Rackspace Expands With Chicago Data Center

dft-ch1

A look at finished data center space inside the DuPont Fabros CH1 data center in Elk Grove Village, Ill., where Rackspace Hosting has leased 36,700 square feet of space.

Rackspace Hosting (RAX) will open a new data center in Chicago, continuing the steady expansion of the company's infrastructure as its expands into cloud computing. Rackspace will lease 36,700 square feet of raised floor space in a huge facility built by DuPont Fabros Technology (DFT) in the Chicago suburb of Elk Grove Village.

The leased space, which equates to 5.6 megawatts of critical power load, will come online in late 2009 and support additional growth in Rackspace's managed hosting and cloud computing businesses, as well as disaster recovery options for customers in the company's other facilities.

The Rackspace lease is a huge customer win for DuPont Fabros, which has struggled to lease space in its 495,000 square foot Chicago building. With the Rackspace lease, the first phase of CH1 is now 48 percent filled. The deal also depends the working relationship between the two companies, building upon Rackspace's lease of a pod in DuPont Fabros' ACC4 facility in Ashburn, Va.

"DuPont Fabros has been an excellent partner for Rackspace’s data center needs," said Randy Smith, director of real estate for Rackspace Hosting. "This new facility is the continuation of a successful relationship we began in February in DuPont Fabros’ Ashburn facility. DuPont Fabros has the unique ability to design a data center infrastructure that can increase operational efficiencies and ultimately reliability for our customers. This allows us to focus on the core of our business and continue to deliver Fanatical Support."

Rackspace said leasing wholesale data center space from DuPont Fabros will enable it to expand more quickly and cost effectively than if it built its own facility. Additionally, because the lease provides for Rackspace to grow into the space over time, the company is better able to match its expenses to revenue as driven by customer demand.

The deal will also provide Rackspace with a large new state-of-the-art facility at a time when it is addressing power infrastructure problems that recently caused outages at its primary facility near Dallas.