Colo building data center in a former shopping mall:
Colo building data center in a former shopping mall DATE: 14 May 2009
Lifeline Data Centers, a colocation company based in Indianapolis, is taking an old shopping mall property and turning it into a data center facility. The Eastgate Mall, which has been closed since 2004, has become an eyesore in the city.
Lifeline will spend about $23 million to transform the property to make it more appealing and bring in tax money for the city. The first phase will turn into 60,000 square feet of data center space in a spot where Wasson's – an old department store – and a Burlington Coat Factory once stood. The company then plans to build four 100,000-square-foot data centers on the south and east sides of the property.
Reworking a shopping mall site into a data center isn't easy. Though the construction of the building's foundation is solid, a food court doesn't take as much power as thousands of servers, and so Lifeline had to rework the power infrastructure.
On the cooling side, Lifeline is taking a novel approach by building its own air handlers at about half the cost of buying them off the shelf. Most of the work is already done, with one customer already testing equipment there. Co-owner Alex Carroll said Lifeline expects to have about 12 customers up and running by August.
Check out this 6-minute video on how Lifeline is transforming a shopping mall into a data center.
More on Building or renovating a data center
Liquid Web opens 'cloud'-enabling data center VIDEO - A Web hoster will run Storm, it own cloud computing platform. at its new data center in Michigan. Storm will compete with Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud and other offerings. ( Nov 12, 2009 )
Are containerized data centers catching on? ARTICLE - Containerized data centers have been touted by Microsoft and Google as a way to expand without hefty construction costs. But have other companies adopted the data center in a box? ( Nov 16, 2009 )
Buyout could boost Uptime Institute ARTICLE - The 451 Group acquisition could reinvigorate the data center consulting think tank. ( Oct 23, 2009 )
End users still cool on Iceland as a data center site ARTICLE - Iceland's financial collapse, limited labor pool and lack of proximity to metropolitan areas give users pause about targeting the country for data center site selection. ( Oct 22, 2009 )
Data center consolidation can benefit from ITIL TIP - Data center consolidation projects can be complex and risky, but if IT organizations use the ITIL lifecycle to document the process, it can help smooth the transition. ( Oct 19, 2009 )
Data center location selection: Incentives can tip ... ARTICLE - Though it is often a minor consideration for where to locate a data center, companies should consider incentives as a way to make a good deal better, one state organization says. ( Oct 08, 2009 )
TechTarget provides technology professionals with the information they need to perform their jobs - from developing strategy, to making cost-effective purchase decisions and managing their organizations' technology projects - with its network of technology-specific websites, events and online magazines.