Steve Jobs can be looked to as the one who made computers and technology “cool”. For many owning a Mac, iPhone, iPad or iPod became a status symbol, as you could say you had the latest and best technology literally at your fingertips.  Who would have thought putting an “i” in front of a word could completely change its meaning.   And what Steve Jobs started will carry the technology world for years to come.  

We have lost a friend, innovator and visionary.  One who saw the world for what it could and should be.  Let us now carry on where he left off…

Actually, AT&T is our neighbor with whom we share a private cul-de-sac along with several other carriers, just north of I-270 and near the main Telco fiber corridor from Chicago to Atlanta.

DataCenter.BZ now has 4 totally separate AT&T fiber entrances, 2 each connecting to our redundant carrier meet-me-rooms which provide data center customers with direct and/or blended access to many different carrier providers and therefore inexpensive and ultra-reliable connectivity solutions.

How can you secure a stimulus package customized specifically for your company?  Consider what large enterprises and more recently government agencies and SMB players have been leveraging for years, the economic and operational advantages of locating and/or replicating mission-critical data, applications, communications and other IT assets in a data center.  Purpose-built data centers, that are highly secured, energy-efficient and networked with a myriad of connectivity options, often help corporate and municipal users of all types obtain economies of scale, achieve robust disaster recovery and business continuity solutions, and overall realize a more profitable and sustainable operations model insofar as data availability, communications and even workforce utilization is concerned. As a result, capital that would otherwise be tagged for operating and capital investments can instead be utilized for sales and marketing efforts, R&D, staff augmentation and other corporate growth initiatives.

Consider for a moment the cost and overall availability of Internet connectivity. The connections required by IT infrastructure located in discrete offices, business parks or even corporate computer rooms are typically offered by one or just a handful of telco providers each with their own pricing schedules and network maintenance costs. In contrast, securing such services in a data center that has partnered with numerous carriers available directly on-site can dramatically reduce telecom costs for businesses while at the same time enabling critical carrier diversity, the ability to “burst” on alternate carriers and other customized IT and workforce continuity solutions. Further, modern data centers are built in such a way that power, cooling, security and network connectivity are both safeguarded and protected from business impacting outages. Finally, a facility such as DataCenter.BZ has been critically designed and constructed to be extremely energy efficient. For example, over 3,000 tons of redundant cooling utilizes chillers and air handlers with energy efficiency ratings (EERs) of 23+ and 76+, respectively! The LEED Silver designed facility also incorporates “free cooling” and overall achieves an estimated energy efficiency ratio (PUE) of 1.25 which compares extremely favorably with corporate environments.

In addition to the economic advantages associated with greater connectivity options, lower telecom costs and higher energy efficiencies described above, another compelling factor for corporate users considering colocation and other data center services is the flexibility to outsource the surroundings required for housing critical corporate IT infrastructure. And as technologies change and corporate IT strategies shift, the ability to grow, reconfigure, virtualize, leverage cloud services, etc. without having to maintain, operate or invest in the supporting environment is a significant advantage that translates into considerable time and capital savings. Corporate IT staffs either work directly from the data center location where they can be supported by data center staff, or businesses have the ability to rely on a full complement of managed services to carry on their IT operations.

Moving to a data center saves more than money; it protects the time your business needs to invest in other opportunities to keep your company on the leading edge.  

Find out if DataCenter.BZ’s enterprise-class, carrier-neutral data center could assist the reliability and profitability of your business. Please contact our sales team at sales@datacenter.bz or 614.515.5880. 

Although “Ohio” and “hurricane” seldom coexist in the same thought, remember that back in 2008 Hurricane Ike (which, by the way, was our nation’s third-costliest hurricane ever) made more than just its presence felt in the Buckeye State.  By the time Ike hit Ohio, it was still throwing around 75 mph winds, or sustained winds equivalent to a Category One hurricane. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Ike)

For those who did not live through Ike, it took our state more or less by surprise and left over 350,000 customers in Central Ohio alone without power, many for days on end, and overall forced Ohio to declare a state of emergency. Now, due to the diligent and extensive design and preparations that go into a purpose-built telecom facility like DataCenter.BZ (which in addition to our carrier-neutral data center built to Tier IV standards also houses data center operations for multiple local telecom carriers), our facilities were completely unaffected, and we have many stories about the IT folks and corporate executives who showed up throughout those days and nights (including many non-customers!) seeking help with keeping their communications and IT operations going.

