEdge Solutions.

LightEdge will open the first phase of its 60,000-square foot underground operation, built to Tier III Standards, within STC during the first quarter of 2014. In addition, LightEdge will use a portion of STC’s six-acre equipment yard located on the exterior surface of the property. The highly secure data center will have 24x7x365 monitoring, key card and biometric access.



“In the more than 20 years I’ve been involved in data center development and operations, I’ve never seen a property more appropriate for a data center,” said James deVenny, an independent consultant who was co-founder, president and chief executive officer of Dataside LLC, a provider of enterprise data center space, colocation and managed network services.

“This is an ideal partnership,” said Ora Reynolds, president of Hunt Midwest. “Together, Hunt Midwest and LightEdge have all of the pieces needed to create a world-class data center.”

SubTropolis Technology Center has a naturally hardened limestone infrastructure that provides a fortress six times stronger than concrete and features evenly spaced pillars with 40-foot clearance and 16-foot high ceilings. Millions of square feet are available for contiguous expansion.

Power and HVAC

STC is served by KCP&L, an electric utility known for its award winning reliability. There are two diverse substations and 161 kV transmission lines on the property. The raised-floor facility utilizes Liebert CRAH and Liebert UPS systems with system level redundancy and N+1 components to safeguard power. In addition, parallel diesel-fired generators can deliver 1.5 megawatts of critical load power to the floor. High-efficiency chilled water systems cool the data center environment.

“Hunt Midwest and LightEdge are creating a best-in-class data center infrastructure that will offer a great combination of redundancy and capacity,” said Chuck Caisley, vice president of marketing and public affairs for KCP&L. “The robust electric transmission and distribution network – with multiple substations in the area and proximity to our generating station – directly supports the needs of the technology industry.  In other words, LightEdge’s innovative data center facility at SubTropolis Technology Center makes perfect sense.”

Network Services

LightEdge’s carrier-neutral operation provides the ability to deliver high bandwidth, high reliability and low latency service to customers. LightEdge expects to have the following carriers available when operations begin: AT&T, Surewest, TW Telecom, Time Warner, Unite, and Windstream. Connection with multiple providers, and the nearby 1102 Grand carrier hotel, will provide local private network connectivity up to 10 gigabits per second (Gbps) plus connectivity to the LightEdge cloud for access to other LightEdge data centers.

About LightEdge Solutions

LightEdge Solutions offers dynamic end-to-end network, colocation and IT cloud solutions, providing businesses with reliable access to Fortune 100-level infrastructure that quickly adapts and scales to meet changing business requirements. LightEdge, which is owned by The Anschutz Corporation, was founded in 1996 and is headquartered in Des Moines, Iowa. LightEdge serves both Midwestern and national companies from its five regional office locations with scalable and customized IT solutions that leverage a fully redundant network backbone and a team of experienced engineers.

About SubTropolis Technology Center (STC)

SubTropolis Technology Center is a mission critical data center campus that provides a highly scalable infrastructure for millions of square feet of contiguous expansion; redundant power with low kW costs; and fiber networking to meet the ever-growing bandwidth requirements of businesses. STC is served by KCP&L, with two diverse substations and 161 kV transmission lines on the property. The eco-friendly underground STC campus is protected by a 150-foot layer of limestone, making it a Tier IV compliant structure. STC provides a Meet-Me-Room for interconnection with major carriers and service providers, and a six-acre equipment yard on the exterior surface. In addition to LightEdge Solutions, future phases will include government agencies and enterprise users.

About Hunt Midwest

Kansas City-based Hunt Midwest has developed over 6,200 acres of commercial, retail, industrial and residential property, and is owner/developer of SubTropolis, the world’s largest underground business complex. Hunt Midwest is a privately held company owned by the Lamar Hunt family. The Hunt family business is a diverse portfolio of entities involved in real estate, sports/media, energy/resources, private equity, and investments. Marquee entities include the Kansas City Chiefs, Hunt Midwest, Chicago Bulls, United Center, Toyota Stadium and FC Dallas Soccer Club.

Iron Mountain: #Underground Data Center Tour By: Colleen Miller

Nicholas Salimbene, Director, Business Development, for #Iron Mountain Data Centers, gives a video tour of its underground data center, which is located 220 feet underground. The facility is constructed in a former limestone mine and impervious to #natural disaster from storms to earthquakes. Iron Mountain uses the underground location to cool the data halls, with underground water and naturally low temperatures. The video shows an overview of the facility through stages of construction. Video runs 2:37 minutes.







Welcome to Iron Mountain's premiere underground data center facility, located 200 feet beneath rolling countryside in a former limestone mine. The facility spans 145 acres and provides one of the most physically and environmentally secure colocation infrastructures available.

