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Mike Benbow, Business Editor benbow@heraldnet.com

Grand central data center

NetRiver Inc. will pay more to run its new data center in Lynnwood, but its CEO says proximity to clients give it an edge over centers in rural Eastern Washington.

By Eric Fetters / Herald Writer

LYNNWOOD - In a building where REI used to sell hiking boots and Gore-Tex jackets, racks of computer servers blink and hum.

So far, just one row of metal server cabinets stands, but NetRiver Inc. plans to fill the former store space with computing equipment by the year's end.

While small towns in central Washington and other rural areas are playing host to big new data centers, NetRiver has relocated its headquarters from Spokane to Snohomish County.

Ryan Maloney, NetRiver's chief executive officer and president, said there are advantages to being close to the Puget Sound area's I-5 corridor. It allows clients to keep better tabs on their off-site servers.

"Clients are still willing to pay more for a data center like this that they can get to easily," Maloney said.

While NetRiver still operates its Spokane center, the company moved its offices to south Snohomish County a couple years ago. It spent a year and a half planning the new Lynnwood data center and about nine months outfitting the building, Maloney said.

A graduate of Mariner High School, 31-year-old Maloney majored in architecture at Washington State University. When family circumstances brought him back to this area, however, Maloney took a job at a computer store.

That started his career in the industry, even through the dot-com bust at the beginning of the decade.

In fact, even a few years ago, data centers in many places were begging for business, as there was much more capacity than what was needed. That situation has flipped 180 degrees as the volume of online data and commerce grows rapidly. Hurricane Katrina in 2005 also spurred another wave of interest among businesses in finding backup locations to store their data in case of an emergency.

"We've certainly seen it pick up," said George Henny, president of FiberCloud Inc., which operates data centers in Everett, Seattle and Bellingham. "It shouldn't be any surprise that with more businesses moving to the Internet, we're seeing more data centers."

Also nicknamed server farms, the centers have sprouted across Snohomish County in the past decade, including large ones operated by Microsoft in Bothell's Canyon Park area and by AT&T in Lynnwood. Henny said that he thinks there's enough demand for all the local ones to succeed.

Maloney said he's pleased with the response they've received since announcing the opening of the new Lynnwood data center.

"Unlike before the dot-com bust, where you had all these startups as customers, now most of our inquiries are from well-established companies," he said.

NetRiver, which claims to serve 3,000 clients, could fill up its existing Lynnwood space within the year, Maloney said. There are plans to take more space in the building and possibly add on.

Not that the first phase of the data center is small. Each of the hundreds of server racks to be installed can hold between 40 and 64 servers each.

At full capacity the facility's storage will hold "multiple petabytes," Maloney said. One petabyte is equal to more than a million gigabytes. The typical home computer has between 100 and 250 gigabytes of storage.

"We deliver more electrical service to one of these cabinets than one would to the average household," said Paul Harris, NetRiver's vice president of information technology.

In fact, once NetRiver's main data center floor is full of server racks, the 7,000-square-foot space will require 6 megawatts of electricity. That's enough to meet the needs of more than 3,600 houses.

In order to keep the servers cool, the building has air conditioning equipment that can move tons of air, and automatic louvers that open to the outside if the air pressure inside builds too much, Harris said.

There's also the redundant systems found in most data centers to keep things running in the event of power failure. An uninterruptable power supply unit can keep the juice flowing for up to 10 minutes, giving a generator located next to the building time to start.

Harris showed off the control room and monitoring equipment, where employees will watch for trouble around the clock. The facility also has sophisticated security measures, including a biometric identification system that reads employees' finger and thumb prints.

Maloney said NetRiver also intends to offer wireless and fiber-optic Internet access to local businesses, especially as new development comes to Lynnwood's core.

Underneath the big wooden beams left over from before REI's move to Alderwood mall, Maloney and Harris said they're happily settling in, with just one regret.

"We wish REI would have left the climbing wall," Harris said. "That would have been fun."

Reporter Eric Fetters: 425-339-3453 or fetters@heraldnet.com">fetters@heraldnet.com.