In the event another potentially devastating storm decides to try to take on Ohio, DataCenter.BZ remains prepared and, as they say, it’s all in the preparation. The data center is built to Miami Dade-hurricane standards, with a double, independent standing-seam roof system, reinforced concrete walls, California earthquake-rated floors, walls and ceilings, and so on. Now, if either of the independent utility grid feeds serving the complex are affected, multiple 2-MW generators are on-line and with the addition of Alternate Feeds Utility Service (like a large hospital), every data center power panel has a minimum of 4 input power feeds and DataCenter.BZ does not employ ATS but rather a more sophisticated (and expensive!) Russelectric bus design.

Regarding flood threats, DataCenter.BZ (along with AT&T, Sprint and other key telecom assets serving central Ohio) is located at the geographic highpoint of Franklin County, and further the facility’s raised data center floors are 24 inches higher than the rest of the facility and more than four feet above parking lot catch basins.

Yes, Ohio remains one of the safest and most secure choices to locate mission-critical data center operations, but that doesn’t mean the state is always untouchable. Hurricanes and earthquakes can still hit, and that is why DataCenter.BZ has taken so many precautions to protect our customers’ operations from power/connectivity downtime. 

However, quakes do happen, as plotted in the following map, stretching back to 1875. Central Ohio, however, has experienced little activity relative even to other parts of Ohio.

That being said, while the way we designed and constructed our purpose-built facility may have seemed over the top it’s days like today that remind us all that anything is possible. Just like in 2008 when Ohio was hit by a hurricane (Hurricane Ike for those who don’t remember), Ohio does experience seismic activity.  While we don’t see the same force, and near the same frequency, as seismic activity in the western US, the Southeast, and elsewhere, we’ve incorporated many of the same features that protect buildings in quake prone areas.   Our raised floors and ceiling structures meet California earthquake standards, our internal building structure is flexing steel with exterior concrete barriers, and our facility overall is designed to Miami Dade hurricane standards. The ability for a building to move with the Earth’s motions (and high winds, etc.) is key to withstanding the toughest elements. 

There are many reasons Ohio is an ideal location for a high-availability data center, but just because nature’s fury doesn’t normally happen here doesn’t mean it can’t.  This is why DataCenter.BZ built its center to meet the toughest requirements.  Now we can simply say, did you just feel that?...and move on with our day.   

An ATS is a mechanical device that unfortunately can be prone to failure. The contacts bear a live load—you are moving a live "load" between 2 different sources of power—and the connection points can become pitted and damaged due to arcing and transfer of dissimilar materials.

And because the ATS is mechanical, if the transfer gets stuck in mid process, or if a connect refuses to release or make, unfortunately the result can be major failure.

Also, given an ATS’s position within a power structure, it can become impossible to change out an ATS without causing a power outage.

In DataCenter.BZ’s design, Russelectric transfer switches are used with a bus design. The bus is passive (silver-plated copper bars) that are connected to the load panels. There are also power source breakers that connect to the bus. Accordingly:

1) The breakers can be "racked out" for replacement or maintenance without shutting down the Russelectric transfer switch

2) DataCenter.BZ stocks spare breakers - so the breakers can be racked out and new breakers racked back in

3) If a breaker were to fail (or be replaced), the Russelectric will close a replacement power source to the bus, bypassing the bad breaker

4) DataCenter.BZ has the ability to completely unload a 3,200 amp / 480 VAC power panel without any outage

5) DataCenter.BZ’s UPS systems are designed with bypass power feeds, and each bypass power feed is homed to a manual source bus power selection panel

With help from Emerson/Liebert and Russelectric, common and even uncommon power failures have been explored in depth along with ways to engineer around them. Although this has more than doubled DataCenter.BZ’s build-out cost in such areas, such design and approach complements our focus on industrial grade solutions for our enterprise customers.

