Colovore Begins Construction on High-Density, State-of-the-Art Colocation Facility in Silicon Valley

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Colovore Data Center Features 20 kW per rack, wall to wall, significantly reducing TCO

Santa Clara, CA (August 1, 2013) — Colovore announced today that it has begun construction on its high-density, 9 MW data center located on 1101 Space Park Drive in Santa Clara. The modern, LEED-Platinum retail colocation facility will offer power densities of 20 kW per cabinet for the entire data center floor, unrivalled in the Bay Area data center market.

The company features a deep, IT-savvy management team which has been running retail colocation facilities and managing core web infrastructure for some of the Bay Area’s largest technology companies since 2000. Sean Holzknecht, President, formerly ran the operations of retail colo provider Evocative, a winner of numerous Inc. 5000 awards, and was previously responsible for managing data centers at Navisite and Colo.com. Peter Harrison, CTO, most recently was an executive in Google’s data center strategy and planning group, and prior to Google helped build and manage critical web infrastructure for eBay and Netflix.

“Why does power density matter so much? Because the more dense you deploy, the more you save. It dramatically reduces TCO day one and density is quickly becoming the critical long-term infrastructure planning variable for IT managers. Today’s virtualized servers demand more and more power, and the risk of running out of power and cooling in the Bay Area’s 10-12 year old, low-density data center footprint is very real” stated Sean Holzknecht, President of Colovore.

Consider the following real-world example: a customer uses 60 kW of monthly power, spread across 12 5-kw cabinets at an existing colo provider. At Colovore, that same customer can consolidate from 12 cabinets to 5 12-kW cabinets, eliminating the monthly rental fee for 7 cabinets immediately and reducing the need for multiple top-rack switches and expensive monthly cross-connects. The day 1 savings at Colovore are 25-30%+, and furthermore, the customer has 8 kW of available power per cabinet and 40 kW in total– allowing for growth of nearly 70% from its existing level—without needing to purchase a single new cabinet. The customer’s IT infrastructure management has been simplified considerably; it can grow vertically in fewer cabinets, not spread horizontally across half-full, low-density cabinets. And its IT roadmap is now certain with no risk of obsolescence.

“The trend towards converged IT infrastructure is here, with meaningful efficiencies to be gained. Using compact, virtualized blade servers packed densely with RAM and processing capability makes all the sense in the world,” said Peter Harrison, CTO at Colovore. “But the requirement in power density and cooling per data center rack goes up considerably in order to deploy this converged infrastructure. We understand this, and we are offering the data center home in the Bay Area for all companies, not just the Fortune 500, to take advantage of this IT trend. Not everyone needs 20 kW per cabinet today, but we can support this. And 4-5 kW per rack is definitely no longer sufficient and is quickly becoming obsolete as densities continue to rise.”
Colovore’s data center offers an unrivalled feature set in the Bay Area retail colo market:

  • Power is provided by Silicon Valley Power, the cheapest but most-reliable utility in the state of California, with a substation immediately adjacent through the fence and another across the street
  • Space Park Drive features a wide array of tier 1 ISPs and fiber providers, so connectivity is unsurpassed
  • The building itself is designated LEED-Platinum status and built to a 1.5 seismic importance factor
  • With its modern, purpose-built mechanical and electrical infrastructure, Colovore will operate with a PUE below 1.3
  • 9 MW of power have already been permitted and approved, so Colovore has plenty of power to support future growth

Equally important, Colovore is building its facility with the day-to-day life of an IT Director specifically in mind. The company has developed a proprietary, custom information portal to give timely, relevant operations data and information to customers. The facility features wifi, a comfortable lounge, and plenty of desktop and meeting room space for daily use. Its staff features experienced systems administrators with deep IT capabilities, and Colovore will offer value-added products such as blended Ethernet, managed firewalls, VPNs, and storage, and other important services such as remote hands, cable management, and rack-and-stack. “We are I.T., for I.T.” commented Peter Harrison. “We understand the daily life of IT data center managers. We understand their pain and we are here to be long-term partners to help them succeed.”

About Colovore

Colovore is Silicon Valley’s premier provider of high-density colocation solutions that future-proof your business and save you money. With power densities of 20 kW per rack wall to wall, we can lower your TCO significantly. Virtualize, converge, Colovore. www.colovore.com