Switch announced in August that its SuperNAP 8 Las Vegas data center had earned Tier IV Gold certification for Operational Sustainability, the top certification in the industry. SuperNAP 8 is only the fourth data center in the world to obtain it and the first carrier-neutral, collocation facility to do so. The other provider facilities to earn this certification include Telefonica’s Madrid data center, U.S. Bancorp’s Kansas data center and a municipal facility serving the Province of Ontario.
Achieving a Tier IV Gold certification signifies that a data center has reached the highest levels of efficiency and redundancy in addressing the problems that lead to outages. The steps taken at the SuperNAP 8 facility to ensure redundancy include backup fuel supply, generators, batteries and remote power panels. Physical and virtual security measures have also been taken at the Las Vegas data center, such as rotating keys, high-performance cooling units and a roof capable of withstanding winds of up to 200 MPH.
Switch has more than 1,000 customers and the SuperNAP 8 Las Vegas data center hosts servers for companies like eBay and Fox Broadcasting Network. According to the Switch, SuperNAP 8 has yet to experience a single instance of downtime.
“Even if a mistake is made, stuff is still working the minute you want to use it,” said Missy Young executive vice president of colocation for SuperNAP 8. “We’re designed, built and operated that way. That’s really critical to any company that has any servers anywhere. If your site goes down, customers will go to your competitor’s site. You can’t risk that.”
The SuperNAP 8 modular data center was built using an approach known as SwitchMOD. Every module has 10MVA of power and two separate data halls, capable of holding 800 cabinets each.
