WMF Projects/Data Center Virginia

We're in the final selection phase for which facility will house our new Primary Data Center in the Ashburn, Virginia area.

Feature justification
Currently, all data and primary services of the Wikimedia Foundation are hosted in a single datacenter in Tampa, Florida. The projects and organisation are in a vulnerable position that way, as any natural disaster can strike this site and cause a major impact to the availability of the projects.

To resolve this situation, the Wikimedia Foundation will set up a second data center capable of serving all projects and services. This data center will be located in Virginia on the US east coast in a first class colocation facility. We will then be able to maintain all data and infrastructure in a redundant fashion, such that either data center can go down while only minimally impacting services.

Initial schedule

 * June - September 2010: Colocation facility research and selection
 * October 2010: Sign colocation facility lease, order equipment, start buildout of infrastructure
 * November - December 2010: Installation of equipment

Status
The data center cage build is almost complete, and almost all hardware has been ordered. We are on track for starting our build out in February.

Task management

 * RT wikimedia #153: Deploy new Virginia primary data center