Silicon Valley losing new data centers to rest of country

California’s Silicon Valley has always been home to more data centers than any other place in the United States, but lately the region has been feeling a bit under-loved and left out as developers choose other locations to house their servers.

Why is the Silicon Valley less desirable than before? It’s not. The matter can be traced back to one thing: money. Not only are data centers more expensive to construct and run in California, but capital-strapped developers are being given financial incentives to build elsewhere.

Most notably, President Obama’s stimulus plan is spawning a flurry of data center construction in northern Virginia, an economically depressed area. At least two companies, DuPont and Terremark, have halted plans for Silicon Valley facilities and moved their dollars to the East Coast.

Virginia isn’t the only state experiencing a silicon boom. Yahoo is currently building a large data center in North Carolina, and New Jersey recently became home to a Wall Street server facility.

It’s no surprise that as America’s computing needs grow, data center construction will continue to be more diversified than in the past– especially when there is an incentive involved.

Photo | Flickr

Is this the most secure data center in the world?

It may not look like something out of James Bond, but a new government data center in Culpeper, Virginia may be the most secure yet.

Hosting provider Terremark constructed the data center for the United States government as a cloud computing facility.

Built like a bunker, the center boasts reinforced concrete walls, motion-sensing cameras, armed dogs, and bomb-sniffing dogs. “This building is like a secure bunker, and the campus is like a military base,” the company’s senior Vice President, Norm Laudermilch, bragged. All vehicles entering the facility are thoroughly searched.

The data center may be secure on the outside, but I bet its much more vulnerable virtually. Armed guards and concrete are useless against hackers, who in this day and age seem to find a way around any security system. Still, it’s important that the government have the more secure infrastructure available.

Source | InformationWeek