Stories abound on data center builds in the US. These include Apple finally making a decision on its $1bn, 500,000 sq ft facility, and the US National Security Agency securing funds for a one million sq ft data center in Utah.

Reports said that Maiden, a town in Catawba County in North Carolina will be the site for Apple’s $1bn data center. Apple was said to have been lured by a package of incentives including a $46m tax saving over 10 years. Design details are sketchy at this point and as FOCUS went to press Apple had yet to officially confirm the plan.

National Security Agency
Over in the state of Utah, the National Security Agency (HQ, pictured above) said it would build a two-phase, one million sq ft data center after it secured $800m for the first phase. Although the project has yet to entered the design phase, the site will run on 30mw with construction due to begin next year with a completion date of 2013.

First phase of the project will include building infrastructure to support a 65mw energy load after Phase 2 is complete, also estimated to cost about $800m. Funds for Phase 2 have not been appropriated for this budget cycle.

The agency plans to design the data center “to the highest LEED standard attainable within available resources”. Raised floors in the facility will be required to handle 1,500 pounds per square foot.

“Following approval of formal requirements and community evaluation of several potential data center locations throughout the US, Camp Williams in Utah emerged as the best choice of location,” said NSA spokeswoman Marci Green. “Over the coming months the project management team will begin the design phase and this will be followed by the issuance of a Request for Proposal to competitively select a developer for the project.”

In one of two projects that involves academia and commerce EMC, Cisco and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are building a high-performance data center in western Massachusetts that will run on hydroelectric power from the Connecticut river.

The project is a public/private collaboration involving the storage and networking firms the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston University.

In the second project, and not to be outdone, Syracuse University and New York State announced plans for a 12,000 sq ft $12.6m data center in New York. The project will feature an on-site electrical tri-generation system that will use an array of natural gas-fuelled microturbines to generate all the necessary electricity for the center and provide cooling for the computer servers. The data center will be able to operate completely off-grid.

IBM and the University will create a liquid cooling system that will use double-effect absorption chillers to convert the exhaust heat from the microturbines into chilled water to cool the data center’s servers, with sufficient excess cooling to handle the needs of an adjacent building.

More Texan data center builds
Cisco Systems is building in Allen Texas. It is working on a 140,000 sq ft site running 40mw and multiple carriers. Also in Allen, The Planet announced a 12,000 sq ft data center that will use chilled water cooling.

Another colocation firm, Cyrus One, is building a 25,000 sq ft data center in Texas that will run between 20 and 30mw and is due to open in December this year. At the far end of the scale, Global Data Center Trust will build a 160,000 sq ft facility in Phoenix, drawing 20mw of supporting multiple carriers, and will open in 2010.

Back in Europe
In Europe the biggest announcement came from Switzerland, where colocation provider Equinix announced plans to build a data center in Zurich. The facility will be Californiabased data center services provider Foster City’s fourth in the Swiss city.

Known as ZH4, Equinix already has a significant presence in Zurich – total available floor space will amount to 12,920 sq ft, according to an Equinix statement. It will add to the company’s existing portfolio of more than 40 International Business Exchange data centers that provide services to the finance sector and will double its Zurich data center footprint.

The facility will offer a variety of interconnection and peering services including direct cross-connects between networks, as well as the Equinix Exchange central switching fabric. It will accommodate about 500 cabinet equivalents. Equinix expects the data center to open in the second quarter of 2010.

Related News: Oracle halts $300 million Utah data center construction
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Related Event: DatacenterDynamics Chicago, October 20th 2009