Top 5 Data Center Stories, Week of April 19

For your weekend reading, here’s a recap of five noteworthy stories that appeared on Data Center Knowledge this past week.

Microsoft to Build New $1.1 Billion Data Center in Iowa - Microsoft is building even bigger in Iowa. The company today unveiled plans to invest a whopping $1.1 billion in a new data center campus in West Des Moines, where it already operates a large server farm. The project will be one of the largest in the history of the data center industry, with plans calling for 1.2 million square feet of facilities across a 154-acre property.

Linode Invests $45 Million to Retool its Infrastructure - Cloud computing specialist Linode is investing $45 million in its infrastructure and undertaking a major corporate relaunch. This is the largest capital investment in the company’s history, and comes with an overhaul designed to position it to better compete with market leader Amazon Web Services (AWS) in the cloud hosting space.

With Performance Hub, Equinix Targets the Enterprise - Equinix thinks the enterprise is its big opportunity going forward. The focus of this effort is Performance Hub, a network optimization offering that offers an attractive entry point into the Equinix model. It’s part consulting and part formalization of some proven designs.

CoreSite Powers Up With Double-Stacked Generators In NJ - At its NY2 data center, CoreSite has stacked the massive generators that provide emergency backup power for the huge new facility. The 2 megawatt Caterpillar engines are there to keep customer servers humming within the 280,000 square foot data center in the event its two utility feed both go dark.

Microsoft Sees Data Centers Transforming the Power Grid - Microsoft wants to use its data centers to help transform the way electricity is delivered in the United States. That process will focus on San Antonio, where the company has confirmed plans to build a $250 million data center, along with a research project to develop new ways to use renewable energy to power Microsoft’s cloud.

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