Number of large data centers grows

The global internet infrastructure keeps growing, with three new big data centers slated to go online in the US. Google, Oracle, and Switch Communications have invested a total of over $1 billion into three facilities, located in North Carolina, Utah, and Nevada.

Google's new computing powerhouse is likely to be the first of the three to start operations. Last Thursday, the company announced the completion of the first building and invited local media and citizens to take a peek. The 100,000 square feet facility comes with a price tag of $600 million and will employ 200 people. The data center will run Google's own software, such as the Bigtable storage engine and the MapReduce parallel processing application, in order to support the company's search, webmail, and related services. More information is available at Google's dedicated Lenoir data center webpage.

An even larger project is underway in Las Vegas, funded by Switch Communications to the tune of $500 million. Strategically located, and with an area of 407,000 square feet, the data center will be one of the largest data centers in the USA when completed. According to a report in The Register, "[buying an Enron broadband trading hub] gave Switch access to more than twenty of the primary carrier backbones in a single location. Switch tied this vast network to existing data center hosting facilities and attracted military clients, among others..." Until now, Switch has kep a low profile because of its more secretive clients, but this latest data center, called the SuperNAT, is likely to bring the company a lot of publicity. The SuperNAT will open later this year.

Oracle has made an initial payment of $250 million on a new data center in West Jordan, Utah, expected to be online in 2010. The facility will support the growing demand for Oracle SaaS offerings, and will provide 100 new workplaces.