On May 14, 2010, eBay completed construction on its newest data center in Salt Lake City, UT. The center, named Topaz, is being called “bullet-proof,” by Dean Nelson, senior director, global data center strategy architecture and operations, in a post on his blog, “Data Center Pulse.”

The data center was built at a cost of $287 million and the project was completed in 14 months. Nelson said the center will house eBay’s core businesses, including both ebay.com and PayPal.com. The 24,000-sq-ft, two-story building houses three, 20,000-sq-ft rooms for IT equipment.

Nelson cites one key highlight of the project is the built-in redundancy on virtually every component, which means that “even the backups have backup,” making the data center Tier IV level fault tolerant.

Another highlight of the project is its energy efficiency. In addition to running at 400V, the system features a waterside economizer, which uses outside air to cool the center, and a hot aisle design that isolate the heated air from the cold air.

In addition, Nelson expects Topaz to achieve LEED Gold certification from the USGBC.