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Cloud Growth Spurs Data Center Land Grab In Northern Virginia (datacenterfrontier.com)

Posted by samzenpus on from the get-it-while-you-can dept.

1sockchuck writes: Data center developers are buying up land in northern Virginia, preparing for explosive growth of cloud computing infrastructure. Digital Realty just bought land in Ashburn, Virginia to support 2 million square feet of data center space, while DuPont Fabros, RagingWire and Sabey have also locked up land parcels for future growth. Why is Ashburn so hot? Cloud builders crave proximity to an Internet exchange operated by Equinix, which itself just bought land for another 1 million square feet of colocation space. That's one of the reasons why Amazon Web Services operates more than 20 data centers in northern Virginia. "Data center demand is stronger today than it's ever been," said Bill Stein, the CEO of Digital Realty.

20 comments

  1. keeps peering with NSA simple by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    as the crow files, how far is it from these locations to places where spooks have their data mining operations?

    1. Re:keeps peering with NSA simple by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Well, the nominal capital of spookville is over in McLean, VA; so 20-25 miles, depending on how close the various actual facilities are to the nominal 'locations' of the two places.

      Probably a kind of unpleasant commute with the airport right in the middle; but that's not an issue if you are just shuttling data.

    2. Re:keeps peering with NSA simple by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's the CIA in McLean. The NSA HQ is 55 miles away from Ashburn by road, maybe 40 miles as the crow flies.

  2. Never ask... by JWSmythe · · Score: 2

    Note: never ask about the microwave antennas on top of Equinix Ashburn DC1/DC2.

    --
    Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
  3. Guess what else is close to Ashburn, VA? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Every intelligence agency in the United States is within a 50 mile radius.

  4. And it's a damned headache. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    And it's getting to the point that Dominion Virginia Power can't keep up with the growth. They are pulling in lines from Maryland and West Virginia, pissing off people that bought houses down route 50 left, right, and center. The various builders with any experience can't keep up with demand either, they are bringing in people from all over the country that work a shovel and own a pair of steel toe boots. The tech and facilities workers are being stretched thin as can be, it's almost as bad as the 90s when anyone that could turn on a PC would get hired to do break/fix work at the rack, and monitor data center power, A/C, and anything else needed. What makes a data center is being stretched with sites using no active cooling, no raised flooring, barely if any A/C piping to get the cooling to the racks, just so whoever is putting the site up can save a buck. Ashburn, which is in Loudoun County, is starting to fine data center operators for excessive use of water and the sewer system they dump it into.

    Welcome to the cloud, kids. Sames as the old cloud.

    1. Re: And it's a damned headache. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've lived in Loudoun County 20+ years (Silicon Valley relocation) and currently live in One Loudoun just up the road. The county has been filling up the Dulles Flight path with two things --data centers and age 55+ Communities. The data centers are perfect neighbors:
      1.) tax positive, even with good incentives. each campus costs Billions before you even start loading racks with servers.
      2.) low generators of traffic (Waxpool SUCKS) because you don't need/want many workers there.
      3.) Require little county/state infrastructure like schools and secondary/tertiary roads. Power lines are WAY cheaper than schools
      4.) They build where people didn't want to be (flight path)

    2. Re:And it's a damned headache. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Amazon is building a big data center in Haymarket that is going to need a power line bulldozed in along I66 from the west. It's beautiful country out there, but owned by a lot of the old money people in Prince William and Fauquier counties. They successfully fought off Disney in the 90's and another Dominion power line in the 00's. So they might be able to stand up against Amazon.

  5. Convieniently located by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Right by the N$A.

    1. Re:Convieniently located by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Right by the N$A.

      Except, you know, in another state, 50+ miles away, across a river, with no line of site.

  6. Its about the fiber by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I am all for a good conspiracy theory but the location has absolutely nothing to do with Intel agencies secretly accessing all of the bits. There is an incredible amount of fiber in the ground in Ashburn. Yes there is a ton of Defense and Intelligence activity in the DC area and especially in NoVA and thus the area has massive amounts of fiber in the ground. One of the largest Internet peering points (the old MAE-East) used to be in Vienna VA and effectively moved out to Ashburn when AOL and UUNET built their campuses in Ashburn back when land was cheap out there. UUNET, the first commercial ISP on the planet but now part of Verizon due to the Bernie Ebbers , built a massive campus with a lot of long haul fiber into it and then built big new replacement for MAE-East out there. The road that UUNET's old HQ is on Loudon County Parkway which is the same road Equinix is on. It is next to the Greenway toll road which turns into the Dulles toll road which is a MAJOR fiber route in towards the Beltway. There is also the old Washington and Old Dominion railroad (now a recreation trail) that is a major fiber pathway through NoVA all the way into DC. There is also Rt 28 and Rt7 which are also major fiber pathways. That whole area (Loudon County Parkway, Waxpool Road, Farmwell Road) is chock full of data centers and fiber. It was all farm land out in the boonies back in the late 90s when AOL and then UUNET bought land and moved out there and Equinix and others followed quickly.

    So sorry not Intel agencies conspiracies apply.

    1. Re: Its about the fiber by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why do you think MAE-East was in Tysons's? Just because? Not proximity to anything else all over McLean that's since been consolidated out to Dulles?

    2. Re: Its about the fiber by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      MAE-East was in Tyson's Corner in a parking garage because it was a convenient place to put it. The fiber was passing by it on Gallows Road and VA Rt7. Some of us were actually part of creating it and can tell you the spooky agencies had nothing to do with it. UUNET, PSI, and Sprint wanted to exchange traffic directly and MFS was willing to provide the infrastructure and the parking garage was a very nice convenient place to do it since MFS was already there.

      The conspiracy theories are fun and all of that but this was just boring good business.

      If you want to keep lobbing the conspiracy theories then I guess we should declare the McDs, 7-11, and movie theatre in close proximity will be just CIA/NSA/spookville fronts as well. Hell, let's go to town and say Tyson's Corner Mall is a big CIA/NSA/spookville front and ever store in it is part of the conspiracy. Tyson's Corner mall was so successful they built the Galleria to expand the CIA/NSA/spookville activities. Heck, the Beltway itself must be part of some spookville mind control plan 'cause it is so close to all of the Intel facilities; quick put on your tinfoil hats.

      Sometimes stuff is not what it seems and is a conspiracy. Sometimes it just ain't a conspiracy.

  7. Stephenson nailed it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The BAMA sprawl.

  8. We were working in Equinix one day by Mishra100 · · Score: 1

    We were working in Equinix one day when we ordered pizza. The pizza guy showed up and asked:

    "Wow, I've never seen this place... What IS this???"

    The engineer replied, "Oh this place? It's the internet."

    "COOOL!"

    1. Re:We were working in Equinix one day by tnk1 · · Score: 1

      They do have some pretty cool buildings and big name customers. Right across from our cage was Wikipedia and down the row was EA and a lot of other names you'd quickly recognize. It's not really the Internet, but you could be forgiven for thinking it was.

    2. Re:We were working in Equinix one day by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      When the "Internet" is an abstract thing with no location in a way you could say that anything that it is a part of it is the Internet. Datacenters, fiber optic lines, cable modems, your cell phone, you. It's all the Internet.

    3. Re:We were working in Equinix one day by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I brought a black box to a board meeting one time and told them it was the internet...they were so impressed....oh wait, no, that was The IT Crowd.

    4. Re:We were working in Equinix one day by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Did you get permission from "The Hawk?"