• Data Bunkers: Iron Mountain’s Built-to-Suit Bunkers
• Iron Mountain is Taking the Data Center Underground
• Inside Iron Mountain’s Room 48
• Microsoft, Iron Mountain Team on CloudRecovery
• Iron Mountain Adding Data Centers

Europe Data Center Provider The Bunker Opens New High Specification Data Hall in Kent

The Bunker News – KENT, UK – The Bunker, provider of ultra secure Managed Hosting, Cloud Computing, Colocation, and Outsourced IT from within Europe’s most secure data centres, is pleased to announce that it has successfully opened a significant new high specification data hall in Kent.
The former military operations room at its South East facility becomes the latest high specification data hall to open in Europe’s most secure data centre. The new data hall has been fitted out with state of the art power and cooling infrastructure, providing up to 32 amps of UPS power per rack and N+1 fully redundant power and air conditioning.


The facility also benefits from hot and cold aisle separation, dual power feeds, generator back-up and over 150 ISP connections available.
The new data hall in Kent is part of The Bunker’s continuing investment programme, to meet the growing demand for high specification, ultra secure data facilities for fully managed and colocation customers.
Simon Neal, Director of Data Centre Services at The Bunker, said: “I’m delighted with the new data floor at our Kent facility. The ongoing investment allows us to expand our business and provide security conscious organisations with the reassurance of knowing that their hosting and managed services needs are being met in an ultra secure, high specification environment.”
Growing awareness of limited power availability and high prices in London is driving up demand for high power density, out-of-London locations. The Bunker is an obvious choice for organisations that require secure, high specification, managed services and colocation hosting facilities.
“The first customer has already moved in and we anticipate a rapid take-up of space and the opening of phase 2 in the near future.” continued Neal.

Bunker 2

State of the art and military grade
 The Bunker is expanding its Kent operations. The Bunker² maintains the highest standards set by The Bunker by blending state of the art M & E infrastructure with military grade security. The new data centre facility provides an alternative highly secure, low risk Internet hub outside London servicing clients who wish to establish systems in the UK, but who also require access to the World Wide Web without entering the high risk London zones.

The Bunker² offers 12,000m² Tier 3 data floor within the existing defences of The Bunker’s facility, along with 2,000m² of office and support accommodation, staffed 24/7/365 by security and technical personnel. The development will be of a modular low profile design, cut into the landscape with a grass roof. Each module of 2,200m² blends into the surrounding environment with minimum visual impact.

London is the second largest Internet Exchange in the world. Unfortunately London is also one of the highest risk cities in the world.



The Bunker² is a Carrier Neutral Data Centre, situated at a strategically important location on the cross roads of the main Internet fibre routes leaving the UK towards Europe, Asia and the USA. For our clients this affords peace of mind that traffic can be routed via the traditional channels across London, however in the event of a catastrophe, disabling the main Internet hubs in the London Docklands and the City, traffic can still route to any location in the world via the main Internet exchanges in Europe.
The next step for a trusted brand

The Bunker² facility
The Bunker² is owned and developed by The Bunker Secure Hosting Limited. The Bunker delivers secure Managed Hosting and Data Centre solutions from within Europe’s most secure Data Centre and has done so since 1994. Our technical leaders are recognised experts in security and cryptography, renowned for their work on Apache-SSL. Our management team includes Data Centre experts with over 10 years experience. The Bunker is ISO 27001 accredited, are recognized experts in Open Source technology, we are Microsoft Gold partners and practice Prince 2 and ITIL standards.

About The Bunker
The Bunker delivers Ultra Secure Managed Hosting, Cloud Computing, Colocation, and Outsourced IT from within Europe’s most secure data centres.

Our data centres, which are outside the M25 yet within easy reach of London, are military-grade nuclear bunkers purpose built to house the UK’s air defence systems. We run 24x7x365 – our NOC monitors systems both nationally and internationally and is staffed around the clock by system and network engineers and security staff. The Bunker is ISO 27001 and PCI DSS accredited and follows ITILv3 best practice and PRINCE2 project management standards.

Our clients are financial services organisations, technology companies, healthcare, government and other regulated businesses that value a premium service built around security.
For more information visit www.thebunker.net
 info@thebunker.net

Subterranean “data bunkers”

Subterranean “data bunkers” in unusual locations continue to stir the imagination of the technology world. The latest data hideout to enter the spotlight is the “Swiss Fort Knox” facility deep below the Swiss Alps, which offers ultra-secure data storage in a nuke-proof data center. The facility was featured in the November issue of Wired magazine.
Like many of the data bunkers, the Swiss Fort Knox facility takes advantage of existing infrastructure. in this case an old Cold War bunker built by the Swiss military and designed to survive a nuclear blast. The facility is really two separate data centers about 10 kilometers apart, which were developed over the past 15 years by SIAG (Secure Infostor AG), a Swiss provider of IT security solutions. Two related companies, Mount 10 Swiss Data Backup and SISPACE AG, provide services within Swiss Fort Knox bunker, with Mount 10 providing secure data backup while SISPACE focuses on records storage and management.

