IBM Boulder

Data Center Details

• Phase 1: 60,000 sq. ft. / 6 megawatts of power.
• Ultimate design: 100,000 sq. ft. / 15 megawatts of power.
• Designed to support new compute models like cloud computing to help clients worldwide operate smarter businesses, organizations and cities.
• Reduces technology infrastructure costs and complexity for clients while improving quality and speeding the deployment of services – using only half the energy required of a similar facility its size.
• Intelligent systems use sensors to continuously read temperature and relative humidity throughout the data center and dynamically adjust cooling in response to changes in demand, reducing annual energy costs by 15 percent.
• More than 8,000 branch circuit monitoring points automatically monitor IT systems; more than 2,000 sensors gather temperature, pressure, humidity and air flow information from air conditioners; and more than 30,000 utility and environmental sensors interconnect with software tools.
• Hosts recently announced cloud computing offerings including “IBM Smart Business Development and Test on the IBM Cloud” and “IBM Smart Business Desktop on the IBM cloud.”
• Modular design enables significant expansion of future capacity in half the time it
• would take traditional data centers to expand.

Green Details

• Takes advantage of free cooling – using the outside air to cool the data center – for
• nearly half of the calendar year.
• Intelligent systems use sensors to continuously read temperature and relative humidity throughout the data center and dynamically adjust cooling in response to changes in demand and avoid 15 percent annual energy costs.
• Mechanical system design is 50 percent more efficient than one without heat exchangers for free-cooling or chillers, equating to a reduction of approximately 31,799 tons of carbon dioxide emissions.
• Reflective roof reduces solar heat.
• Collects rainwater for reuse.
• 95 percent original building/shell structure reused.
• 92 percent of construction waste recycled (4,017 tons)
• 20 percent of new materials from recycled products.
• Uses low-sulfur fuels to reduce emissions from backup generators.
• Energy efficient lighting technology on timers.