Carpathia Plans Huge Virginia Data Center

Enterprise application hosting specialist Carpathia Hosting will build more than 300,000 square feet of premium data center space in Halifax County, Virginia over the next five years, the company said today. Carpathia said it has selected the Riverstone Technology Park (RTP) for its data center project, which will start with a first phase of 20,000 square feet of raised floor space in an existing building.

The project demonstrates that demand for data center space in Virginia extends beyond northern Virginia's technology corridor in Loudon, Fairfax and Prince William counties. Halifax County is in southern Virginia, abutting the North Carolina state line.

Carpathia, whose customers include government agencies, said it plans to build several additional Tier III and Tier IV data centers, with some of the space likely being designed to comply with the Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) code, a National Security Agency standard for buildings that handle sensitive government data or intelligence. A key emphasis of the guidelines is the ability to impose extraordinary controls on building access.

"The Riverstone campus is uniquely qualified to meet the rapidly growing needs of government and enterprise customers that demand the highest level of security and availability," commented Rick Smith, CEO of Carpathia. "Our plans for the campus include the design and build of a high security, mission critical datacenter to meet the needs of a variety of potential users. We believe that the healthcare industry in particular is in need of a highly secure facility built to keep pace with the growing requirements for storage and security brought on by regulatory oversight."

Carpathia will receive business location incentive packages from the Commonwealth of Virginia, Halifax County and other entities. Riverstone Technology Park is a 165 acre park designed to attract technology based companies, located on US Highway 58. It has diverse lit fiber connectivity from the Mid Atlantic Broadband Cooperative, a not-for-profit Cooperative created in 2003 to provide affordable broadband in southern Virginia.

The park is located 60 miles from Research Triangle Park, allowing Carpathia to draw workers from universities in Research Triangle as well as Washington D.C. area schools. Carpathia said it is planning to conduct half-day campus tours with major system integrators and healthcare providers in mid-October.