The data center also takes advantage of the cooling potential presented by its location deep under the mountains. The facility uses Mother Nature as its chiller, pulling glacial water from an underground lake to use in its cooling systems. It also features survivalist-level security measures, including face-recognition surveillance software, bulletproof plastics and vault doors courtesy of the Swiss banking industry.

More details of the facility’s operation are available at the web sites for Mount 10 and Swiss Fort Knox.

The Worlds Greenest Underground Data Center

Helsinki:The Worlds Greenest Underground Data Center – Planetsave.com: climate change and environmental news (via Planetsave)

Buildings house secret servers that keep Net humming. Not every data center is a fortress..

CHICAGO – From the outside, the Gothic brick and limestone building a few blocks south of downtown almost looks abandoned.

Plaques identify it as a landmark completed in 1929, a former printing plant that once produced magazines, catalogs and phone books. The sign over the main door says "Chicago Manufacturing Division Plant 1."

There are hints, though, that something is going on inside. Cameras are aimed at the building's perimeter. A small sign at the back entrance says "Digital Realty Trust."

Sturdy gates across the driveway keep the uninvited out.

There's good reason for the intentional anonymity and security, says Rich Miller: "The Internet lives there."

Miller, editor of Data Center Knowledge, which tracks the industry, and Dave Caron, senior vice president of portfolio management for Digital Realty, which owns the 1.1 million-square-foot former R.R. Donnelley printing plant, say it is the world's largest repository for computer servers.

Caron won't identify its tenants, but he says the building stores data from financial firms and Internet and telecommunications companies. "The 'cloud' that you keep hearing about … all ends up on servers in a data center somewhere," he says.

There are about 13,000 large data centers around the world, 7,000 of them in the USA, says Michelle Bailey, a vice president at IDC, a market research company that monitors the industry. Growth stalled during the recession, but her company estimates about $22 billion will be spent on new centers worldwide this year.

The need for data centers is increasing as demand for online space and connectivity explodes. Some are inside generic urban buildings or sprawling rural facilities. For all of them, security is paramount. Inside, after all, are the engines that keep smartphones smart, businesses connected and social networks humming.

Some data centers have "traps" that isolate intrusions by unauthorized individuals, technology that weighs people as they enter and sounds an alarm if their weight is different when they depart, bulletproof walls and blast-proof doors, Bailey says.

When Wal-Mart opened a data center in McDonald County, Mo., a few years ago, County Assessor Laura Pope says she signed a non-disclosure agreement promising "I wouldn't discuss anything I saw in there." She hasn't.

Borrowing a line from a 1999 movie, Miller says, "I used to kid about the Fight Club rule: Rule No. 1 is you don't talk about the data centers, and Rule No. 2 is you do not talk about the data centers."

Although the rapid growth of data centers has diminished their ability to "hide in plain sight," he says, many owners and occupants are "very secretive and … sensitive about the locations."

That makes sense, Miller says. "These facilities are critical to the financial system and the overall function of the Internet."

Making new use of the old

Some data centers — sometimes called carrier hotels because space is leased to multiple companies — are in large urban buildings where they can tap into intersecting networks, Miller says

Old manufacturing facilities such as Chicago's Donnelley printing plant often are repurposed because they have high ceilings and load-bearing floors to support heavy racks of servers.

"They are interesting examples of the new economy rising up in the footprints of the old," he says.

Giant companies such as Google, Facebook, Apple, Yahoo and Amazon often build their data centers in rural areas. "They're looking for cheap power and cheap real estate," Miller says. While the number of private centers grows, the federal government is consolidating. It has more than 2,000 data centers and this summer announced plans to close 373 by the end of 2012.

Communities such as Quincy, Wash., population 6,750, and Catawba County in western North Carolina want to become data center hubs. Catawba and neighboring counties dubbed themselves "North Carolina's data center corridor," says Scott Millar, president of the Catawba County Economic Development Corp.

Apple last fall opened a 500,000-square-foot, $1 billion facility in Catawba County. Google and Facebook have data centers in nearby counties and more are under construction.

Catawba County is building a second data center park in hopes of attracting more, Millar says. Because data centers don't require many employees, most of the permanent jobs are created by contractors who provide electrical, cooling or security support, he says. About 400 people work at the giant Chicago data center; many employ far fewer.

