Building Efficient Data Centers
December 17, 2008 by Kevin Hazard, Web Hosting Evangelist in Data Centers, The Planet
I think I’ve officially become a geek. I just got a few of the pictures from the build-out of our newest data center phase, and I’m almost ashamed to admit how excited I was to write this post as an opportunity to showcase them.
The Planet has six data centers between Houston and Dallas, and some have been built out in “phases” or semi-independent sections. This phased construction process allows us to invest our time and money more efficiently because we can create space as we need it, rather than building out an entire data center shell and having to heat/cool/power the excess space that may not actually house servers for months. Following a very welcome ramp up in demand for our dedicated servers and managed hosting, we recognized an impending need for more data center space, so our facilities team fired up their engines and began planning Phase 3 of our D6 data center … and that’s when the fun started.
Jeff Lowenberg, our vice president of facilities, spoke with WHIRtv about the progress we’ve made in improving our data center efficiency over the past year, and the new data center phase is a testament to the work Jeff and his team have done in researching and designing new data center space. With a few of these innovative ideas, we worked directly with our vendors to create custom DC solutions, and the results are beyond ideal … literally: the new phase’s coefficient of efficiency (the total power necessary to operate a data center divided by the power necessary to operate the servers alone) will be approximately 1.5, which is below (better than) the “ideal” ranking of 1.6. With a lower coefficient of efficiency, a greater percentage of our power is running servers rather than heating/cooling/lighting the data center space while maintaining a perfect operating environment for the servers.
Tune in tomorrow for a tour of the new phase’s construction where we’ll “show and tell” HOW this is possible.
-Kevin
P.S. You may have seen that we announced a new data center earlier this week – D7 – to be built out in Plano, Texas, just north of Dallas. We’re preleasing it and expect to have it ready in May, so you can expect to see a bit more info about that space on the blog as that facility takes shape. 
December 17th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
I can say with some authority – you became a geek long ago.
December 17th, 2008 at 3:38 pm
Adam … I thought we agreed to never speak of that geekiness.
Maybe a better way to say it would have been “I’ve reached a new geek rank.”
September 25th, 2009 at 9:42 am
Thanks for posting on your blog. This is very interesting stuff. Where did you land in terms construction cost on a square foot basis.