Buildings house secret servers that keep Net humming
CHICAGO -- From the outside, the Gothic brick and limestone building a few blocks south of downtown almost looks abandoned.
Plaques identify it as a landmark completed in 1929, a former printing plant that once produced magazines, catalogs and phone books. The sign over the main door says "Chicago Manufacturing Division Plant 1."
There are hints, though, that something is going on inside. Cameras are aimed at the building's perimeter. A small sign at the back entrance says "Digital Realty Trust."
Sturdy gates across the driveway keep the uninvited out.
There's good reason for the intentional anonymity and security, says Rich Miller: "The Internet lives there."
Miller, editor of Data Center Knowledge, which tracks the industry, and Dave Caron, senior vice president of portfolio management for Digital Realty, which owns the 1.1 million-square-foot former R.R. Donnelley printing plant, say it is the world's largest repository for computer servers.
Caron won't identify its tenants, but he says the building stores data from financial firms and Internet and telecommunications companies. "The 'cloud' that you keep hearing about … all ends up on servers in a data center somewhere," he says.
There are about 13,000 large data centers around the world, 7,000 of them in the USA, says Michelle Bailey, a vice president at IDC, a market research company that monitors the industry. Growth stalled during the recession, but her company estimates about $22 billion will be spent on new centers worldwide this year.
The need for data centers is increasing as demand for online space and connectivity explodes. Some are inside generic urban buildings or sprawling rural facilities. For all of them, security is paramount. Inside, after all, are the engines that keep smartphones smart, businesses connected and social networks humming.
Some data centers have "traps" that isolate intrusions by unauthorized individuals, technology that weighs people as they enter and sounds an alarm if their weight is different when they depart, bulletproof walls and blast-proof doors, Bailey says.
When Wal-Mart opened a data center in McDonald County, Mo., a few years ago, County Assessor Laura Pope says she signed a non-disclosure agreement promising "I wouldn't discuss anything I saw in there." She hasn't.
Borrowing a line from a 1999 movie, Miller says, "I used to kid about the Fight Club rule: Rule No. 1 is you don't talk about the data centers, and Rule No. 2 is you do not talk about the data centers."
Although the rapid growth of data centers has diminished their ability to "hide in plain sight," he says, many owners and occupants are "very secretive and … sensitive about the locations."
That makes sense, Miller says. "These facilities are critical to the financial system and the overall function of the Internet."
Making new use of the old
Some data centers — sometimes called carrier hotels because space is leased to multiple companies — are in large urban buildings where they can tap into intersecting networks, Miller says.
Old manufacturing facilities such as Chicago's Donnelley printing plant often are repurposed because they have high ceilings and load-bearing floors to support heavy racks of servers.
"They are interesting examples of the new economy rising up in the footprints of the old," he says.
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