The Green Mountain Data Center

The Green Mountain Data Center is adjacent to a fjord, which provides a supply of 8 degree C water that will be used in the cooling system.

Green Mountain Data Center

 Green Mountain Data Center
Located inside the mountain in a former NATO ammunition depot (the largest in northern Europe)
Built for the highest military security level. Secured against electromagnetic pulses (EMP)
"Nuclear secure" facility, secured against sabotage and direct attack from the sea.

Green Mountain Data Center

 Green Mountain Data Center a prime piece of real estate tucked inside a scenic Norwegian mountain. Built next to a cool water fjord and surrounded by evergreens and lush rock-clinging mosses, the space boasts of bright, airy subterranean halls carved out of natural cave walls and almost transcendental settings above ground. This will be the comfortable new home for many of Norway’s data servers. The Green Mountain Data Center is one of the first pioneering data centers that will greatly reduce its costs by harnessing the cooling power of the environment, namely, the steady flow of cool water from an adjacent fjord. Alas, the grass seems to be consistently always greener in Scandinavia.
The Green Mountain Data Center contains nine ‘Mountain Halls’—each spanning well over 1,000-square-meters of space to host rows and rows of servers—a workshop, and an administration building. Its servers will be hooked up to an uninterrupted supply of power from a total of eight independent generators as well as three supply lines connected to the central Norwegian network, and its carbon footprint has been thoroughly eliminated.


Of course its most compelling feature, aside from its generally pleasant, Hobbit-like atmosphere noted by Gizmodo, is the cooling system, which relies on the nearby Rennesøy fjord to provide an abundance of cold water year round to cool its resident motherboards. Facebook has gone a similar route by planting a server farm in the Arctic, but we wouldn’t be hard pressed to say that we like the hospitable environment of this data farm better, and it’s nice to see yet another Scandinavian mountain bunker to add to our favorites!

The Mountain Hall

    Approx. 21,500 m2 floor space in the mountain
    The areas consists of:
    – 6 mountain halls each of 1,855 m2
    (11 x 164 m each) in size
    – 2 mountain halls of 1,546 m2 (19 x 82 m each) in size
    - 1 Mountain hall with internal structure 1,370 m2 in size
    - I.e. combined mountain halls of 15,692 m2
    - Warehouse/workshop 520 m2
    - Administration building 840 m2
    - Quay w/"roll on-roll off" option

 Fire safety and fire
protection

    Closed caverns enable the use
    of inert / hypoxic air ventilation
    Reduced oxygen level to prevent fire and smoke
    - 02 reduced to 15 -16 %
    - Fire cannot arise as the combustion process
    does not get enough oxygen
    - Corresponds to an altitude of approx. 3,000 m
    Hypoxic air ventilation/Inert ventilation system
    - Reduces/limits smoke formation
    - Prevents combustion/fire
    - Ensures continuous operation
    - No fire damage
    - No secondary extinguishing damage (corrosion,
    harm to the environment, poisoning, etc.)
    - No problems with hard disks due to the triggering
    of fire extinguishing equipment

 Safe as a vault

    Located inside the mountain in a former NATO
    ammunition depot (the largest in northern Europe)
    Built for the highest military security level
    - Secured against electromagnetic pulses (EMP)
    - "Nuclear secure" facility
    - Secured against sabotage and direct attack
    from the sea
    "Best in class" data security

 Communication
- redundancy

    High capacity and redundancy
    Local broad band operators
    Good connectivity to the world
    Multiple high capacity lines to Oslo
    Multiple high capacity lines directly to the UK
    Multiple high capacity lines to continental Europe
    Carrier neutral availability

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."