DataCenter.BZ engineered around such risks in its facilities design, and a lightning strike on one or more of its redundant utility feeds or redundant generator feeds would not suffer the same fate:

1) DataCenter.BZ’s dual utility power entrances are separated from its generator entrances by over 200 feet.

2) Each of DataCenter.BZ’s four power feeds have lightning protection (TVSS, or Transient Voltage Surge Suppression) that will clamp a lightning strike in one-half of one nanosecond, or 1/2 of one billionth of a second.

Lightning travels approximately 1 foot every nanosecond, and the TVSS will clamp the lightning (power surge) within one-half of one nanosecond. This means the surge will travel about 6 inches past the TVSS before it is clamped, and DataCenter.BZ’s next piece of upstream gear is at least 100 feet from the TVSS. If the power surge (lightning) is massive enough, it will destroy the TVSS, but the power feed will become an open circuit and the damage will not propagate downstream. Though this source of power then becomes unavailable, there are three other sources of power remaining to feed each main panel.

3) DataCenter.BZ also employs additional layers of protection beyond the TVSS. The Russelectric transfer equipment utilized by DataCenter.BZ has active 3,200-amp breakers that would also detect a power surge and open.  The multiple redundant power feeds (4 to 5 feeds per Russelectric unit) are all isolated from the power bus, so the loss of a Russelectric unit’s 3,200 amp breaker would cause a brief interruption of power (3 seconds), which the UPS systems would cover, until another power feed is closed onto the power bus.

4) Since DataCenter.BZ’s power feeds are isolated and not common, a surge on one cannot back feed another.

Generator and utility power synchronization can be an unfortunate source of problems. When the synchronization fails, useful and working generators cannot be brought online as the overall power structure cannot be synchronized; the backup assets are then unavailable. DataCenter.BZ’s approach is intentionally more robust and contains no single point of failure.

Below is a look at where we started and where we are today!

The starting point...

Miami-Dade Hurricane standards + double roof system + exterior wall-embedded “New Jersey cement medium barriers” + private cul-de-sac location + redundant operational design = your safest data center option.

View of the 27-foot tall ceilings, which along with our 30,000-square ft. of 24-inch raised floors, provide for highly energy-efficient cooling. This enables DataCenter.BZ to offer smaller footprint solutions, minimizing customers’ operating costs. DataCenter.BZ is also working to obtain LEED certification for the facility.

Private and shared cages are up, and several thousand additional square ft. of customer installs (aka, private and hybrid clouds) are ready to begin…

The generator bay before...                                                                           And after.

Imagine never having to fear a power outage again. DataCenter.BZ follows 2(N+1) availability standards, which means redundant power systems have a seamless transition to multiple backup sources. Bet you didn’t know that DataCenter.BZ will have 5 new 2.5 Megawatt generators (bringing the facility to a total of 7 generators). What can your company do without fear of downtime?

And work on the NOC and main lobby is moving right along. Security is paramount at DataCenter.BZ. Along with multiple man-traps, bio-hand scans and FOB checkpoints, NOC (which is manned 24 hours a day, 7 days a week) offers additional security measures and support, and customer racks/cages are further secured in private, independently accessed zones with final rack and/or private cage entry limited to customer-authorized personnel.

Another unique feature of the expansion is a new Central Ohio Hot Site providing real-time workforce recovery for customers requiring between 10 and 150 seats, giving clients the security, connectivity and power availability of the adjoining data center. DataCenter.BZ’s the only Tier IV data center in Columbus with a Hot Site.

This area can also be used for training and other events…a new Events section will be added to DataCenter.BZ’s website in the near future.

Externally-located trailer hitching posts for additional recovery solutions are also available, as demonstrated here.

Want to see the new facility for yourself? Contact us at tours@datacenter.bz to set up your private tour!