The Apple data center, Millar says, is "pretty secretive." No signs indicate what the building holds, he says, "but everybody knows what it is."

James Lewis, a senior fellow in technology and security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a public policy research group in Washington, D.C., compares the evolution of data centers to changes in the way electricity is generated.

A century or more ago, he says, factories and other companies operated their own electric plants to power their lights, elevators and other functions. Those with spare capacity began to sell it to their neighbors. "That's what happened to computing," Lewis says.

Instead of maintaining computer servers in their own facilities for rapidly growing data storage needs, some businesses locate their servers or backup servers in data centers, he says. They can save money because the centers minimize energy consumption, ensure security and allow computers to share tasks. Data centers also give companies places to store backed-up data that is crucial to their businesses.

"The amount of data in the world doubles every couple of years and people … are willing to pay for it to be stored," Lewis says.

He doesn't think it's essential to conceal the centers' locations, though, because hackers won't try to come in through the front door. "The main source of risk isn't physical, it's cyber," he says. "If hiding the location … is all that they're doing, they're not doing enough."

Tall building, low profile

Keeping a low profile is just the beginning of the security measures at Digital Realty Trust's massive Chicago data center.

The exterior is embellished with terra cotta shields depicting printers' marks. The building occupies almost a full block, is nine stories tall and has a 14-story tower. Inside, there are visible and unseen protections, some of which the company won't talk about publicly. There are guards at both entrances, cameras inside and out, motion sensors and much more. To access the rooms where rows of servers live, a card must be scanned and a fingerprint recognized.

The interior of the building is a mix of old and new. Because it is a landmark, its wood-lined two-story library, which has been used for photo shoots, must be kept intact. Some corridors feature stone arches overhead, and some offices are paneled in English oak.

Other hallways are sterile and silent. Inside the locked doors of the individual data centers are locked metal-grid cages and, inside them, rows of black shelving with the blinking lights of servers visible through the doors. The only sound is an electronic buzz. Cameras scan every square foot of the room.

Between the rows of servers are "cooling aisles" with thousands of round holes in floor tiles feeding cool air into the space. Over the server shelving are ladder racks that suspend "raceways" — yellow plastic casing enclosing fiber optic cables. The shelving doesn't extend to the ceiling; air must circulate above the servers to keep temperatures down.

Caron says it costs $600-$800 per square foot to build a data center and often less than $70 a square foot for a normal industrial building, including the land. The giant printing presses that once filled space in the former Donnelley building made it ideal for conversion to data center use, he says. A data center floor must be able to handle at least 150 pounds and as much as 400 pounds per square foot. By comparison, most office buildings are built for 70 pounds per square foot.

Huge amounts of electricity power all those servers, he says: 100-150 watts or more per square foot, compared with 3-5 watts for each square foot of an office building. To keep the servers running, there's more than one electrical feed into the building and backup systems and generators ensure there's never an interruption in power. The Chicago facility has 63 generators.

Digital Realty Trust, which bought the building in 2005, owns 96 properties, most of them data centers, in the USA, Europe and Asia, Caron says. There is, he says, "a lot of demand" and the company expects to spend up to $500 million this year on acquisitions. Last year it spent more than $1 billion , he says.

'You have no idea what's here'

Not every data center is a fortress. The one owned by the city of Altamonte Springs, Fla., is a former 770,000-gallon water tank next to City Hall.

Lawrence DiGioia, information services director in the city of 40,000, says he relocated the city's servers after being forced by three hurricanes to pack everything up to keep them out of harm's way. The tank has 8-inch-thick walls. "It did a great job holding water in," he says, "so we knew it could keep water out."

Even a small-scale data center needs security, though. DiGioia says his is protected by video surveillance, requires dual authentication to enter and a biometric lock limits access to the server room.

It's even harder to get into the five data centers 200 feet deep in a former limestone mine in Butler County, Pa.

"The facility affords a very high level of security, not only physical — armed guards, steel gates, layers of security, biometrics — but also we're protected from the elements, civil unrest, terrorist-type things," says Chuck Doughty, vice president of the Underground, as it's called, for Iron Mountain, an information management company.

Except for the cars parked outside, he says, "you'd have no idea what's here." Besides 7 million gigabytes of digital data, including e-mail, computer backup files and digital medical images such as MRIs, the Underground is home to documents, film reels and computer backup tapes owned by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Sony Music and Universal, among others.

Doughty worked for years on Room 48, an experiment in making data centers more energy-efficient and reliable, and is working now on ways to utilize some of the cold water in the mine to cool the computer space without using chillers or cooling towers. He hopes to begin construction next year.

