The new site used lean construction techniques to deploy its precast concrete data centre design in less than twenty-two weeks.
“The Huntsville data centre is positioned to take advantage of the economic growth in the area that has both Huntsville and Birmingham being labelled as the ‘Silicon Valley’ of the South,” says Jeff Uphues, chief executive officer of DC BLOX. “The Huntsville facility will target enterprise, hyperscale cloud, software-as-a-service, government, network and content providers.”
The design included hot aisle contained cabinets, pods or suites; the data centre includes customer’s facilities like secure receiving and storage, conference rooms, staging areas and hoteling space. Once completed the new facility will deliver 46,000sqft of data hall space and up to 15MW of critical IT power.
“The significant investment being made by DC BLOX to open this data centre in Huntsville will not only create high-paying jobs but also bring another industry to the booming technology sector in north Alabama,” Governor Kay Ivey said. “We’re committed to positioning Alabama for a technology-focused future and look forward to working with the company to accelerate that process.”
According to figures from Bloomberg, Huntsville has the third most technical workforce in the US with nearly 17% of the workforce in a science, technology, engineering or math job role.
“The DC BLOX data centre is another great addition to our technology rich community. Huntsville, and the region, has a growing need to safely and securely manage big data through faster, cleaner transmissions,” said Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle.
The new site will also has the ability to scale up to higher levels of information classification and makes a compelling disaster recovery location for enterprises in Nashville as well as the company’s other sites in Atlanta and Chattanooga.
In addition to Huntsville, DC BLOX has also begun developing its flagship property in Birmingham, Alabama. The first phase due for completion in 2019 with the ground-breaking taking place sometime later this month.
