Bridget Botelho of Techtarget wrote an article on the subject of locating data centers based on an interview with Chris Crosby, the senior vice president of Digital Realty Trust. Digital Realty Trust is based in San Francisco and operates more than 2 million square feet of data center space in the U.S.
The selection process and criteria have been published several places, choosing place with characteristics such as:
- Few natural disaster potentials, such as hurricanes, tornados and earthquakes. Pingdom has an informative article on this subject.
- Abundant and inexpensive power supply. DatacenterKnowledge has an informative article on this subject. This blog has also discussed this topic. [link to posting]
- Tax breaks. Some local governments solicit for data center constructions for taxes and employment.
- Access to fiber network. This a must for data centers.
- Human resources.
- Plenty of land.
Crosby reveals some interesting “secrets” behind those criteria:
"As the largest data center operator in the country, promising 99.999% uptime, Digital Realty Trust looks at the process of choosing data center sites not as a selection process but as an elimination process, Crosby said."
Some of the criteria may conflict with each other. For example, cheap power and spacious land tend to indicate rural regions. Those regions may not have qualified people to work at data centers. Site selection can be really hard. As Crosby says:
"Finding a great site for your data center won't get you kudos, but finding the wrong one will get you fired," because it will cost a company millions of dollars."
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