The security of data centers, Doughty says, is becoming increasingly important for companies and governments "not only because of the situation in the United States with terrorism, but because of the world situation."

Lewis says one of the lessons of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks was the importance of having data stored in more than one place. As more data centers are built, he says there will be more debate about legal issues: What happens if law enforcement has a warrant for a server that also contains data owned by other companies? Should there be standards for protecting consumers, including requirements that they be notified of breaches? Should data centers be regulated by the government?

John McKay, a visitor to Chicago from Vancouver, Canada, snapped photos of the former printing plant recently. A brochure highlighting historic buildings in the neighborhood had led him to it.

"What a shame," he said, "that it's vacant."

USSHC Ultimate Underground Data Bunker

USSHC was founded in 2002. However, the process of creating the ultimate underground data bunker actually started in 1999 with the needs of an Internet Service Provider. It was found that truly geographic IP transit could not be fulfilled by the local telephone carriers due to telephone tariffs. The larger Tier 1 Network Service Providers could not provide higher reliability because they depend on the local carriers to deliver the local access to their network. No matter how services were delivered via these traditional means, there was always a single point of failure.

There are solutions that use fiber rings to deliver services, but even fiber rings have single points of failure: The telephone exchange central offices.

The only way to have true IP redundancy is to have different connections from multiple IP transit providers from opposite directions, that use different local fiber networks, from entirely different companies. Most data centers try to meet these needs using fiber paths from carriers not bound by telephone tariffs. However, this “solution” was accompanied by a host of other problems.

In terms of physical security, every data center investigated shared a common building with other tenants. Either the data center was an afterthought and added to an existing building (server closet that grew in to dedicated space), or it was purpose built but with much office space and other common space in the same facility. Both of these types of shared structures increase the risk of collateral damage due to fires in the same building, and to security risks due to the large numbers of people sharing the facility. The best data center fire suppression system in the world doesn’t do a bit of good if the office above it building burns down on top of the data center.

Major shortcomings in physical security were also a recurring theme during the search for a data center. Many facilities share common space with other businesses. Despite partitioning off a building, the common mechanical facilities such as chiller plant, and electrical, are typically shared with other tenants. Obtaining building wide security is difficult not only due to the different tenants sharing common areas, but due to reception areas in buildings that were open to the public and entirely unsecured. Most “secure” server spaces were found to be secured from public areas by walls made of sheet rock! Some sheet rock walls contained windows! We desired something a little more secure than two layers of half inch thick sheet rock, or a single pane of glass.

Despite finding several facilities that all claimed to be “hardened” and able to withstand the force of a tornado with walls made of reinforced concrete, and at least one door made of steel with no windows to the outside world, further investigation revealed that at most, they were only partially below ground, (walk out basement) and all lacked physical plant equipment that was designed to operate during major contingencies. They also shared office space in the same building. Time and time again, it was found that 100% of the data centers had their heat rejection and standby power systems above ground. And in no case were the generators or air conditioning systems “hardened” at all. While the servers may survive if the data center took a direct hit from even a small EF-1 tornado, they would not remain operational for any length of time once the uninterruptible power supply batteries were exhausted. Even if the connectivity and building itself survived, and a generator was tough enough to operate after a storm or tornado, the external cooling would not. Even with power, the servers would quickly overheat, leading to downtime, and possible data corruption or loss.

Some data centers that claimed to be “hardened” were found to require a constant feed of municipal water for on site cooling. With all of the redundancy built in to the site, the whole data center could fail due to a non redundant source of cooling water that could be interrupted due to a pipe break, power outage, earthquake, or even simple maintenance. Or the whole data center could fail due to a water pipe break that would flood the facility with a high pressure torrent of municipal water.

Then there were the data centers located in flood plains. We were shocked at just how many data centers were located in flood plains. More alarming was the “head in the clouds” attitude that most had about the flood plain being entirely acceptable because the data center was on an upper floor.

The harder we looked, and the more we uncovered, the more discouraged we became. Eventually however, USSHC solved all of these problems, and then some.

The idea behind USSHC was to provide a safe, secure place to house an Internet Service Provider that would be immune from any form of disaster, “deep in an Iowa underground bunker” where the power would always stay on, and the servers would always stay connected, fully online, and fully operational, despite what was going on in the outside world.

Since it went live in 2002, the facility has been expanded to allow other companies to share the same level of redundancy, security, and performance.

In 2009, USSHC opened the GWAB (Geek with a box data suite) to offer an economical alternative to our premium data center colocation offerings.

