Data Recovery Digest

CenturyLink, a popular provider of telephone, high-speed Internet and cable television services, boasts a lot of customers throughout the residential, commercial, governmental and wholesale markets. As a result, their overall power consumption is quite significant. In an effort to help reduce this footprint, which will ultimately lower upkeep costs on their end, CenturyLink has announced their newest datacenter, which is located in central Washington State, will operate solely on hydroelectric power. The move, which is an innovative and eco-friendly way of continuing and even heightening operations, has already garnered a great deal of attention.

The new facility, which is located in Moses Lake, Washington, will receive its power from a series of hydroelectric generators located on the nearby Columbia River. Moreover, the natural atmosphere of the region is expected to help with temperature control and cooling within the datacenter itself. At the start of operations, the datacenter will utilize a total of 8 megawatts of hydroelectricity. It can handle up to 30 megawatts at its maximum load.

David Meredith, senior vice president with CenturyLink, spoke about some of the benefits of switching to hydroelectricity. He was quoted as saying: “CenturyLink's new low-cost power data center services provide many benefits to our customers, including a highly resilient solution coupled with power costs and efficiency metrics that rank among the best in the industry, and the facility serves as an excellent disaster recovery location. Enterprises enjoy global access to CenturyLink's portfolio of cloud and managed hybrid IT services, and we continue to extend the reach of our data center footprint to new markets to meet from the needs of our customers.”

This isn’t the only move that CenturyLink has made in order to reduce their ecological impact. The company previously used Bloom Energy, which comes in the form of a solid oxide fuel cell, to power another datacenter located in the southern area of California.

IDC, one of the industry’s leading research and intelligence firms, provided their analysis of CenturyLink’s latest move. Kelly Quinn, a research manager with IDC, was quoted as saying: “The central part of Washington State is one of the geographies in which I see substantial potential for further growth as a data center hub. Its potential stems from the area's abundance of natural, power-generating resources, and its relative immunity from natural disasters. The location should help enable CenturyLink's new data center to provide customers with the ability to achieve higher levels of density without incurring high power costs. It also may offer customers who are 'green' conscious the ability to work with a provider that can satisfy their data center needs with renewable energy sources."

With over 55 datacenters currently operating throughout North America, Europe and Asia, CenturyLink is one of the leading providers of network and data infrastructure, big data analytics and IT integration. To support their operations, CenturyLink relies on 250,000-route-miles of fiber cabling in the U.S. and an additional 300,000 internationally. To find out more information about CenturyLink, please visit their website at www.centurylink.com