1&1’s Lenexa, Kansas Data Center Grand Opening

1&1’s Lenexa Data Center

World's largest web hosting provider 1&1 Internet turns a warehouse in tornado alley Lenexa, Kansas into state-of-the-art data center.

What does a four billion dollar web hosting company with over seven million customers do to gain ground in the US? If they are 1&1 Internet (http://www.1and1.com), they find a warehouse in Lenexa, Kansas, drop several million dollars and turn it into a 55,000 square foot data center capable of hosting 40,000 servers.

The largest web hosting company in the world found its golden opportunity in North America, attracting over 700,000 new customers with its US marketing campaign. Now the four billion dollar web hosting company is settling down in Lenexa, Kansas with their multi-million dollar state-of-the-art data center and US headquarters in Chesterbrook, PA.

The data center originally opened its doors in early 2007, but the grand opening – where us media folks got to visit, take a few snapshots, ask a bunch of geeky questions, and turn our digital recordings into a fluid of verbiage that makes you want to stand up and say, “I want to host my server at the 1&1 Lenexa data center!” – took place on October 4, 2008.

Before you pick up the phone or visit the 1&1 website and start asking questions about 1&1’s line of servers, first you need to know a few things about the Lenexa facility. If you live in the US, you should already know that Kansas is plagued with tornados, twisters, and powerful wind storms capable of ripping and shredding buildings to dust. Keep your server related questions in mind. But meanwhile, let’s talk about concrete, steel, raised floors, and an innovative cooling system.

The Lenexa facility is reinforced with two sets of concrete walls and a steel roof with a solid mass of concrete sitting on top. Even if you have a dozen servers, or just one server residing in the Lenexa facility, the amount of concrete and steel that holds the place together will keep your servers safe and secure. The data center has four-foot raised floors giving it ample room to connect serious air conditioning systems for optimum cooling. The unique thing about this facility is air circulates only in areas closest to the servers – inside each cabinet and between rows, instead of filling the entire room, thereby saving energy.

The data center’s cold air is generated by a 2+1 redundant system consisting of three chiller plants powered by two high powered 8.800KW cooling units. The 2+1 redundancy means that two of these three plants are sufficient to cool the entire data center. In case of a power outage, two 3,600 horsepower diesel generators will keep servers running for up to a week. Engineers monitor the system’s health by running a simulation once a month to ensure the generators are working properly.

Beyond the concrete and steel and cooling system, Lenexa is a hub of fiber-optic connectivity to multiple ISPs throughout the US. The facility is capable of routing thousands of Terabytes of traffic per month – all without any data jams. And 1&1 continues its quest to be environmentally friendly by purchasing Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) from the Bonneville Environmental Foundation (www.b-e-f.org) to offset CO₂ emissions.

Renewable Energy Credits allow companies to support alternative power, such as wind or solar power, in areas that do not offer alternative solutions directly. 1&1 will need all that power to keep their double-redundancy systems online. The company boasts that their fail-safes have fail-safes including backup generators, dual routers, gel battery power banks, cooling systems, and multiple hard drives – all designed to keep the facility’s 40,000 servers running regardless of tornados, twisters, and external conditions.

At the grand opening, head of 1&1’s Lenexa data center development division, Thorsten Ziegler, gave CEO Oliver Mauss a tour of the facility and shared his enthusiasm for what the facility has to offer customers. Ziegler previously worked on 1&1’s four other data centers, giving him the experience he needed to build the Lenexa facility. Ziegler emphasized that 1&1 knows how to implement processes and technology to increase efficiency and continue its lead as the world’s largest web hosting provider.

Guests learned the Lenexa facility was designed and built with future improvements in mind. For example, as the need for Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) increases over the current IPv4, customers will experience more flexibility in traffic routing and will have access to more addresses. Additional improvements and technologies include an early detection fire protection system, redundant UPS systems, and backbone routers from two vendors instead of one.

Like the other four 1&1 data centers, Lenexa will be monitored 24/7/365 by network and system engineers. The facility has over 150 surveillance cameras installed, a security airlock system designed for only one person to walk through, security personnel, and other technologies and protocols for maintaining strict security measures. For a complete tour of the Lenexa data center, visit the 1&1 website.

About Dave Young