Disaster-Proof Data Centers

Disaster-Proof Data Centers
Companies Look To Bunker-Style Hosting Sites For Protection

CIOs who worry about what a bad storm, flood, or fire could do to their corporate data center might consider the ultimate in disaster recovery sites—the bomb shelter. There are a handful of underground data center hosting sites, built in old bomb shelters or mines, and their popularity with private businesses is on the rise. “We will see a lot more [bunker-style data centers] coming up,”

As the data center industry grows, it gets trickier to find ample space to house new facilities or provide companies with room to expand. Interestingly enough, underground locations are a viable option, since a lot of abandoned mines and military bunkers meet necessary criteria. Some underground locations were even built so that reuse would be easy. Directors of these facilities note that people tend to imagine the underground data centers to be dark, drippy holes in the ground, but this is definitely not accurate.

Although anyone with data storage needs might enjoy having such an interesting, high-security facility, so far, underground data centers are especially appealing to high-security organizations like the government. They are extremely well-protected in the event of disasters like hurricanes, tornadoes, and fires, as well as potential terrorist attacks.

Although there are a few issues with some of the underground data centers, like that some of them are in very rural areas, other problems one would imagine to exist, in reality, are not serious obstacles. Water is kept out easily enough, and can even be used for cooling. Limestone mines tend to be dry anyway. The main benefits are the amazing security, and the high amount of readily available space.

It all sounds like a lot of fun to move into, and data center migrations are what we're all about.

Key Points

• Underground data centers offer ultimate protection against natural disasters and terrorist attacks.
• Hosting companies are taking over old military bunkers or abandoned mines to create data centers.
• Bunkers offer lower cooling costs plus extra security services such as biometric readers and armed guards.
• A subterranean data center will be easier to secure against unauthorized entry and terrorist attacks.

The NBC Nightly News team travelled to one of Iron Mountain’s underground data centers to discover some of the treasures that are protected in this super-secure location. This is the same location where they protect thousands of our customers’ server and PC data.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Cloud of massive servers located in huge underground data centers.

The Big Switch

The Big Switch

In an interview with Nicholas Carr , author of The Big Switch he talks about the idea of computing becoming a utility. I think the idea of this becoming a reality is a very good thing. The idea of giving the user the ability to not just accesses their data, but their entire set up, there programs setting book marks on any computer at any time is the future. People will no longer be forced to carry all of their data around with them on laptops with huge hard drives. All data will be stored in the cloud of massive servers located in huge underground data centers.

This could completely change the game when it came to buying a computer. People will no longer need that 2.9GHz Core 2 Duo processor. The speed of your processor would mean nothing because all of the large amounts of computing that eat up the processor on a current computer, will be handled back at the server end. The hard drive space on a new computer can be much smaller then they are today and the user would only need enough space to hold a OS and a browser. This will completely change the way we buy computers today. Computers can become much smaller and lighter as can be seen with today’s netbooks.

The huge battle over operating systems could ended forever because if everything is stored on the cloud the user is no longer constrained by there OS. I am not running that program locally on my computer it is running in some data center. So why would it matter what OS I would use?

The idea of cloud computing could change the world and they way we use computers and I hope that one day it does.

Underground Data Centers

The Underground Data Centers & Bunker Boom

Rich Miller

The expansion by The Bunker reflects the growing niche for underground “nuke-proof” data storage facilities housed in former military facilities, mines or limestone caves. These subterranean fortresses have strong appeal for tenants seeking ultra-secure hosting that will survive any eventuality – including a nuclear blast.This trend has given new life to aging military bunkers in the US, UK and Canada. Although security is usually the primary motivation for customers, underground facilities offer advantages to the data center operator. Chief among them is cooling, as these subterranean facilities typically have a natural temperature of 60 degrees or lower.

There are challenges as well, especially managing humidity that can be harmful to servers. Underground data centers also can’t receive certification under the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) program for energy efficient buildings because the U.S. Green Buildings Council’s standards has no provision for subterranean facilities.

Here’s a list of all the underground data bunker projects we’ve been tracking at Data Center Knowledge:

• Bahnhof Pionen: Better known as the “James Bond Villain” data center, this former military bunker is 100 feet underneath Stockholm, Sweden and features waterfalls, greenhouse-style NOC, glass-enclosed conference room “floating” above the colocation floor, and blue-lit diesel engines.
• SmartBunker is an ultra-secure data center located in a former NATO command bunker in Lincolnshire, UK. The power used within the 30,000 square feet data centre is generated entirely from wind energy. SmartBunker says it is the first UK facility with no carbon emissions.
• The U.S. Secure Hosting Center is an underground colocation center in Iowa that hosts the web infrastrucutre for Wikia, one of the projects of the Wikimedia Foundation.
• Iron Mountain hosts data center operations for Marriott Corp. and other customers in its huge data storage facility located 220 feet underground in a limestone cave outside Pittsburgh. The 145-acre facility has its own fire company, water treatment plant and 24-hour security and maintenance force.
• Montgomery Westland, previously known as the Westlin Bunker, operates 40,000 square feet of underground data center and office space in Montgomery, Texas. The facility was initially built by Ling-Chieh Kung, a nephew of Chiang Kai-shek and founder of Westlin Oil. Fearing a nuclear war, the reclusive Kung built a nuke-proof survival shelter.
• The Mountain Complex is a disaster recovery data center in a former mine built into the side of a dolomite mountain in the Ozarks near Branson, Missouri. The facility houses backup data for thousands of financial institutions.

