Telx Gets New Certification for Clifton NJR3 Data Center After Throwing Big Party
The Telx (New York) Tier III Clifton NJR3 data center threw itself a party June 19, 2013, and it was a grand one at that.
Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno, New Jersey State Senator Nia Gill, Clifton Mayor James Anzaldi and Phil Simms, the New York Giants football great, came out to toast the opening. The data center, the first Telx has built from the ground up, is located on a campus in Clifton, adjacent to Telx’s NJR2 data center.
Also attending the event was the family of recently deceased Telx president Eric Shepcaro, the executive whose vision was behind the $200 million state-of-the-art building. The family helped cut the ribbon for the new data center.
According to Anzaldi, the center came about as a result of a partnership among the town, the developer and Telx. It was built on environmentally damaged land that had been cleaned up properly, he said, and is expected to add local jobs and bring property tax revenue to the town. “We built something great, and we want to grow more. I continue to look for pieces of land because I think it’s time for another Telx project,” said Anzaldi.
Senator Gill added that New Jersey needs to invest in high-tech employment because innovation and potential growth in this industry will help ensure the state’s economic future.
Lt. Gov. Guadagno recalled being at the groundbreaking for the building and told Shepcaro’s family that the data center was a testament to him. “He invested in New Jersey, he invested in everything that is good about New Jersey and you should take some solace in knowing that every time you drive by this building … it’s because of Eric’s vision,” she said.
Simms answered questions about leadership in football and in life.
The three-story data center, with 215,000 gross square feet, is expected to bring a number of permanent jobs to the area and had been the source of hundreds of temporary construction jobs, officials said.
At the open house, visitors were given VIP tours of the center, with guides noting some of its unique attributes. Those included cooling units positioned in the data center over corridors on the next floor, to prevent water leaks from contaminating the center. If a leak is detected, it can be contained in a place where it will do no harm.
The company touted the security features of the NJR3 building. Fences along the building’s perimeter have an anti-climb design and include fiber optics for intrusion detection. Multiple guardhouses and barriers restrict access to the site, which also has biometric security.
Telx said it had made the design changes in response to big pharma and big finance companies’ concerns, since they are its largest clients at this site. The building includes a futuristic-seeming control center that monitors the health of the data center’s components.
Telx recently announced some of the NJR3 data center’s achievements. The facility has received certification as a Tier III Concurrently Maintainable data center by the Uptime Institute. Currently NJR3 is the only retail data center within the New York/New Jersey metro area to hold this level of certification, Telx noted.
NJR3’s Constructed Facility certification ensures that if any critical data center component is removed through planned maintenance or component failure, service will not be interrupted.
