Texas Colo with Efficient Data Center Cooling System Launched

Aligned Data Centers, a data center provider formed earlier this year, has launched its first colocation facility in Plano, Texas, featuring a water-efficient data center cooling system designed by its sister company Inertech, whose systems are also deployed at eBay, Lenovo, and Telus data centers, among others.

In addition to using very little water, the design of the cooling system is the primary enabler for Aligned’s unusual colocation business model. Offering a compromise between physical data center capacity and elastic cloud infrastructure, the company offers what it calls on-demand colocation services, meaning customers only pay for the capacity they actually use, with the ability to scale their deployment up or down as they go along.

Aligned COO Thomas Doherty told us in an earlier interview that the cooling system’s modular design was what gave the provider the flexibility to change the amount of capacity provisioned for any single client on-demand.

Find more details on Aligned’s innovative data center cooling system and business model in a recent Data Center Knowledge feature.

In addition to the Plano facility, Aligned is building a larger data center in Phoenix and scouting for additional locations in California, Illinois, Virginia, and New Jersey, the company said in a statement.

Aligned, Inertech, as well as Energy Metrics and Karbon Engineering are subsidiaries of a holding company called Aligned Energy. The parent company is backed by the hedge fund BlueMountain Capital Management.

First phase of the Plano data center provides about 100,000 square feet of space and 12.5 MW of power. The site can accommodate 300,000 square feet of space and 30 MW of power total.

In Phoenix, Aligned is building a 550,000-square-foot, 70-MW facility.