Iron Mountain finds limestone a natural fit for data center efficiency

Iron Mountain

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

"A major challenge was helping our engineers and equipment suppliers understand the basic physics, thermodynamics, and electrical transformation and distribution of this unique location and how they could be leveraged -- and not just apply typical data center designs that have been used for the last 25 years," said Doughty.
The location's geothermal and subterranean conditions open up opportunities for energy reduction that you wouldn't find in a traditional data center. For starters, the natural temperature of the facility is between 55 and 65 degrees, so Room 48 benefits from free cooling. Ducting above the servers pushes air down naturally, using far less power than would be necessary to blow air upward, as a traditional data center would.
Iron Mountain also employs a cold-air containment strategy, which uses the limestone walls and ceiling vents to cool wires and cables hanging above the server racks to increase cool-air distribution by up to 20 percent. At the same time, air pressure differentials force warm air from the servers up and out through perforated ceiling tiles. Room 48 (which gets its name from its location on the underground facility map) has no need for raised floors found in traditional data centers, thanks to the natural limestone walls' ability to absorb 1.5 BTUs per square foot per hour.
Geothermal and subterranean conditions of former limestone mine yield significant savings on cooling
Mother Nature alone isn't responsible for the efficiency gains of the facility. As part of the design, Iron Mountain located the power distribution and air conditioning equipment outside of the facility, resulting in a further reduction in heat while freeing up 30 percent more space for racks.
Room 48 uses motion-sensor, low-power, low-heat lighting to further reduce temperature and costs. Additionally, Iron Mountain opted to purchase run-of-the-mill K-rated transformers and electrical load centers in the data center, the kind you'd find in an everyday electric supply store, rather than pricey electrical equipment typically used in data centers. The company also incorporated readily available, energy-efficient T8 fluorescent bulbs into its lighting scheme.

Iron Mountain's efforts paid off in spades. The company estimates that Room 48 cost about 30 percent less to build than a traditional data center because of its energy-efficient design and use of standard equipment instead of specialty gear. The various efforts to slash cooling save the company hundreds of thousands of dollars annually. Moreover, the natural cooling allows Iron Mountain to boost power in the room to 200 watts per square foot, 50 percent above the 125 watts per square foot used in data centers located in the same underground facility.
"Room 48's design and construction provided a powerful lesson in discarding prior data center design templates and leveraging the natural advantages this unique location provided," said Doughty. "Future Iron Mountain data centers will use the lessons of Room 48 to help design, construct, and operate the most cost-effective data centers, utilizing the geothermal cooling of the underground."

Underground Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity Centers in the US

Montgomery Westland is owned by Pudge Properties. Since acquiring the property in April 2007 the partners have invested over $15M in campus improvements. The partnership has committed to develop the campus into one of the largest Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity Centers in the US.

The Montgomery Westland facility sits on 52 acres in Montgomery Texas. The property is secured by 24 hour guard, completely fenced, with total camera surveillance and biometric-card key access. It is located approximately 40 minutes from Houston, 100 miles from the gulf coast. An onsite helicopter pad is provided for emergency access when required. The Montgomery Westland campus is 300 feet above sea level. It is a comprehensive data campus that offers business continuity solutions and data storage in an optimal secure environment. The data campus consist of an existing 100,000 square foot office building for Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity and a 33,000 square feet of secure underground data storage space in our bunker. The bunker space can be scaled for collocation by the unit, cabinets, caged suite or customized private suite. We offer Tier 11 and Tier 111 storage solutions.

Power to the facility is fed by two diverse routes. Power distribution is supplied via two 4000a/480V switchboard, six generator sets provide a total capacity of 4600KW, and UPS power is supplied via (6) 500kva modules. There are four underground fuel tanks with a storage capacity of 57,000 gallons. Bunker space is provided with a minimum of N+1 cooling utilizing Liebert down draft units with humidification, reheat, and moisture detection. Temperature, humidity, and alarm conditions are monitored electronically 24/7.

The master plan for Montgomery Westland includes a four phase expansion in office buildings for business continuity/disaster recovery and an additional 100,000 square feet in new bunker space for secure data storage. Connectivity to the complex is offered via diverse fiber routes at Gig E speeds from various carriers. Montgomery Westland is a carrier neutral facility and can offer DS1, OC-12 or Ethernet VLAN from our Houston POPS’s. As part of our Cisco IP telephone system can support redirects of your original office numbers regardless of your location in Texas. Additional cities around the US are available on a per request basis.

As part of our Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity solution we are supported by our partner La Torretta offering our clients a first class comprehensive family plan for lodging, food service, meeting facilities and leisure.

DataChambers Underground Data Center

Nicholas L. Kottyan

With more than 25 years of experience in the technology and telecommunications industries, Nicholas Kottyan is especially well-versed in the critical information technology challenges facing today’s businesses. He helps clients develop business continuity plans that ensure seamless customer service… manage growing electronic records…and find cost-effective ways to monitor, manage and maintain critical data networks.

Mr. Kottyan has led DataChambers through two significant expansions of its data center facilities to meet growing demand.

