Sentinel Completes Initial Phase of North Carolina Data Center

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An artist's illustration of the Sentinel Data Centers project in Durham, North Carolina. (Photo: Sentinel)

Sentinel Data Centers has completed construction and commissioning of the initial 50,000 square foot, 8 megawatt initial phase of its NC-1 Data Center in Durham, North Carolina. This is the sixth facility Sentinel has developed since its founding in 2001, and marks its entry into the active North Carolina data center market.

The 420,000 square foot facility will ultimately yield approximately 200,000 square feet of net usable space, divided in hard-walled, turnkey suites of multiple sizes and configurations. Sentinel can accommodate footprints ranging from 10 cabinets to 50,000 square feet in the facility. It offers a seamless ability to expand capacity and/or footprint “on demand, as well as “Multi-Tiering” solutions that will enable each user to deploy different resiliency zones within its space, allowing for granular optimization of cost structure by application.

“We are gratified that our skillful design and construction teams have executed on our vision to bring a wholly new, higher quality and lower cost data center model to the region,” said Todd Aaron, Sentinel Co-President said.  “North Carolina is a truly exceptional state in which to do business, and we are grateful at the reception our model and the NC-1 facility have received both from local companies and from out-of-region enterprises seeking to leverage the state’s attractive occupancy economics.”

Earlier this year, Sentinel also announced the development of a new 131,000 square foot, single-tenant data center for Bloomberg LP in Orangetown, N.Y. Sentinel is collaborating with Russo Development on the project.

Wholesale Comes to Research Triangle

Sentinel Data Centers began development of the 420,000 square foot facility roughly a year ago. Targeting both in-region and out-of-region users, the facility is one of the first wholesale data centers in the North Carolina market, along with a smaller project by Compass Datacenters in Raleigh. Sentinel offers a turn-key solution for large-footprint users in a region short of these options. When the facility was initially announced, co-president Josh Rabina noted that the combination of highly reliable, low cost power, significant regional talent, easy access via multiple airports and exceptional quality of life are all factors that attract out-of-region users from multiple industries to Durham.

Sentinel is a veteran player and early pioneer in the wholesale data center business. The company builds and leases finished data center space to enterprise customers. Since its inception, Sentinel has developed more than 1.5 million square feet and 120 megawatts of best-in-class data center solutions for a diversity of Fortune 500 enterprises across multiple industries, including financial services, healthcare, technology and biotechnology.

North Carolina has been a hot market for data center development in recent years, attracting major projects from Apple, Facebook and Google. The state also has a cluster of data centers in the Research Triangle area. Sentinel marks the trend of wholesale data center players building in the region.