Equinix expands East Coast IP hub with new data center
The eight data centers on the company's sprawling Ashburn, Va., campus operate as one virtual building, serving as North America's largest IP traffic hub.
Equinix has added an eighth data center to its sprawling campus in Ashburn, Va., that serves as a key hub for IP traffic on the East Coast.
The center, called DC11, provides colocation, International Business Exchange (IBX) and IT infrastructure services to government agencies and technology companies in the national capital region.
The Equinix campus was built north of a former UUNet facility that was a key hub in MAE-East, the Internet’s first major interconnection point, according to an article on Data Center Knowledge. The company’s first data center opened in Ashburn in 1998, “providing a ‘carrier-neutral’ facility where companies could gain access to Internet backbones operated by UUNet and AT&T,” the article stated.
Since then, the Ashburn campus has become known as the IP hub of the mid-Atlantic seaboard, said Equinix’s Jim Farmer, director of Americas marketing in the company's blog. It is the largest IP traffic hub in North America and the gateway to Europe, he added.
The new DC11 has space for 1,200 cabinets, with capacity for an additional 1,800 cabinets. Phase 1 offers 42,800 square feet of customer floor space, but the facility will provide 232,000 gross square feet in total, with additional capacity being built out in phases, the company said.
Equinix treats its eight buildings on the Ashburn campus as one virtual building, with fiber connectivity between each, according to Equinix regional operating chief for the Americas Raouf Abdel, as reported by Data Center Dynamics.
In support of its government customers, Equinix offers the following features:
- Connection to more than 900 network carriers, including all of the GSA Networx and WITS providers.
- Interconnection to more than 300 cloud providers and more than 500 managed IT service providers.
- Certification and accreditation support for federal compliance standards and security controls such as FISMA, DIACAP, NIST800-53.
- Secure data center facilities featuring secure cage spaces, 24x7x365 on-site security guards, multiple levels of biometric readers, CCTV, access control lists, motion detectors and comprehensive procedures for screening inbound deliveries.
- Back-up services through a comprehensive global service-level agreement that includes 99.999 percent power availability, 99.99 percent temperature and humidity availability, and 99.99 percent cross-connect availability guarantees.
DC11 also meets Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative mandates for efficiency, as well as industry compliance frameworks such as HIPAA and PCI, according to Data Center Knowledge.