Before joining the company, he was president and CEO of Peak 10 Inc., a data center services company he co-founded. He also has served as senior vice president for CT Communications Inc., a publicly traded local telephone company in Concord, N.C., where he led an expansion into new long distance, wireless PCS and Internet services markets.

In 1991 Mr. Kottyan founded Teledial America of North Carolina, which he sold to LCI International (now part of Qwest Communications). He also has served as president and CEO of Phone America of Carolina.

Mr. Kottyan is currently chairman of the N.C. Technology Association, the primary voice of North Carolina’s technology industry.

Patrick Craig

Patrick Craig is chief technology guru for the DataChambers team – experienced in the hardware, software and industry protocols that underpin successful networks and data centers.

Patrick Craig

Mr. Craig was instrumental in the design of the high-availability infrastructure DataChambers uses to support mission-critical business functions for its clients. He also leads the company’s Network Operations Center (NOC). The NOC team monitors and manages client systems around-the-clock to detect and resolve potential issues before they impact performance.

Before joining DataChambers, Mr. Craig was managed services administrator for Divine Inc., a software and technology company. He also served as vice president of IT technologies and as lead systems administrator for NetUnlimited, a voice and data solutions provider. During his tenure with NetUnlimited, he managed three of the company’s divisions and designed the infrastructure needed to support thousands of users.

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – MAY 6, 2010 – DataChambers, a North Carolina-based technology firm, today announced it has secured financing from NewBridge Bank to support construction of a new data center on its 80-acre campus in Winston-Salem.

Work is well under way on the 20,000-square-foot, $9 million project, which was announced last spring. When completed, it will more than double the company’s capacity to house data networks for its clients, including more than 110 firms in 28 states.

“We’ve been pleased with the progress of the project, which positions us for significant growth,” said Nicholas Kottyan, CEO of DataChambers. “We expect to be up and running by early summer.”

Construction of the new facility involves the demolition and rebuilding of a section of the former office building where DataChambers is headquartered. The space is located 18 feet underground in a secure, blast-resistant bunker.

General contractor for the project is Landmark Builders.

“DataChambers is a great success story in our region, and we could not be more pleased that they have chosen NewBridge Bank as their financial partner,” said Terry Freeman, Senior Vice President and Commercial Relationship Manager for NewBridge Bank. “This locally owned and operated business is the ideal client for NewBridge Bank to help move forward.”

About DataChambers

DataChambers is a full-service information technology and managed services provider specializing in electronic data storage, 24×7 managed information technology solutions, secure co-location services for mission-critical information technology infrastructure, secure tape vaulting, and offsite records storage and management. The company is SAS 70 Type II audited and meets rigorous national standards for safeguarding client systems and data. DataChambers’ 140,000⁺-square-foot headquarters in Winston-Salem, N.C., is based on an 80-acre campus owned by the firm’s majority shareholders. For more information, visit www.datachambers.com.

About NewBridge Bank

NewBridge Bank is a full service, state chartered community bank headquartered in Greensboro, North Carolina. NewBridge Bank offers financial planning and investment alternatives such as mutual funds and annuities through Raymond James Financial Services, Inc., a registered broker dealer. NewBridge Bank is one of the largest community banks in North Carolina with assets of approximately $2 billion. The Bank has 33 banking offices in the Piedmont Triad of North Carolina, the Wilmington, N.C. area and Harrisonburg, Va. The stock of NewBridge Bancorp, the Bank’s parent company, trades on the NASDAQ Global Select Market under the symbol “NBBC.”

http://www.datachambers.com/2010/05/06/datachambers-secures-financing-for-major-data-center-expansion/#more-571

Baltics - Underground Data Center Former Soviet Army bunker

The most secure underground data center in the Baltics - data center "Grizinkalns". Located in a former Soviet Army bunker - 9 meters above sea level, but at the same time 12 meters below ground. Opened in 2000. TIER I / II infrastructure, carrier-neutral. http://www.deac.eu

CyberBunker Under Ground Data Center

Pirate Bay Hunkers in a Bunker

October 7th, 2009 : Rich Miller

The outside of the CyberBunker, the new host for The Pirate Bay.

