PhoenixNAP Data Center Opens

phoenixnap-exterior

The exterior of the PhoenixNAP facility, which is now open for business.

Data center service provider Phoenix NAP announced today that it is open and operating, a year after beginning construction on the 160,000 square foot facility.

The new data center will open with about 15 percent of its 45,000 square foot first phase occupied by customers, according to Ian McClarty, president of Phoenix NAP. "There's a really nice mix of clients," said McClarty. "We're seeing a lot of interest from the enterprise." Plans call for two 45,000 square foot data halls for a total of 90,000 square feet of raised-floor space.

PureWave UPS Maximizes Footprint
The data center is supported by PureWave UPS systems from S&C Electric, which can be housed in the equipment yard, allowing PhoenixNAP to maximize the data center space within the building.

PhioenixNAP is using McQuay central chiller plants. "The modular chiller plants at Phoenix NAP represent optimum redundancy, efficiency and reliability," according to Terry Young, general manager of the Solutions Group at McQuay International, the suppliers of the cooling and pumping modules. "While the basic design had built-in redundancy features, the modules engineered and built specifically for Phoenix NAP were customized to surpass anything else available in this type of packaged chiller plant."

McClarty said many of the early customers are from the Phoenix area, but he said PhoenixNAP was also seeing interest from businesses in Southern California.

Disaster Recovery Destination
"We realize a lot of people may look at Phoenix as a site for disaster recovery or business continuity services, and our infrastructure reinforces those types of solutions," said McClarty. "Both the power and cooling systems are designed with multiple redundancies and concurrent maintainability, meaning maintenance can be performed on any part(s) of the systems without requiring the entire distribution chain to be taken offline."

PhoenixNAP has connectivity via Cox Business, tw telecom, Internap, AboveNet, Level 3 and AGL Networks.

The building previously served as the headquarters for life sciences company EaglePicher, which relocated to Michigan as part of a bankruptcy reorganization in 2005. The project is being developed by Global Datacenter Trust, which liked Phoenix market because it is well positioned to avoid most natural disaster scenarios, including earthquakes, hurricanes and tornadoes.

The company has documented its construction process at DataCenterBuilder.com, which features several videos using time-lapse photography. But they also share technical information about the facility. In this video, PhoenixNAP Director of Operations Jordan Jacobs discusses the company's approach to the design of its power infrastructure.