Huge Data Center Going Up In Sin City

pacopico writes "The Register has a report on an intriguing Las Vegas-based company which is building one of the world's largest data centers called the SuperNAP. The company — Switch Communications — claims it will be the most densely packed and power efficient data center ever built. The report notes, 'Legend has it that the company managed to acquire what was once meant to be Enron's broadband trading hub for a song. This 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, to its Las Vegas shop.'"

Re:Heat

[Iphtashu Fitz]

True, but so are places like Dallas, San Diego, etc. and they all have huge datacenters. Beside, Vegas as a lot of relative cheap electricity thanks to the likes of the Hoover Dam, etc. That's the main reason why Vegas is so big and always lit up like a friggin' Christmas Tree on steroids. Prior to the power plant at Hoover Dam coming on-line the city was pretty much like any other city in the USA.

Switch Does Have Some Good Facilities

[bastion_xx]

I've done due diligence visits to a couple of their sites in Las Vegas. Professional facilities and they host for a lot of Las Vegas casinos and companies.

I didn't get too far into the peering side of things, but I remember them talking up the amount of fiber that runs through the Las Vegas valley.

Re:Heat

[mbone]

Prior to the Hoover Dam coming on line (i.e., pre-World-War II), there wasn't a city there.

Re:Heat

[hackstraw]

I thought about heat, cooling, power, all the standard data center stuff, then I thought. Well, Isn't Vegas a great place for solar? Not a mention of it in the article. It mentions needing 3 million gallons of water a day (not a commodity in the desert), they also say that the building was left over from the Enron fiasco.

I don't know, to me something does not seem to add up here. They are advertising 3x the power density of the typical data center (1500 Watts/sq ft vs 500), and all that. Fortune 100 companies as companies, all that, but also the stuff where they get database feeds from databases that nobody knows about, and that they have a display that will immediately update whenever someone mentions the word bomb on an airplane (are airplanes wired that well now?).

To me, the article leaves many more questions than answers. Something seems fishy with this, but maybe my tin foil hat is on too tightly today.

Not the greatest area...

[Anonymous Coward]

I work very close to where is data center is going in, and the area is horrible for telecommunications. With all the construction, lines are accidentally cut on a regular basis. A few weeks ago, all data/telco lines in the area went down for most of the day.

Re:Heat

[Concerned Onlooker]

That's not exactly true. Prior to the dam, Boulder City did not exist. It was a town that sprung up entirely for the purpose of housing the workers that built the dam, which was completed in 1935. Las Vegas itself was established in 1905 and officially became a city in 1911. However, the dam did allow it to thrive.

Re:Heat

[jo42]

Hoover Dam

Yeah, great, except Lake Mead is at its lowest level ever since it was made by the dam. The South-West is in a serious multi-year drought and predictions have it that if it continues, in 10-15 years there won't be enough water running through the dam to turn a single turbine. What then?

Re:Heat

[LiNT_]

Las Vegas does not get any power from Hoover Dam unless it's purchased on the open market. The power generated by the Hoover Dam belongs to California and Arizona. If Nevada receives any power generated by the Hoover Dam, it's because it's purchased through the energy market just the same as if it was purchased from any other energy provider.

Actually yah, it is their property

[Swift Kick]

FTFA:

Page 1: "Legend has it that the company managed to acquire what was once meant to be Enron's broadband trading hub for a song."

Page 3: "Enron had already built a lot of the infrastructure needed for its facility and brought the major carriers on board just as its business started to collapse. So, the broadband center went up for sale.
"We were the only ones that bid on it," Roy said. "It should have been the $200bn companies that owned it. We got it for a Cinderella story type of figure."

If the facility was sold off as part of the bankruptcy proceedings, it's sold. Whatever you think 'fair market price' means, it doesn't apply when it comes to bankruptcy firesales, where the creditors are trying to recoup whatever they can from their investments, and don't necessarily have the patience to sit around and wait for the 'fair market price'.

Re:Switch Does Have Some Good Facilities

[inKubus]

The thing about vegas is the town quadrupled in size in the last 10-15 years. So all the infrastructure is new. And the city was good about zoning everything underground. So there are giant 32" conduits running everywhere. Most of these are owned by the city or by Nevada Power. The city basically got the conduit in return for permitting the NV Power lines. So along every major street (and it's nicely gridded out), there is a TON of conduit space. The only person to really make use of them has been COX (the cable company). XO (Now known as Telepacific), Sprint/Embarq (the CLEC), and some other people have been quietly building SONET [wikipedia.org] rings around the city. Sprint has all the last mile copper and Cox has last mile coax. There are some other enterprising people who are getting into the business. American Fiber Solutions is one I know has some contacts to use the Nevada Power conduit/easements. And I heard Time Warner cable is planning a big rollout of IPTV-type services.

So anyway, there is a lot of bandwidth IN the city from a lot of different carriers. But if you look at the long lines, where Vegas actually gets connected with the outside world, you basically have 4 routes, the shortest being AT&T to Los Angeles. There are some direct OC192 (10G) connections to 1 Wilshire going to Vegas. Then you have Phoenix (SW Bell/SBC/Now AT&T again), Salt Lake (L3) and Denver(Qwest). Whereas at 1 Wilshire you have GLOBAL connectivity up and down the coast and trans-pacific. Plus a lot more people in the local area.

However, there was a lot planned for Las Vegas before the first dotcom fizzle and a lot of fiber came in. I see it as more of a good remote/DR site for LA/the Bay/Phoenix/Salt Lake/Denver but I don't see it becoming a major hub for anything. Whereas the major developments on the Columbia River (the Dalles, the Microsoft "centre" across the river) in N. Oregon and Washington seem to be more realistic long-term big centers. For one thing, you have the Bonneville Power Administration which runs all those dams on the columbia. You can get bulk power cheap, especially now that we buy most of our aluminum from China. The ambient temp is cheaper. The network is much closer to the Bay area. It's not closer to LA, but most of the action is in the Bay. Plus you have a lot of East/West lines running down to Salt Lake on the I84 corridor thru Boise, which is destined to be the new big boom town (it already was one of the fastest growing places in America).