InfoBunker

The lure of underground data centers

Subterranean facilities provide security and energy savings — and they’re cool, too.

By Drew Robb - Tech Page One Aug 26 2014


Every evil genius deserves his own subterranean bunker with a supercomputer to plot world domination. The economy being the way it is these days, however, most can’t afford to build their own lair. Fortunately, there are plenty of underground facilities that you can share with other businesses and organizations. There is a coolness about these locations, and not just because the ground temperature is in the 50s year round.
“There is a certain James Bond allure to the underground data center,” said John Clune, president of Cavern Technologies. “Many of our customers utilize the location in their marketing to show how seriously they take data storage and protection.”

One of TelecityGroup’s five data centers in Helsinki, Finland, is housed under the Uspenski Cathedral. Credit: Shutterstock

Here are four companies in the U.S. and Europe that are running underground data centers.

Unorthodox location

London-based TelecityGroup operates five data centers in Helsinki, Finland. One of them is located in a former bomb shelter 100 feet below the 150-year-old Eastern Orthodox Uspenski Cathedral. By using sea water and a heat exchanger, it uses 80 percent less energy for cooling than a typical data center. But not all the heat is sent to the sea. The water first circulates to a heat exchanger serving the city’s district heating system, with the servers providing enough heat for 500 homes. The data center won an Uptime Institute Green Enterprise IT award in 2010.

Data mining

 

Cavern Technologies built a 50-megawatt, 300,000-plus square-foot data center in a former limestone mine near Lenexa, Kansas. Being 125 feet underground means that the site is secure from the tornados, ice storms and hail that can hit above-ground data centers in the region.
“From day one, we have a hardened F5 tornado-proof [261 to 318 miles per hour] structure,” said Clune. “Above ground, it costs up to $150 per square-foot for a hardened shell. On a 100,000-square-foot building, that is a cost savings of $15 million that we can pass on to our customers.”

Secure storage

 The Green Mountain Data Center is a Tier III+ facility located in a former NATO ammunition storage facility on an island in western Norway. Three-hundred-foot-long tunnels connect the data center rooms to the outside world. Although the site is physically remote, high-speed connections mean it is only 4.5 milliseconds from Aberdeen, Scotland and 6.5 milliseconds from London.

One of the main advantages of the site is its energy efficiency. Located on the shoreline, it draws 46- degrees -Fahrenheit water from a fjord, an arrangement that allows a 200-kilowatt pump to produce 26,000 kilowatts of cooling. The system is designed for high-density computing, up to 60 kilowatts per rack. Since it is deep underground, the cooling system never has to offset heating caused by the sun striking the walls and roof. In addition, Norway has abundant hydropower, so the data center operates without greenhouse gas emissions and the power costs about 40 percent less than it does in London.
“We wanted to build the greenest data center in the world and being underground helped in so many ways,” said Jonathan Evans, Green Mountain’s international accounts director.

Cold War bunker

When InfoBunker went looking for an ultra-secure location for a high-availability data center, it wound up taking over a building that was already designed for high-tech applications: a former military communications center near Des Moines, Iowa, that was built to survive a direct nuclear hit.
“From a functionality standpoint the building is performing exactly the same services it did while under military control, only now geared towards the private sector,” said Jeff Daniels, InfoBunker’s executive vice president. “From a cost perspective it was also far less expensive than a greenfield data center project as we could make use of almost all the existing base infrastructure and our [capital expenditure] was limited to upgrading/modernizing systems and building the actual data floor into what was essentially white-box space.”
Although at just 25 feet deep it is much closer to the surface than some of the other underground data centers, the amount of steel and concrete used gives it strength. Daniels said that to replace the building today, with all its hardening and critical systems would have cost over $100 million. But it did also require additional work to drill holes for pipes and conduits.
“The floor is two foot thickness of 6,000 PSI-rated concrete and has steel reinforcing bars the size of your wrist all through it,” said Daniels. “It eats core drill bits like popcorn.”
The facility is designed for 10 kilowatts per rack and uses outside air-cooling nine months of the year, using the heated air to warm the offices. The building stays at about 55 degrees Fahrenheit year-round and can act as a buffer to absorb some of the heat if the HVAC goes down. Waste heat from the servers is used to keep the office spaces comfortable.

Zombie apocalypse

Data centers such as these are even being touted as a place where people could potentially survive a “zombie apocalypse.”
“Despite advertising ourselves as a 20-megaton nuclear-hardened data center we do not anticipate ever being nuked,” said Daniels. “InfoBunker was however nominated one of the top six ‘zombie-proof’ green data centers worldwide.”