Iron Mountain's 22 stories experimental Room 48

Underground Data Centers: Iron Mountain's 22 stories experimental Room 48

This data center is quiet, sans fans -- and energy efficient to the extreme

Lucas MearianDown a road that winds through the rolling hills of western Pennsylvania, just across from a cow pasture, the bucolic scenery of Butler County is interrupted by a high chain-link fence topped with razor wire.

Cars entering the compound are channeled into gated lanes before being searched by a guard. A short distance beyond the security point, the road disappears into a gaping hole in a cliff face. The hole is sealed off by the thick, steel bars of a tall sliding gate controlled by guards carrying semiautomatic pistols. They are protecting a 25-foot-high passage that leads 22 stories down to Iron Mountain's main archive facility, which takes up 145 acres of a 1,000-acre abandoned limestone mine.

Behind steel doors

Among dozens of red steel doors inserted in the rock face along corridors that create an elaborate subterranean honeycomb, you'll find Room 48, an experiment in data center energy efficiency. Open for just six months, the room is used by Iron Mountain to discover the best way to use geothermal conditions and engineering designs to establish the perfect environment for electronic documents.

Room 48 is also being used to devise a geothermal-based environment that can be tapped to create efficient, low-cost data centers. (For information on more companies using geothermal conditions to improve data center efficiency, see "Riding the geothermal wave.")

There is no raised floor in Room 48. Instead, networking wires are suspended above rows of server racks and cooled both by the limestone walls and vents attached to ceiling-mounted red spiral ducts 36 inches in diameter. The HVAC system uses the cool water of an underground lake hundreds of acres in size.

Massive limestone columns support Iron Mountain's man-made caverns
Click to view a slide show of The Underground

Outside light is beamed into the main aisle of the room through a long ceiling tube to reduce heat. Rows of server racks are encased in rectangular metal containers that trap electrical heat and force it up through perforated ceiling tiles, allowing the 55-degree limestone roof to absorb heat that otherwise would build up in the 4,100-square-foot room.

"Limestone can absorb 1.5 BTUs per square foot," Charles Doughty, the vice president of engineering at Iron Mountain, said during a recent tour of the facility by Computerworld. Facts on molecular chemistry and mineral properties roll off 61-year-old Doughty's tongue. He has worked as a technologist and archivist in the tunnels of the one-time mine for 37 years, studying thermodynamics in an ever-evolving effort to create the perfect environment for storing paper and electronic records.

An underground office

Doughty's underground office is adorned with dark wood furniture that's upholstered in the type of rich leather befitting his executive status. The furniture and carpeted floors contrast sharply with a rough-hewn wall of prehistoric rock. The office sits just off a larger room filled with cubicles that also butt up against rock walls, which are painted white to better reflect light and suppress any limestone dust.

Charles Doughty's underground office
Click to see larger view

The Underground, as the mine is called by employees, has its own cafe and a fire department with three engines. Like the other 2,700 workers here, Doughty traverses miles of roadways and tunnels in golf carts. Iron Mountain employs just 155 people in The Underground, the rest work for companies renting space in the facility.

An endurance kayaker who owns a working 30-acre farm and is training for an iron-man competition, Doughty is an idea man in a subterranean environment. He calls it "the best job in the world. I only get to create ideas. Other people do the work to make it happen. "

From mine to storage

Four hundred million years ago, a teeming ocean covered this area. And during a 100-million-year period, billions of tiny crustaceans died, their skeletons settling to the ocean floor, fossilizing and creating layer upon layer of limestone.

In 1902, U.S. Steel began blasting out that limestone for use in the production of metal for skyscrapers, railways and the rest of the nation's booming infrastructure. By 1950, U.S. Steel ceased mining operations and began using the man-made caverns to protect its corporate records from the Cold War-era threat of atomic bombs. The company quickly saw a business opportunity in renting out mine space to other companies and to the U.S. government for vital-records archiving. Thus was born in 1954 the National Storage Company.

More than four decades later, in 1998, it was bought by Iron Mountain, which had itself started under similar circumstances in an iron ore mine in upstate New York. There, in 1951, Herman Knaust opened the Iron Mountain Atomic Storage Corp.

