StrataSpace: a datacenter campus in Louisville

Martin Levy

Wednesday, September 26th, 2007

During the course of an ordinary week, T1R analysts visit at least one or two datacenters. T1R does not sit back and listen to the sales pitch; we put on hard hats and safety vests and crawl around fiber vaults, chiller plants, generators, rooftops and any other place where infrastructure is located. As nice as the clean, cool and gently murmuring computer room can be, seeing what's behind it is just as important. Analysis is not about reading press releases or visiting websites.

Now and again, we enter a site and say, 'Wow!' Not often – but it happens.

Visiting the StrataSpace facility – about 20 miles outside of Louisville, Kentucky – was one of those 'wow' moments. StrataSpace is unique – and you would never know that unless you traveled to Louisville for a tour.

580,000 sq ft campus, 220,000 sq ft datacenter

StrataSpace is a campus designed for building datacenter pods with all the features you would expect from a well-designed datacenter site. Construction is in process and currently there is a generator facility – initially equipped with two 2.5MW units from Caterpillar, with room for plenty more. Included in the campus is a location for the centralized chiller plant, centralized receiving and loading dock, centralized campus security and centralized telecom facilities. StrataSpace's 40MW substation is approved and awaiting design and construction.

The campus has room for about 220,000 sq ft of datacenter space, allocated and built in pods of around 11,000 sq ft each. The site may be under construction, but it's the cleanest site you could imagine. Even the landscaping is complete, and the grass is as green as you would expect in Kentucky.

StrataSpace's beauty is that it's all underground, with the added security that comes with that. It's not just underground in a cold, dark, damp bunker sense of the word – this underground campus is bright, clean and airy and it's still large enough to easily drive an 18-wheeler into the site and successfully manage a U-turn. With the space allocated for datacenter builds, there is still room for a full road system capable of handling fire trucks and construction and maintenance vehicles. There's 32 ft of headroom across the whole facility – which makes it easy to forget you're underground.

Efficiency

Being underground is a massive energy win. While the temperatures fluctuate aboveground – sometimes sitting at 100 degrees during the summer – the underground site is a constant 65 degrees, year round. The whole campus is naturally cooled. The datacenters and support facilities were constructed as stand-alone buildings, so the exteriors are bathed in that 65-degree air.

Kentucky rates as the number one state for low-cost electricity. In one study, Kentucky came in lowest with sub-$0.04 per kWh industrial rates. That's under half of New York's rates and nearly a third of California's average rates.

Underground?

StrataSpace put plenty of thought into the campus site, and T1R was impressed at how the design carefully addressed making this underground facility palatable to even the most skeptical IT executive. First, the StrataSpace campus is about energy efficiency and security. Being underground is a secondary issue. It's only natural to roll your eyes when it's described as an underground datacenter. Images of military bunkers or Cold War survivalists' hangouts come to mind. Sites like these have been converted into datacenters, but none of those efforts can be compared to the StrataSpace datacenter campus.

To be clear, even seasoned members of the T1R team were expecting the visit to be an exercise in walking crouched over through some smelly tunnel before being ushered into the datacenter site. The experience couldn't be more different. The drive past security into StrataSpace's facility was more impressive than the equivalent drive into the underground parking of some five-star hotels. Our initial reaction was confirmed as we toured the rest of the facility. StrataSpace did a good job and deserved that 'Wow!'

Challenges

That said, T1R does have reservations that need to be addressed. First, the StrataSpace business model relies on enterprises seeing the value of Louisville for colocation. Second, it relies on finding customers that don't have a high-density telecom requirement. Sure, there is ample diverse fiber into the StrataSpace facility; however, the carrier diversity is not what one finds in New Jersey, Virginia or downtown Seattle. Third, potential customers will have the feeling that being underground is just plain weird.

The first challenge is actually easy. Louisville is about as central in the US as you can get without wandering off into the Great Plains. It's about halfway between Chicago and Atlanta and well connected even to Dallas. This would make it on par with enterprises hosting in St. Louis. In addition, Louisville is home to UPS' WorldPort hub, which is being expanded from one million sq ft to just over three million sq ft. When finished, the UPS facility should be able to sort half a million packages per hour.

The second challenge – telecom diversity – is only a challenge when hosting telecom-rich customers. T1R would not expect to see a BT or China Telecom pick Louisville as an expansion site. Still, with three carriers already installed in StrataSpace and a few more on the way, there seems to be no shortage of telecom capability. Customers requiring services in telecom hotel locations like 1 Wilshire in Los Angeles or 111 8th Avenue in New York would not be served well in Louisville, let alone many other cities.

The final challenge – being underground – is the one that T1R is already comfortable with. We hope that enterprise customers can see past the strangeness. Building or trying to build an underground datacenter underground is not new. However, the idea had been very poorly executed until StrataSpace came into the picture. Players who convert old military bunkers into datacenters have exactly that to offer their customers – a converted bunker. In StrataSpace's case, the fact that the campus is underground is immaterial to the fact that it's constructed as an efficient and secure site for running a datacenter. Nothing about the site is a compromise, and that's important in a time when datacenters are required to perform at their best 24/7/365. If building and operating underground facilities is integral to a business like Iron Mountain – a company with a stellar reputation – then the idea of being underground should be more widely accepted by the enterprise community. StrataSpace has clearly addressed that advantage, so it should not be an issue for prospective tenants. T1R can imagine that potential government clients – who believe the pitch that being underground is more secure – must still consider the basics of running a datacenter first. Being secure is one thing; being efficient and able to operate reliably is far more important.

T1R will continue to follow StrataSpace and its campus – after all, how often do you get to say, 'Wow!'?

Source: www.t1r.com