Flexential, a provider of data center colocation, cloud and hybrid IT services, announced it will break ground on its third data center in Hillsboro, Oregon, located outside of Portland, on October 1. The Flexential Portland-Hillsboro 3 data center, announced this summer, continues the company's 20-year commitment to this fast-growing market, and marks unprecedented growth by Flexential in the Pacific Northwest, the company says.
Flexential's Hillsboro 3 data center will total 358,000 square feet and 36 MW, offering 1,500 watts per square foot of power density and the highest cooling efficiency in the region with zero water usage and a 100 percent renewable energy campus. This data center provides minimal latency domestically with fiber connections to all major U.S. cities. It is also home to two major trans-pacific subsea cables, providing direct connection and fast access to APAC and includes tier one carriers connected to the northwest access exchange in downtown Portland.
Sitting on diverse metro fiber rings, Hillsboro 3 will have access to the current and future data centers in market and will service seven transpacific submarine cable systems. The newest ring consists of 3,456 fiber strands, 1,700 of which run between Hillsboro 2, the Network Access Point (NAP) of the Northwest and Flexential's Hillsboro 3 data center.
"As the longest-standing data center provider in the Hillsboro market, with the most customers and whitespace deployed, Flexential is the clear choice for hybrid and large-scale deployments in the Pacific Northwest," said Ryan Mallory, chief operating officer of Colocation Services, Flexential. "Hillsboro 3's hallmark is its fiber-rich connectivity ecosystem. The new data center will be connected to Flexential's 100 GB backbone, offering customers access to more than 200 carrier access points and connectivity to 40 data centers as part of the FlexAnywhere platform. As the COVID pandemic continues to drive digital transformation and a need for remote business, demand continues to increase. We are excited to break ground on Hillsboro 3 to meet this demand and continue our legacy in the region."
Flexential notes its Portland-Hillsboro 3 facility's unique high-density capabilities make it an ideal environment for power intensive applications such as AI and machine learning. The four distinct and separate 60,000 square foot, 9 MW data halls and 24 foot ceilings provide a highly efficient cooling design.
On October 1, 2020 at 12:30 p.m. Pacific time Flexential will hold a virtual ground breaking with customers, partners, Flexential executives and area leaders. Flexential's Hillsboro 3 delivery team consists of The Mulhern Group, KW Engineering, Sturgeon Electric and Skanska, one of the world's leading construction and development groups, as the construction contractor.
"Together with our partners we are focusing on a customer-first approach for design and construction, working together to make sure Flexential's customers have the security, power and resources they need to succeed when we open and for decades to come," said Michael Silla, senior vice president of Data Center Design and Construction, Flexential.
Portland is also home to one of Flexential's cloud data centers within the national Flexential fleet, providing a complete cloud portfolio, including hosted private cloud, multi-tenant cloud, managed public cloud, DRAAS and direct connections to public cloud hyperscalers such as AWS, Azure, Oracle and Google Clouds.