In the News: Time Warner Cable boots up Denver data center
By: Mike Robuck, CED Magazine
Time Warner Cable first broke ground on expanding the national data center, which is located in the Denver suburb of Centennial, in June, 2013. National Data Center West (NDC West) is a twin of Time Warner Cable’s National Data Center East in Charlotte, which opened its doors three years ago.
Time Warner Cable’s Ryan Kelly, integrated communications manager, wrote about the National Data Center West’s completion in a company blog.
“Think of these two centers as the brains of our operations,” Kelly wrote. “Our two National Data Centers work in tandem to support and safeguard all of our customer services including email, billing records, Wi-Fi, high-speed data, phone, IntelligentHome, and of course IP-based video products including our TWC TV app.”
With the expansion, the facility in Centennial added 75 percent more capacity, which matches the capabilities at National Data Center East. The two data centers are at the core Time Warner Cable’s digital video and IP-based services. Some of the primary functions of both data centers include hosting the applications that support approximately 70 million residential emails sent per day, managing the billing records of more than 15 million customers and supporting backend applications delivered to Time Warner Cable employees.
Time Warner Cable previously said National Data Center West would be a 170,000-square -foot facility that would include 1,600 racks of technical equipment that could support 6400 kilowatts (kW) of critical load.
On the energy efficient front, thanks to Denver’s cool, dry climate the data center is cooled for free approximately 80 percent of the year. Time Warner Cable is working on garnering Gold LEED certification by achieving best-practice design in the categories of site, water, energy, material use, and environmental quality.
Prior to the expansion, Time Warner Cable said there were 70 employees located within NDC West, but planned to add 25 percent more engineering and data center services resources so that the facility would be staffed 24 hours a day, seven days a week.