Vault Staff and Public at the Ribbon Cutting in June
It was quite a year for the BendBroadband Vault. The facility was completed in late winter and officially opened its doors on April 1st amid a flurry of news coverage from IT and data center publications from around the world. Clients soon began moving in, among them St. Charles Medical Facility from our hometown of Bend.
From the get-go, the Vault was built to be an environmentally sustainable and green facility. In May, the organization furthered the cause by agreeing to purchase enough carbon offsets over the next four years to become a “carbon neutral” facility. This announcement added to the already existing green elements, including the Kyoto Cooling, photovoltaic (PV) solar panels, low-impact landscaping and Blue Sky renewable energy, among other items.
In June, BendBroadband Vault received word that it had been awarded the Uptime Institute’s Tier III Certification of Constructed Facility. The announcement signified that the Vault met the criteria set forth by the original design and had adhered to it throughout the construction process. This also marked the second certification for the Vault by the Uptime Institute, with the Tier III Design Certification being awarded in late March.
Throughout the year, the Vault proved it could live up to its claims for extreme energy efficiency, with the colocation facility operating at a Power Use Efficiency (PUE) of less than 1.2, a huge step below the 2.0 average of most data centers. Add that to an estimated 600kW lower energy consumption when compared to standard data centers and the Vault is proving that green tech is the wave of the future.
Fast forward to the fall and the Vault was able to add a few more awards to its trophy case. On October 13th, the Vault was presented with an Innovation Award by the Environmental Center of Bend as part of the 2011 Sustainability Awards. Later in the month, the Vault was notified it had officially achieved LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold status under the LEED 2009 Building Design and Construction (LEED BD+C) rating system. This was a monumental achievement and one that we had been working toward since the initial concept stage of the facility. Achieving LEED Gold status put the Vault in the upper echelon of data centers and one of only five data centers in the world to attain this level.
The past year has definitely been a whirlwind, but one filled with proud accomplishments and great achievements. Several of the notable names behind the controls at the Vault agreed, and decided to share some of their proudest moments of the year below:
It’s been a very exciting year. I moved here in February from Dubai to manage the Vault. It’s so great to see the environment being used constructively as it is at the Vault through our Kyoto units. We achieved the much-coveted LEED Gold certification to go along with our Uptime Institute certifications – a very good year for achievements! – Steven Hall, Data Center Director
We opened on time, began moving customers in the next day, sustained uninterrupted service for the entire year, earned our Tier-III Facility certification, achieved LEED-Gold status, and have implemented processes and procedures that put us in position for a strong SSAE-16 Audit result. – Leonard Weitman, Vice President of Technical Operations
From all of us at the Vault, have a safe and happy holidays! See you next year.
Leonard Weitman, VP of Technical Operations in the Data Hall
Ernest Kucera
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