Rackspace's consolidation - Energy or Economics? - By Doug Mohney

Views and Opinions on Green IT (Dec 23 2010)

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   San Antonio-based Rackspace is talking about closing down two of its data centers in the city once its leases expire in 2010, according to the local newspaper.   Reasons cited include... wait for it... better energy efficiency and economics.

   The two sites represent a total of 15,000 square feet of space and 30 employees and have been in operation for 10 years and 8 years respectively -- that's about an average of 9 years of HVAC and way before the term "Green Data Center" became in vogue. 

   Why now? “The data center space we have available in the San Antonio area is up for contract renewal in the next couple of years and we are evaluating our options,”  said Rackspace COO Mark Roenigk in a prepared statement quoted by the local paper. “We are expanding data center space across other regions in the U.S., where we are able to achieve better energy efficiency and economics."

   Rackspace also operates data centers in Chicago, Dallas, Virginia, Hong Kong and the United Kingdom and it boggles my mind why the company doesn't have a facility somewhere on the West Coast of the U.S.   San Francisco and Los Angeles may be too expensive from a space and cost-of-living perspective, but there's plenty of fine real estate and bandwidth around Seattle and the state of Washington in general.  On the other hand, the company just bought San Francisco-based Cloudkick, so it may find its way to a Silicon Valley facility.

   Anyway, the key phrase in Rackspace's statement is "better energy efficiency and economics."  Rackspace isn't playing the save-the-planet card, it's all about finding affordable space and better power utilization from whatever data center space the company plans to lease/acquire.  The company also has beaucoup unused expansion space in Chicago and Northern Virginia, reports Data Center Knowledge, so the "economics" argument might be stronger than moving to a place with cheaper-greener watts.

   Regardless of where Rackspace goes, the company will have the opportunity to buy the most shiny new, energy-efficient server hardware, use the latest and greatest energy monitoring tools, and use the best-fit cooling tools and data center layout -- because you just simply can't turn off everything at once at the old data center, stick it on a truck for two to ten days, and plug it back in.  Migrating customers to a new facility offers Rackspace an interesting and significant chance to be green while saving green.  But don't expect for a moment that the company is looking for LEED certified space -- they're looking to save money on operational expenses, not to send out some press releases for show.

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