This virtually indestructible data center is built to withstand wind speeds of up to 500 km/h, without any downtime. But can it also withstand a direct hit from MOAB?
Supplier of data center solutions Tonaquint has announced that it will upgrade its recently acquired EdgeX facility in Oklahoma City to enable 100% uptime, including wind speeds of up to 310 mph (approximately 500 km/h), making it one of the most resilient data centers in the region.
Oklahoma saw 74 twisters in 2023 alone, the majority of which were rated EF-0 or EF-1, which is classified as “weak.” 95% of the Tonaquint data center can withstand an F5 tornado (wind speeds over 200 mph) with structural and mechanical hardening.
The facility, located on a four-acre campus near Will Rogers World Airport, was previously a single-client environment but is being transformed into a multi-client environment. It will initially deploy a minimum of 2.5 MW of critical IT load, with a potential expansion of up to 12 MW.
Can it survive a MOAB explosion?
“This state-of-the-art facility will be well prepared to meet the demands of new customers and the increasing capacity requirements of AI workloads,” said Terry Morrison, COO and CTO of Tonaquint. “These improvements further position this facility as one of the most forward-looking and resilient data centers in the region.”
Tonaquint says this data center offers high-density capacity and geographic capabilities for all types of customer workloads. It also features a renovated customer reception and meeting rooms, and can provide chilled water cooling for high-density workloads.
If you’re wondering how the facility would fare in a direct hit from a Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB), also known as the “Mother of All Bombs” – which was a question someone asked me – it’s very difficult to say.
The shock wave from a MOAB is the equivalent of an explosion caused by 18,000 pounds of TNT and creates a high-pressure wave that radiates outward, concussing, rather than creating sustained wind patterns such as those associated with tornadoes. However, the facility has a lot of internal protection, including steel blast doors, so there’s a good chance that much of it will get through unscathed. Fortunately, it is unlikely that the data center will ever undergo such a test.
Tonaquint is now accepting customer orders, with delivery beginning in April 2024. The Oklahoma City acquisition expands Tonaquint’s existing platform in Boise, Idaho and St. George, Utah, offering cloud, colocation, backup, disaster recovery and network-as-aa service solutions for medium-sized organizations.