Level 3 Opens Northern Virginia Data Center

Level 3 opened a 12,000 square foot, 1.5 megawatt data center in Herndon, Virginia. The data center is one of the company's "Premier Elite" facilities, its highest tier of data center.

The facility is a standalone building. It has  three 480 voltage utility feeds distributed through a fully redundant configuration. There are two 2 megawatt and one 1600 kW diesel generators.  36-plus hours of fuel is stored in a 9000-gallon main fuel tank.

In its Premier Elite-branded facilities, Level 3 provides biometric security and power densities of 5 kilowatts per rack and higher. Premier-branded facilities have  power densities of 3kW and Premier Select feature up to 5kW. The distinctions between its two other tiers of facilities are largely related to security and power density.

This is the company's third Premier Elite facility in the U.S. The company operates another 17 throughout Europe in Asia. Premier Elite facilities represent a tiny but growing fraction of the company's overall data center footprint of more than 350 facilities.

Northern Virginia is a top-tier market and continues to see massive amounts of data center activity.

“The northern Virginia market is one of the top three data center markets in the world according to Ovum’s global data center tracking information,” Mike Sapien, principal analyst from Ovum Global Enterprise Services, said. “Enterprise customers are seeing improved economics in using outside data centers, as well as avoidance of the capital to upgrade their aging private data centers. The use of external third-party data centers are necessary to address expanding their global coverage, increased use of cloud services, and improving application performance.”