Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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.

7 of 20 comments (clear)

  1. 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.
  2. 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.

  3. 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.

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

    Right by the N$A.

  5. 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: 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.