The Pirate Bay has gone underground. Literally. After being bounced from several hosting sites, the controversial download hub has relocated to the CyberBunker, an underground data center facility housed in a former NATO bunker in the Netherlands.Within the last week The Pirate Bay has been offline for extended periods after moving from its previous home in Sweden to a facility in the Ukraine. The operators of the site have been cut off by several ISPs as entertainment companies pursue legal efforts targeting illegal downloads of copyrighted content.

Data centers go underground in bunker

Data centers go underground in bunker mentality can be helpful for security, backup and business continuity

Robert L. Mitchell (Computerworld (US)) 07/29/2009

As Hurricane Ike bore down on Houston one Friday last September, the Continental Airlines' flight operations center, located on the 14th floor of a glass-sided downtown high rise, suddenly went dark. For the airline's pilots and flight crews, however, business proceeded as usual.

Here's why: At that same moment, 42 miles north of the city and some 60 feet underground -- in a hardened Cold-War era bunker built by a paranoid millionaire oilman to survive a nuclear holocaust -- Continental's backup data center took over. Throughout the ordeal -- from Friday morning, as the storm approached, through Saturday, when winds above the Westland Bunker in Montgomery, Texas, gusted to 125 miles per hour, until Sunday evening, when operations resumed in Houston -- the airline managed an 89% on time rating for its global flight schedule.

Locating a backup data center in an underground bunker may seem like overkill, even in a hurricane zone. But the facility met all of the airline's requirements -- including cost, says John Stelly, managing director of technology at Continental. The bunker, run by real estate partnership Montgomery Westland, has been converted into 33,000 square feet of rack-ready data center space complete with air conditioning, redundant network and power sources, uninterruptible power supply systems and backup generators.

Continental leases 2,000 sq. feet underground and another 12,500 sq. feet of office space above ground, in a hardened building complete with 3-inch-thick bulletproof windows. The airline can house its entire operations staff of up to 125 people at the backup site.

After Hurricane Katrina, Continental began looking for a fallback data center for use during hurricanes. Westland "was far enough away to be out of harm's way but close enough for folks to drive to," Stelly says. The blast-resistant facility is admittedly a bit much for even Continental's backup needs, but the four-feet-thick walls and high security entrance are nice extras, Stelly says.

Also, connectivity options at the Westland facility were a plus. The network and power feeds for the bunker were sourced from areas well away from Houston, while pricing was competitive with above-ground co-location facilities.

Rise of the underground

With a renewed focus on data center outsourcing and space in high availability facilities in short supply, investors such as Montgomery Westland have snapped up and renovated abandoned mines and military bunkers in the hopes of cashing in.

Since 2007, for example, Cavern Technologies has operated a data center 125 feet below ground in an abandoned limestone mine. The mined out area underground, which covers 3 million sq. feet, is 15 minutes outside of Kansas City, Mo. Unlike other mines, the Cavern facility was created with the idea of reuse in mind, so floor space isn't irregularly shaped like other underground facilities can be, says president John Clune. The area's relatively low electricity costs, at 3.5 cents per kilowatt-hour, help to make operating costs lower than those in other parts of the country, he adds.

Another facility, The Bunker, is a decommissioned, 50,000 sq. foot Royal Air Force bunker that operated until the 1990s. The facility is inside a hill near Dover, England and it now hosts data centers 100 feet below ground. "People get a picture of a hole in the ground. That's not the case. It's a state-of-the-art data center," says Paul Lightfoot, director of managed services for The Bunker. Clients range from businesses running mission-critical Web applications to a financial services firm that runs online trading systems. "We do everything from basic square footage to fully maintained systems," he says.

Iron Mountain is among the oldest and best known providers of underground storage and data center space. Known for storing everything from backup tapes to old movie reels in The Underground, its repurposed limestone mine in rural Pennsylvania, the company has seen its electronic storage and leased data center space business increase while its traditional paper record storage business has slowed. "It is now the fastest growing component of our business," says vice president Charles Doughty. In addition to leasing rack-ready space, the company offers data center design, hosting and management services.

But while interest is up, the number of actual customers leasing space in its underground data centers remains small. Iron Mountain counts five operating data centers in its underground facility, including its own. But with 60,000 square feet of available data center space and another 145 acres undeveloped in the facility, Iron Mountain has plenty of room for more.

