The Planet says the new expansion will add 12,000 square feet to the company's operations, bringing The Planet's total data center footprint to 167,000 square feet. The new section will also be able to accommodate up to 10,000 servers, says the company. The new addition is expected to open in November.

The expanded facility will feature an energy-efficient design that uses improved measures to completely separate hot and cold air, says the company.

One of the measures include extending the returns of the computer room air conditioning units through the ceiling and using the space above the ceiling as a return air path. By installing Chatsworth Products ducted exhaust cabinets in the new phase, The Planet says it is taking the next steps beyond traditional "hot aisle-cold aisle" setups to completely isolate the hot and cold air in the data center.

"As energy costs continue to climb, operating our data centers at peak performance is absolutely critical, both to our company and to our customers," says The Planet's VP of facilities Jeff Lowenberg. "Our goal is to use best practices and a practical approach to optimize our operations."

Last month, Lowenberg was named "data center manager of the year" by online publication SearchDataCenter.com based on his work that will to save The Planet more than $1 million in energy costs in 2008.

By implementing innovative but "common sense" type of measures, like the one mentioned earlier in the story, Lowenberg has been able to improve the data center's "coefficient of efficiency," an EPA and Uptime Institute recognized measurement of the total power necessary to operate a data center divided by its critical power, which is the energy required to operate its computers.

An ideal ranking is 1.6. The Planet expects to improve the data center's ranking to approximately 1.5. The Planet operates six data centers, with four located in Dallas and two in Houston.

Earlier this month, company's H1 data center in Houston suffered an explosion, which led to an outage that affected approximately 9,000 servers and 7,500 customers.

The explosion and accompanying fire knocked down three walls surrounding the facility's electrical equipment room, as well as destroyed the underground cabling that powers the first floor of the facility.

Although disgruntled customers are inevitable in a situation like this, The Planet remained in constant communication with its customers through its forum and customer portal - indicative of its well-formulated disaster recovery plan - as well as through other popular forums, like Web Hosting Talk.

The Planet was eventually able to back 90 percent of the second floor servers after more than 40 hours of troubleshooting.