(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Online auction site eBay (www.ebay.com) announced on Friday it has opened a new data center in South Jordan, Utah, according to a blog post at Data Center Pulse.
First announced in December 2008, the $287 million facility has been online since May 4. The data center serves as the flagship facility for eBay, which hosts the eBay.com and Paypal.com websites.
In the blog post, Dean Nelson, eBay’s senior director of global data center strategy discussed the details and provided photos of the data center project, named Topaz, as well as the company’s recent launch event.
The facility’s first phase comprises of a 240,000 square foot building that features three 20,000 square foot data center halls, including one for eBay Marketplace, one for PayPal.com, and a third for expansion.
The project calls for four phases, which is designed to consolidate eBay’s leased data center space that is spread across three states. Currently, the data center has 7.2MW of capacity, with a 30MW substation on site.
“We have built a fault tolerant Tier IV level data center that is 50 percent less expensive to operate than the average of all other data centers we lease today,” says Nelson. “It is also 30 percent more efficient than the most efficient data center in our portfolio. At a designed PUE of 1.4, it lowers both our economical and ecological costs. We only consume the energy we need, when we need it.”
The new data center has a range of built in energy efficiency features, including 400V power distribution, cooling from a water-side economizer system, in-row cooling units for close-coupled cooling, a hot air containment system to isolate the hot and cold air within the server area, and the ability to support power densities of up to 30kw per rack using this design.
eBay says it expects to attain Gold-level certification under the LEED program for energy efficient buildings, while Nelson says the data center should be able to achieve a Power Usage Effectiveness rating of 1.4.
The company celebrated the grand opening earlier this month, transforming the facility’s third data hall into “Club eBay”.