While the Iron Mountain facility in Pennsylvania may best be known as the home to the photographic collection of Bill Gates' Corbis Corp. venture, it also houses the records of countless corporations and highly sensitive government agencies in its array of tunnels.

Doughty is focused on creating the most naturally efficient data center. One of his latest ideas is to drill a shaft from the hillside down to the mine's lake and allow winter air to turn it into a slushy mix that can be used during summer months to dissipate heat in the mine's data centers.

Light is beamed into Room 48 from outside
Click to see larger view

Unlike other limestone mines which are normally covered in layers of porous sandstone, The Underground was blessed with a roof of shale, which acts as natural umbrella. Water is absorbed into the ground around the mine, instead of through its ceiling. The subterranean lake is an anomaly created when rain or surface water percolates down and around the limestone outcropping through layers of porous soils and rock strata into caverns at the low point of the mine where, at depths of four to eight feet, it spans hundreds of acres. For now, Iron Mountain uses the lake water cooling incoming mine air but does not currently the HVAC systems. But Doughty believes the 50-degree water could eventually be circulated to the data center and back to the lake to naturally expel heat.

"We'd like to get to the point where we expend no energy for cooling," Doughty explained.

While there are four other data centers in the mine, the subterranean facility's dehumidified air and cooler temperatures were initially only seen as advantageous to storing paper, photos, film and microfiche, which under the right conditions could last 2,000 years, according to Doughty. The mine's natural environment wasn't used to disperse heat and reduce energy consumption in data centers -- until Room 48 opened.

Room 48

Room 48 is starkly quiet compared to typical data centers. It creates its own wind through the use of alternating hot-air and cold-air server rack aisles. The high static air pressure differential between the aisles separating rows of server racks naturally causes cold air to drop and hot air to rise through the perforated ceiling tiles and vents that run parallel along air ducts.

Iron Mountain also removed power distribution transformers and computer room air conditioning -- common in other data centers -- from inside the data center and located them outside to further reduce heat. That move also freed up about 30% more space, Doughty said.

By setting the room's return air temperature to 75 degrees, Iron Mountain cut energy consumption for cooling by between 10% and 15% compared with the company's traditional data centers. They operate between 70 and 72 degrees. The natural cooling also allowed Iron Mountain to boost power in the room to 200 watts per square foot, more than 50% above the 125 watts per square foot used in the other data centers located in the mine. Room 48 also cost about 30% less to build than they did because the design favored efficiency and cost reduction over specialty equipment.

For example, instead of buying expensive electrical equipment designed specifically for data centers, Iron Mountain went to the same electrical supply stores any electrician would frequent to purchase K-rated transformers or electrical load centers. "Anything you buy for a computer room is expensive," Doughty said.

Room 48's servers are not yet water cooled
Click to see larger view

Iron Mountain also installed low-energy T8 fluorescent lamps enclosed in tubes to reduce convection, although most of the time the room is dark because lights are controlled by motion sensors in each aisle.

While the mine's water isn't yet being used to directly cool server racks, Doughty said that will be incorporated into future design changes. He's convinced that all data centers will shift toward water-cooled racks. And he expects that geographical positioning using locations where natural cooling or energy resources can be exploited for efficiency will be the future of new data center construction.

Riding the geothermal wave

Iron Mountain is just one of several such experimental efforts under way using geothermal conditions to power or improve the cooling efficiency of data centers. In February 2008, American College Testing (ACT) in Iowa City, Iowa was the first data center in the U.S. to be awarded the Platinum certification in the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program, a voluntary rating system for energy efficient buildings overseen by the U.S. Green Building Council.

The Underground has three fire trucks on call
Click to see larger view

The ACT operation has a 4,000-square-foot raised-floor data center cooled by a geothermal "bore field." The bore field consists of holes drilled into the earth and a closed-loop piping system filled with water or coolant that uses the cool underground conditions to exchange heat.

ACT isn't alone; other companies approved for Platinum status include Citigroup data center in Germany and Advanced Data Centers in Sacramento.

Google is hot on the technology as well and has invested more than $10 million in three companies developing geothermal energy systems. The technology, called Enhanced Geothermal Systems, replicates naturally occurring pockets of subterranean steam and hot water by fracturing hot rock and using the resulting steam to produce electricity.

And in July, Microsoft opened a 700,000-square-foot data center in Northlake, Ill., that uses outside air as part of the cooling system.

Interest in geothermal technology isn't surprising, said Doughty. "Energy costs are increasing exponentially so that the cost to operate the data center is becoming the greatest cost. People who can leverage the geographic location or a subterranean location will achieve the greatest benefit."