QTS, Ashburn Data Center

This Data Center is a mission-critical and retail collocation facility designed to accommodate 32 MW total capacity and be modular, scalable, and flexible in its design. The data center houses twelve column-free data halls across three floors, which includes three data halls, one per floor, per quadrant. Located in Northern Virginia’s "Data Center Alley", this innovative 3-story facility is a direct response to a desire to build upward to get more critical space and capacity out of each acre real estate in the Northern Virginia market has become more scarce and costly. To meet this goal, the collaboration of the design and construction team led to the highly energy and cost-efficient facility. The three-story design provided a balance between real estate utilization, construction cost, and future growth flexibility. Most of the multi-story data centers within "Data Center Alley" are limited to 2-stories due to the prevalence of air-cooled systems and the lift limitations of refrigerant-based systems. Though multiple cooling architectures were considered, an innovative solution was ultimately developed to efficiently serve a three-story data center.