Underground data center facilities fall into two categories: Abandoned mines, like Iron Mountain's, and decommissioned military bunkers such as InfoBunker, a subterranean facility just outside of Des Moines, Iowa. InfoBunker leases data center space to organizations ranging from a local telephone company to government agencies about which Jeff Daniels, a vice president at the company, says he can't talk.

On the demand side, an increase in extreme weather events, heightened concerns about security since 9/11 and the need to provide higher levels of security to comply with regulatory requirements have made these spaces more attractive to some organizations. Underground facilities offer security and structural protections that would be cost prohibitive to build from scratch.

Meanwhile, the recession and credit crunch have made it harder to get funding to build new data centers, and organizations have become more accepting of the idea of using co-location facilities to house mission-critical data center operations. "Demand for computer space is stronger than I've ever seen it [and] the supply is so small, so inadequate," says Peter Gross, vice president and general manager at HP Critical Facilities.

Basic co-location space isn't the problem, says Jon Bolen, chief technology officer at Westec Intelligent Surveillance. The surveillance-monitoring service, based in Des Moines Iowa, serves clients such as McDonald's Corp. and Zales Corp., and recently completed a search for a hardened facility for its own backup data center. During this search, Bolen saw a general lack of high-end infrastructure, of enterprise-class data center space. "If you need space that is as good or better than the space you would build there's a shortage of places you can go."

This shortage has given the underground facilities an opening to pull in larger data center clients. Cavern says it is negotiating with Fortune 500 clients looking to lease spaces of 30,000 to 100,000 square feet. However, most clients are smaller organizations that don't require so much space; more typical would be a hospital that leases 1,500 sq. feet.

One might assume that IT organizations would have to pay a premium for bunker space. After all, the cost of building such a structure is high, and special venting and air-flow systems are required. But IT executives say they've driven deals where the total cost of ownership is competitive with above-ground facilities. Because they're repurposing existing space that the government or a mine operator paid to build, providers say they don't have to pass on the original construction costs for the structures and can afford to be cost competitive.

Before deciding to go underground, IT executives need to identify potential limitations, experts say. Even things as simple as ceiling height can be a challenge. Continental's data center space in the Westland bunker has 10-foot ceilings, and putting full-height racks on top of an 18-inch raised floor was a tight fit. "We had to come up with a design to allow us to use full-height racks while providing sufficient airflow," Stelly says.

Another concern: While computer systems may be protected in a bunker, critical infrastructure needed during a disaster, such as generators, fuel tanks and air conditioning cooling towers, may be above ground. That could be a problem if the catastrophe you need to worry about is a tornado, warns Westec's Bolen.

Bolen recounts how one company claimed that its hardened facility could withstand a direct hit from an F3 (158 to 206 mph) tornado. But the air conditioning and generators were outside. "When an F3 hits, those generator and HVAC units are going to come off their pads," he says.

Westec ended up taking space at InfoBunker, about 45 miles away from its offices, Bolen says. The 65,000 square foot Cold War command bunker, designed to withstand a 20-megaton nuclear blast, maintains all infrastructure, including generators, fuel and cooling equipment, 50 feet underground.

Another consideration is that these underground facilities tend to be in rural, out-of-the-way locations. The facilities may be too far away from a company's primary data center, and finding local lodging for staff in a disaster situation may be difficult. Continental had to find office space and lodging accommodations for more than 100 operations staff during Hurricane Ike. Fortunately, Montgomery Westland had hardened above-ground office space as well as access to local lodging.

Underground facilities do have a few other advantages. The limestone floors at The Underground have a virtually unlimited load rating, while the walls maintain a constant temperature of about 55 degrees and act like a heat sink for some of the waste heat that comes off data center equipment. The limestone walls absorb 1.5 BTUs per hour per sq. foot of wall space, Doughty says.

Cool stuff

The green aspect of going underground is what attracted Marriott International. It wanted to move from an outsourced "cold site" disaster recovery service to managing its own hot site backup data center. Management wanted a hardened, secure facility in a location that was within a day's drive from Marriott's Bethesda, Md., headquarters. And it wanted to make sure the facility followed the company's focus on environmentally friendly best practices, according to Dan Blanchard, Marriott's vice president of enterprise operations.

Last year, the hospitality business completed the build-out of a 9,000 sq. foot remote backup data center at The Underground. Blanchard says that although the extreme level of security, including armed guards, exceeded his requirements, the idea of reusing an old mine rather than breaking new ground appealed to Marriott. "It's a definition of recycling to use the space that was a mine and convert that fairly inexpensively to its next use, which for us is a data center."

