Iron Mountain's Natural Cooling Advantage update from July 2008

With a growing number of providers building underground data bunkers, a leading name in data storage is entering the game in a more substantial fashion. Iron Mountain, which has been a market leader in storage of documents and backup tapes, is beginning to lease data center space in its huge facility located 220 feet underground in a limestone cave outside Pittsburgh.

CIO recently reported that Marriott will become the largest private customer operating a data center in Iron Mountain's 145-acre facility, which has its own fire company, water treatment plant and 24-hour security and maintenance force. Marriott is leasing 12,500 square feet of data center space from Iron Mountain for a disaster recovery "hot site." Here's some additional background:

Those savings were driven by the cooling advantages of an underground facility, where the cooler temperature allows tenants to spend save money on air conditioning.

In a recent interview with ComputerWorld. Iron Mountain Digital President John Clancy discussed how cooling can be a business differentiator for a cave-based data center:

There is one downside, which was noted by Marriott: underground data centers apparently can't receive certification under the LEED program because the U.S. Green Buildings Council's standards have no provisions for subterranean facilities.

Here's another look at some of the underground data bunkers we've been tracking at Data Center Knowledge: