Open for business in Quincy

Posted December 20th, 2007 at 10:35 pm by KC Mares, Director of Data Center Strategy

 4 Comments / Filed in: Trends & News

Our second data center in Central Washington is open for business! Earlier this month we hosted more than 250 local community members and officials, contractors, and construction crew in Quincy, Washington to celebrate the opening of our first data center built from the ground up. We take great care to find the right combination of fiber connectivity, network availability, low cost of power, land and operations, and a skilled workforce to operate a state-of-the-art facility when looking for new data center locations. In Quincy and nearby Wenatchee (where we opened a data center last November), we not only found all the right resources, we were also embraced by a welcoming community.

Whether you’re checking your email or sending one, our data centers are making that action possible behind the scenes. These data centers support all our servers and network connectivity, which means access for you to all our products around the world. Greening our data centers has also been core to the company’s overall carbon neutral efforts this year and innovations in the design and operations of our new data centers help us meet our promise to be an environmentally responsible business.

The coolest part (no pun intended!) of the new Quincy facility is that it takes advantage of a cooling technology that saves energy costs every year and is sourced by 99% renewable power. A substantial amount of energy is used to cool Yahoo!’s server infrastructure. Typical data centers use air conditioning year-round, but Yahoo! is exploring technologies that include high-efficiency air-conditioning systems that use water-based chillers combined with using cold external air to cool the inside of the data center about ¾ of the year (we’re pushing for more). Our goal is to operate our Washington facilities with a 100% zero-carbon footprint by using renewable hydroelectric energy, investing in additional carbon-offsets, and producing zero water waste through chemical-free water treatment and water recycling.

We’re proud of the continued infrastructure improvements we’re making to increase our control of operations and energy-efficiency, and we’re just getting started with the Quincy facility. More than 330,000 man-hours have gone into completing the project, and we couldn’t have done it without the community’s support and the incredible commitment from the building and construction crews – hopefully the beginning of a long relationship with many more celebrations to come. When addressing the crowd at Quincy’s grand opening, our Co-Founder David Filo and Vice President of Operations Kevin Timmons reiterated the long-term investment that these data centers represent for Yahoo! and the opportunity to further support our growing community of users, like you. So the next time you send an email or do a Yahoo! search, you can rest assured that our data centers are working fast and furiously (juked up on renewable energy) to make your Yahoo! experience a seamless one.

KC Mares
Director of Data Center Strategy

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4 Comments Add your own

gag | December 21st, 2007 at 4:36 am

wow
impressive, interesting and inspiring

GYUSZI BACSI | January 4th, 2008 at 5:12 pm

unfortunately it is not such a nice building like the head quarter

stu clark | January 11th, 2008 at 9:15 pm

Hi, KC, so, is this how Yahoo!igans stay in touch?
Just how do you “green” the approximately 1,000 kW-hr/sf-yr consumed in any or all of these data centers?

Yahoo opened an IDC in Wenatchee?
Wow, that’s in the stix, on the way to Twisp/Methow River, I once hiked up Twisp R. drainage, over the cont. divide to Dagger Lake, nice place, caught a dz trout and had a BBQ that day.
I suppose it’ll support eastern WA nicely.
Angel

David Kivi | February 15th, 2008 at 8:05 pm

Great project to work on! Had alot of fun. Kivi