Server Farm: Your Place or Mine?

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,48104,00.html

By Julia Scheeres
Nov. 14, 2001

In an era of growing insecurity, having your computer equipment tucked
into a hole 85 feet underground has a certain appeal.

That's the selling point of Underground Secure Data Center Operations
(USDCO), a server farm located in an abandoned gypsum mine near Grand
Rapids, Michigan.

USDCO execs are stressing the bunker-like qualities of their
750,000-square-foot mine in the wake of the terrorist attacks and
subsequent data and equipment destruction.

Most data centers are above ground and vulnerable to the kind of
cataclysmic attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center, a company
spokesman Ryan McGrath pointed out. But this underground stronghold
would even have weathered the crash of Flight 93 on Sept. 11, which
dug a 25-foot crater in rural Pennsylvania.

"It's a disaster-proof environment," said co-founder Irvin Wolfson.
"We've got 85 feet of solid rock over us."

Acts of God pose little threat either: There are no earthquake fault
lines in Michigan and any groundwater seepage is controlled with a
couple of sump pumps.

The 100-year-old mine is naturally suited for housing computers, he
added. The temperature hovers at a chilly 50 degrees with 79 percent
humidity, which reduces computer-generated static electricity that can
short out equipment.

The mine harvested gypsum - a mineral used in plaster - until the
1940s. Then it was inactive for almost two decades before being
converted into a gigantic refrigerator for warehousing food and other
perishables by the Michigan Natural Storage Company, which still owns
the mine and is a partner in the company.

The layout of the cavern consists of a main 40-foot-wide corridor that
branches out into a series of smaller chambers with 10-foot ceilings.
The mine is equipped with back-up generators and multiple DS3 Internet
pipes.

The company leases rack space for as little as $100 a month or an
entire chamber for much more, depending on the client's requirements.
Since USDCO opened its shaft for business in July, 25 customers have
signed on.

The surging demand for data centers has paralleled the growth of the
information technology sector. Many companies mirror their in-house
servers at co-location facilities such as USDCO so they can seamlessly
switch to the hosted servers if disaster strikes, allowing them to
never go offline.

According to research firm Yankee Group, the data center business
generated $9 billion in revenue last year and will grow to more than
$47 billion by 2003.

Data centers are an important niche in the IT field. For most
companies, the loss or interruption of critical data can lead to
punishing financial damages. A switch failure at the New York Stock
Exchange in 1998, for example, halted trading for 59 minutes, causing
multi-million-dollar losses.

Some data centers advertise their fortress-like locations to soothe
customers' fears. Consider The Bunker, a British hosting company
located in a former NATO nuclear bunker outside of London. Or HavenCo
a managed co-location business based on Sealand, a WWII-era gunnery
off England's coast that is also the world's smallest principality.

Other companies hawk their rigid security measures. At San Francisco's
UPNetworks , the computers are safeguarded by four consecutive doors
that require swipe cards, said CEO Richard Leslie. Clients are
escorted by staff to the center's bowels and are monitored by
surveillance cameras even when they're alone with their equipment.

Q9, a data center in Toronto, uses both proximity cards and
fingerprint scanners to access the computer room, which is entered
through a bullet-proof revolving door that allows only one person
through at a time.

"The whole idea is that someone can't force another person to let them
in," said Q9 CEO Osama Arafat. "It's just part of the due diligence
that people demand."



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