Energy efficiency also factored into Marriott's decision, Blanchard says. While Marriott's data center uses a traditional chiller as its primary cooling system, the backup is a prototype free cooling system. That prototype, designed by Iron Mountain, uses an air-to-air heat exchanger, drawing 55-degree air from the 1,000 acres of unused space within the mine. "The air is the exact temperature of what you would bring in with mechanical cooling," Doughty says. Iron Mountain also is experimenting with a system that would pull cool water from an underground lake within the mine.

An abandoned mine may conjure up images of damp walls and dripping ceilings -- but that's not the case here. "You have pumps and a lot of protective devices," says HP's Gross, and all of the facilities claim that dampness is not a problem. Doughty says The Underground is naturally dry due to its location and the type of limestone above the mine.

Air quality also is good, he says. The air in the Iron Mountain facility is relatively clean and non-condensing, he says. "As soon as you put heat to it moves away from the dew point," and that makes it a good choice for cooling, he says.

Blanchard says the new Recovery and Development Center, which is used for software development until needed in an emergency, costs half as much as he previously spent on power. Some of that is attributable to relatively low cost of power in Pennsylvania (5.5 cents per kWh). The rest comes from efficiencies of design and the characteristics of the underground environment.

Gross cautions, however, that cooling efficiency gains specific to the location are probably not all that significant. A well-designed data center today can cut power consumption in half by using new energy efficient equipment that can run at higher operating temperatures, by optimizing airflow designs to allow intake air temperatures to rise as high as 85 degrees and still keep equipment within operating temperature limits, and by picking a location in a colder climate, where water- or air-side economizers can be used to take advantage of cool outside air as weather permits.

Security, Gross says, is the primary benefit of using an underground facility to host a primary or secondary data center. But for most of his clients, the ability to get people to the backup data center in a hurry, connectivity options, and finding a facility that meets budget are priorities. Underground facilities usually don't beat out above-ground sites in his clients' evaluations, he says.

Still, Continental and Marriott are among a small number of enterprise operations using underground facilities. Rakesh Kumar, an analyst with Gartner Inc., says he is unaware of any Gartner client that is currently leasing space in one. The primary benefit of such sites, he says, is that they are designed to be highly resilient -- often to military specifications. That's important for some government data centers. "But for most commercial enterprises, it probably will not be such a major requirement." IT executives considering underground data center space should check into expansion capability, energy efficiency and how electricity use is metered, he says.

The main entrance to InfoBunker's underground facility is a four-inch-thick, 4.5-ton main blast lock. It serves both as a secured entrance and as a very heavy-duty person-trap. Visitors must pass through two doors that are interlocked. One will not open before the other is closed and sealed.



The operations center at InfoBunker's underground facility. The facility has 65,000 square feet of data center-ready space.




Main entrance at The Underground, a 145-acre underground facility operated by Iron Mountain in Butler County, Penn. Visitors are accompanied by armed escorts.

Workers in Iron Mountain's control room at The Underground monitor systems operations as well as external factors like the weather.

The Underground hosts five data centers, including Iron Mountain's own primary data center, shown here. It backs up data for more than 400,000 computers and 20,000 servers, and archives approximately 10 billion e-mail messages.



During Hurricane Ike last year, Continental Airlines evacuated more than 100 operations workers to this hardened office building, adjacent to the underground Westland Bunker, where data center operations continued uninterrupted 60 feet below ground. The office building has 3-inch bulletproof glass on the first floor and reinforced walls.



Suites like this one at the Westland Bunker house customer data center equipment within the hardened, underground facility. The bunker is home to 13 primary and backup data centers. The Tier 3 suite shown is 4,800 square feet.



The Westland Bunker offers caged suites and rack space, shown here. The racks in this 12,000-square-foot room, located some 55 feet below ground, house servers and networking equipment owned by many companies.



Main entrance to The Cavern, operated by Cavern Technologies in Lenexa, Kansas. Originally a limestone mine, the facility now leases data center space to 26 customers.



A secure access corridor within The Bunker, a former Royal Air Force bunker in Dover, U.K.



The main entrance at The Bunker, located on a hilltop in Dover, U.K., doesn't look like much. But 100 feet below ground it hosts data center equipment for more than 50 customers.