Deep underground in Butler County, the Iron Mountain National Data Center functions like its own little city. With more than 3,000 badged employees, the former mine has its own fire department, restaurant, transit systems, water treatment center, and medical center. (Justine Coyne/Pittsburgh Business Times).

But what may be most surprising about this unique facility, located outside of Pittsburgh in Boyers, is the treasures that are stored inside.
Formerly a limestone mine owned by United States Steel Corp. (NYSE: X) in the early 1900s, today the mine houses everything from original prints of classic motion pictures, to data storage for more than 2,300 business and government agencies across the U.S.
Located 220 feet underground, Nick Salimbene, director of business development for Iron Mountain, said what makes the facility so unique is that it is virtually impervious to natural disasters. Salimbene said being housed underground also provides a stable environment that naturally maintains a temperature of 52 degrees.
Of the 145 acres that are developed, Salimbene said about 70 percent is used for physical storage. But demand is shifting toward more data storage. He said the demand for data storage has been increasing between 20 percent and 30 percent annually in recent years. Today, he said about 80 percent of what is coming into the center today is data.
For the privacy of its customers, Iron Mountain does not disclose who uses the Boyers facility by name. But it includes many big names. One tenant Salimbene could discuss is Corbis Corp., which houses its collection of over 20 million photographs .
"There's a little bit of everything here," Salimbene said. "But the most important thing for us, is that our customers feel secure having their items located here."
Obviously, with such valuable objects in its facility, security is very tight at Iron Mountain, with armed guards keeping watch 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
"We have companies trusting us with their most valuable assets," Salimbene said. "That's not something we take lightly."

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

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

Underground Disaster-Proof Data Centers

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

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.

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 see a lot more [bunker-style data centers] coming up,” says Michael Petrino, vice president of data center consulting firm PTS Data Center Solutions (www.ptsdcs.com), who says he’s worked with 10 such data centers over the past few years.

With names like The Underground and InfoBunker, their purpose is fairly clear—to offer total protection against any and all disasters that might bring down a regular data center. Petrino points to financial firms, utility companies, and any publicly traded company that is subject to Sarbanes-Oxley and other government regulations as being prime customers for hardened data centers. Continental Airlines, for example, has a backup data center inside the Montgomery Westland bunker (www.westlandbunker.com) in Montgomery, Texas, which is a former nuclear fallout shelter.

Other companies don’t have such sensitive operations as an airline or bank but still want the security of having an indestructible backup location. Wikia, which operates a consumer publishing platform, went looking for a disaster recovery center in 2007 and wound up renting space inside the United States Secure Hosting Center (www.usshc.com) in Monticello, Iowa. The Iowa center offers a central location between Wikia’s primary San Jose and secondary New Jersey data centers and pretty much guarantees that Wikia sites won’t be down should there be a major disaster on either coast.

“We wanted a disaster recovery location mainly to protect against fire and earthquake in the Bay area. Our entire business relies on being online, so we need to be able to continue to function if [our] primary data center goes away,” says Artur Bergman, the VP of engineering and operations at Wikia.

There were other factors behind the decision, namely service levels and costs. Bergman notes that the real estate costs are lower in Iowa, compared to California and New Jersey, leading to more attractive rates for data center space. But the fact that the center was underground and essentially disaster-proof was also an attractive feature. “If we are spending that money for disaster recovery, we felt it should fit that function as well as possible,” says Bergman.

Behind The Bunker

The majority of the data center bunkers in the U.S. were originally built as either bomb shelters or bomb-proof communications facilities for the government during the Cold War or are inside old mines or caves. USSHC, for instance, was originally one of several bunker locations established by the U.S. government to protect military and government telecommunications links in the event of a foreign attack on the U.S. Iron Mountain’s The Underground, the oldest bunker data center in the U.S., was formerly an iron ore mine.

Computer data and communications are at least as important as electricity to most businesses, and a disaster could put this important data at risk. Considering this, the idea of putting the corporate server inside a bunker may sound pretty good to many CIOs. Even fairly small-scale local disasters can quickly create a surge in interest for disaster-proof data centers. When Iowa experienced flooding last spring, and hundreds of businesses in Iowa City and Cedar Rapids found themselves with waves lapping at their doorsteps, USSHC began fielding a deluge of inquiries, often from businesses looking to move in that week.

