(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — This week, Microsoft (www.microsoft.com) offered a look at its new 50,000-square-foot data center in Redmond, Washington which consolidates servers for the technology giant’s research unit and labs.
The announcement follows reports in July that Microsoft is building a Brazil data center to support the company’s software plus services strategy, which is expected to open in the fourth quarter of 2009.
The new facility will support the company’s new cloud-computing platform, Windows Azure, which is set for wide release later this year.
Located just eight miles from Microsoft’s headquarters, the Redmond Ridge 1 facility first went online in early July and is positioned to scale up to full capacity by April 2010.
The data center will decrease the company’s overall costs, as well as its carbon footprint by 12,000 tons per year by consolidating servers from the many server rooms in its office buildings in an energy efficient building.
Though it is significantly smaller than the large data centers Microsoft typically builds to support its online services operation, the facility will still be able to hold 35,000 to 50,000 servers.
Using free cooling techniques, Microsoft expects the facility will be able to cool its servers with outside air for 95 percent of the year.
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