Vantage Data Centers has announced that it has completed construction of the first of three buildings located at its campus in Santa Clara, CA. The company has leased wholesale operating data center capacity to leading global Internet and semiconductor companies based in Silicon Valley.

The three-building campus has 37 megawatts of effective IT power capacity and sets the bar for a new generation of enterprise data centers by delivering the industry's best Power Utilization Efficiency (PUE) at 1.20 (Note: 1.20 full load with economization / 1.29 under chiller load – January 1, 2011). An unprecedented array of physical, electrical, and mechanical innovations enable extreme scale, flexibility, efficiency and density. This initial project, which was backed by a $300 million investment from a leading private equity firm, is a model for what Vantage Data Centers plans to do around the world.

“The Santa Clara project is a showcase for the industry on how data centers can be more aligned with businesses interests and environmental stewardship,” said Jim Trout, Vantage Data Center’s CEO. “Vantage's long-term goal is to deliver new levels of efficiency and scalability at every completed campus. Our ability to deliver the lowest energy rates, combined with our scale and flexibility, will translate into significant potential cost savings for our customers.”

Addressing Data Center Obsolescence
Innovation in the enterprise IT industry has emerged at a rapid pace thanks to the advent of Web 2.0, virtualization, Web services, and cloud computing. Innovation in the wholesale data center industry, unfortunately, is more than ten years behind. Not only do legacy data centers have outdated electrical and mechanical gear, but also the lack of investment in infrastructure and technology upgrades means more than 80 percent of data centers are almost irreparable or require cost-prohibitive investments. Data center obsolescence risks continue to rise as technological innovation drives the industry toward higher scalability and more power-efficient designs.

The Advantages of Vantage Data Centers Santa Clara Campus
The largest wholesale data center project on the West Coast, Vantage’s 18-acre Santa Clara campus was designed and developed to adhere to the highest standards while providing enterprise customers with the most cost effective, flexible, and scalable service.

Advantages offered by Vantage Data Centers for its Santa Clara Campus include the following:
  • Industry leading PUE/energy efficiency: While standard data centers deliver 1.5-2.0 PUE, Vantage Data Centers has a PUE of 1.20, which translates to an average savings of $370,000 per megawatt per year over typical data centers.
  • Vertical scalability: The campus-style architecture offers customers unprecedented scalability in data-center power, cooling and network connectivity infrastructure while minimizing operational disruption and maximizing energy efficiency.
  • Corporate amenities: Vantage Data Centers offers highly functional facilities for conducting business in a comfortable “Class A” office-like setting. Amenities include office space, conference rooms, staging, storage, and truck access.
  • Deployment flexibility: Vantage Data Centers can adapt to the needs of its enterprise customers, delivering from 1 to 9 megawatts and eliminating the scalability issues of common wholesale architectures. Vantage employs a design process that allows for unmatched collaboration with customers.
  • Electrical Redundancy: The Santa Clara campus has a dedicated, on-site electrical substation with a dual-fed, fully redundant 50 MW capacity. In addition, pure 2N redundancy is built through the uninterruptable power supply and power distribution units (UPS/PDU).