“It often takes that kind of an event to get people interested,” says Isaac Helgens, project and marketing director at USSHC. “People often put off colocating because they love their servers, they want to hold them close. But these days, it’s not necessary to have your servers right with you. Anything you can do locally, you can do remotely.”

Helgens notes that a big advantage of a bunker data center is not so much its underground location—though that is important in the event of a hurricane or tornado—but that it is an independent structure, not shared with any other tenant. “We’ve seen good above-ground data centers, with good structures and fire detection, but their own neighbors on other floors presented a high risk. If you have a call center above your data center, for example, then you have a fire suppression system up there that may go off and wreak havoc on the floor below it. There’s also plumbing that can leak. Or another tenant could be running a fireworks factory for all you know,” says Helgens.

What You Get In A Bunker

Underground data centers typically feature 3- or 4-foot thick walls, fire proofing, and fire detection. Generators, fuel tanks, and cooling systems are usually either underground or just under the surface, to protect them from being destroyed by wind or lightening.

Besides the disaster-proof infrastructure, such centers also have high levels of service and security. InfoBunker (www.infobunker.com), in Des Moines, Iowa, offers biometric keypads and pan and zoom security cameras. Cavern Technologies (www.caverntechnologies.com) in Lenexa, Kan., has security guards, smart card access, and motion detectors. Iron Mountain’s The Underground in Pennsylvania provides armed guards, magnetometers, X-ray scanners, and visitor escorts.

As with regular data center providers, bunker centers provide various concierge services and data center staff to help customers manage their equipment. Should a customer at USSHC need to switch its operations to its backup site at USSHC, it provides the staff with work facilities, office space, phones, and other standard equipment. While it assumes that the customer’s staff will come in to man the backup operation, USSHC provides support staff to help get started.

Although the costs of security, services, and infrastructure tend to be higher with a bunker, there are savings in other areas. For instance, underground data centers are naturally cooler and can take advantage of geothermal energy. “Once you go underground, you have a much lower, steady temperature. It’s the same benefit a cave offers you. I’ve seen several reports that put the savings at upwards of 30% per year in energy usage,” says Petrino. Depending upon the region, utility rates may be cheaper, as well. In Iowa, for instance, customers can get power for $12 to $15 per amp, according to Helgens. At the same time, bandwidth rates may be higher if the bunker is in a remote location, as many are. USSHC pays two to three times the rates for bandwidth that they would if they were located in a major city.

For Wikia staff to fly to the Iowa data center, they would have to pay over $850 per person, with at least one connection. Instead, they have opted to fly into Chicago and drive the extra five hours by rental car. Because they only do it once or twice a year, it’s not a major issue, but for companies that want closer contact with their backup sites, it could be a problem.

For most customers considering a bunker, however, it’s the remote location that adds to the appeal, as it means there is less of a chance for a terrorist attack or security breach. New bunker data centers continue to be opened in rural or small-town spots—such as in tiny Hastings, Neb., where the newly launched Prairie Bunkers (www.prairiebunkers.com) plans to turn 184 WWII naval ammunition storage bunkers into individual data centers. Other companies are working on various underground data center projects, most hosted but a few being built for internal company use. Petrino says he’s aware of at least three financial firms and a government entity that are building their own bunkers.

“As the criticality of data comes into play for more and more businesses, offsite tape storage alone won’t be enough,” he says. “Clients are pushing for more and better data backup. Tapes get lost after all. So if you have these types of [online, secured] facilities, you can be more competitive.”

by Sue Hildreth

http://www.processor.com/editorial/article.asp?article=articles%2Fp3124%2F34p24%2F34p24%2F34p24.asp&guid=&searchtype=&WordList=&bJumpTo=True

U.S. Data Center Bunkers

Data Center	Location	URL
Cavern Technologies	Lenexa, Kan.	www.caverntechnologies.com
DataChambers	Winston-Salem, N.C.	www.datachambers.com
InfoBunker	Des Moines, Iowa	www.infobunker.com
Iron Mountain	Butler County, Pa.	www.ironmountain.com
Montgomery Westland	Montgomery, Texas	www.westlandbunker.com
Prairie Bunkers	Hastings, Neb.	www.prairiebunkers.com
StrataSpace	Louisville, Ky.	www.strataspace.com
SpringNet Underground	Springfield, Mo.	www.springnetunderground.net
US Secure Hosting Center	Monticello, Iowa	www.usshc.com