Building A Data Center in 60 Days

The facilities staff at Pipe Networks is live-blogging its bid to build a new data center in just 60 days. The effort began back on April 16 with an empty room in Brisbane, Australia, and is entering the stretch run with a completion deadline of 9 am EST Friday (June 15). Pipe Networks has put the entire effort online, providing a window into the data center fit-out process with daily updates via Pipe Networks' DC3 blog, a live webcam of the data center in progress and a checklist of key items and their stage of completion.

Pipe's transparency is unusual, as many data center operators work hard to keep the details of their facilities shrouded in secrecy. Google has insisted in extraordinary secrecy while negotiating incentives with state and local officials, while Microsoft once threatened to sue a local government over public records about a data center project.

Not so at Pipe Networks, Australia's largest Internet peering exchange, providing services similar to those provided by Equinix and Switch and Data's PAIX unit in the U.S. The company operates 16 interconnection points in six cities, with customers including WebCentral, The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Primus Telecom and AsiaNetcom.

Pipe's DC3 facility will be about 4,800 square feet and will be able to accommodate 170 server racks. The idea of a 60-day project originated with company executives with a history of rapid build-outs.

"When Pipe was founded four years ago, we were set the challenge to build a data center in around 100 days," Bob Purdon, the company's operations manager, told SearchDataCenter. Since 100 days had already been done, management challenged Pipe's data center team to complete the project in 60 days.