An in-world screenshot of Second Life, taken from the Linden Lab website.
(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Data center operator Terremark Worldwide (www.terremark.com) announced last week that Linden Lab, the developer of the popular online virtual world Second Life (www.secondlife.com) has colocated the project’s infrastructure at Terremark’s NAP of the Capital Region.
Launched in 2003, says Terremark, Second Life has become one of the world’s largest repositories of user-generated content, and sustains an internal economy of more than $450 million in annual transactions between users.
The announcement doesn’t dwell much on the specifics of Linden Lab’s critical IT needs, but the obvious inference is that an always-on virtual world – particularly one that supports the aforementioned content and economy – has serious requirements for uptime and redundancy.
Located outside Washington, DC, says Terremark, The NAP of the Capital Region’s security features exceed federal government standards, and its power infrastructure and environmental systems are backed by a 100 percent service level agreement.
“As Second Life continues to expand its infrastructure to meet current and future demands in user traffic and content generation, we felt Terremark’s full suite of world-class IT solutions provided a high level of flexibility for those future business and technology needs,” says Frank Ambrose, senior vice president of global technology for Linden Lab, quoted in the Terremark press release. “The NAP of the Capital Region’s sophisticated design affords us the opportunity to expand in multiple facilities within the same campus while partnering with a company that shares our commitment to limiting the environmental impact of our activities by employing energy-efficient systems.”
Terremak says it started construction on the second data center on the NAP of the Captial Region’s 30-acre campus in January of this year. The expansion is expected to be complete in “the early part of 2010.”
The campus is designed to accommodate up to five 500,000 square-foot data centers and a 72,000 square-foot office building.
In April, Terremark was named VMware’s service provider partner of the year. The company is a partner in the virtualization software firm’s vCloud initiative, a project to develop platforms for cloud computing.
About Liam Eagle
Liam Eagle has worked as a contributor to the Web Host Industry Review since its inception in 2000, and as editor since 2003. He has been editor of the WHIR's print magazine since its launch. His daily involvement in the gathering and reporting of Web hosting news and his regular interaction with Web hosting leaders gives him an uncommonly broad appreciation of the issues and tends facing the business. Through his WHIR blog, Liam spots Web hosting trends and offers opinions on the industry-wide impacts of major developments and the motivation behind big announcements. Follow him on Twitter @liameagle
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