DuPont Fabros Brings Massive Ashburn Data Center Online

DuPont Fabros Technology has officially launched ACC7, its seventh data center in Virginia and sixth on the company’s 1.6 million-square-foot campus in Ashburn.

Northern Virginia is one of the most active data center markets in the country. According to 451 Research, construction projects by DuPont Fabros and its competitors’, such as RagingWire, have placed the region well on its way to overtake the New York metro as the biggest data center market in the U.S. by the beginning of 2015.

RagingWire announced the launch of the final phase of its Ashburn data center Wednesday.

In true DuPont Fabros manner, ACC7 is huge. The facility is nearly 450,000 square feet and can provide as much as 41.6 megawatts of power. It is the largest data center in the company’s portfolio.

It is also the first data center built using the company’s new data center design, which features a medium-voltage (4,160V) electrical distribution system and an isolated-parallel uninterruptible power supply topology, which enables the company to provide a wide range of space, cabinet layouts and power densities in the facility’s 28 computer rooms.

Each of the rooms is about 8,500 square feet and provides from 1 megawatt to 2 megawatts of critical power. One room can hold about 380 server cabinets.

Another change in design is an evaporative cooling plant that uses recycled water. There ae 12 centrifugal chillers and heat exchanger lineups, each with 1,400 tons of cooling capacity. The facility also has an above-ground 80,000-gallon chilled water storage tank.

Scott Davis, executive vice president of operations at DFT, said ACC7 was a product of three years of design work. The company plans to use it as a standard design going forward.

“This design is a culmination of collaborating with our customers, incorporating trends in the data center industry, and leveraging our vast experience in designing and operating data centers,” Davis said.