Data Center Overview
Our data and your data is mission critical, therefore The
Message Center uses only the best facilities to move and store
our life blood. Although there are several locations that
The Message Center uses to move our data, our main facility
is a 20,000 square foot raised floor data center with 2 mega
watt generators and enough fuel on site to run to over a month
if needed. The building also houses “super-nodes”
for MCI and AT&T local phone service in San Francisco,
so it is considered an “essential” facility because
911 calls are routed here. We share generators, power, cooling,
and fire suppression infrastructure with MCI (formerly Worldcom),
including dual 2 Megawatt generators that support the critical
power requirements and operations of the building.
• Built by Worldcom in 2000 as expansion space
• 20,000 square feet of capacity
• Plenty of available power and cooling
 Building
Construction
This 100% occupied telecom building also houses AT&T and
MCI super nodes. The building was originally built in 1924
as a Marine Corps Depot for heavy equipment, so the five story
structure is built of extra-thick, reinforced cast-in-place
concrete.
• Secure building originally used for storage of military
tanks and equipment
• Built on solid bedrock, seismically retrofit in 1999
to meet rigorous City of San Francisco building codes
• Six separate fiber entrances with 2 fiber rooms. A
large portion of the Bay Bridge Fiber Consortium terminates
in the building (cross-bay Fiber).
• State-of-the-art redundant systems for power, HVAC,
fiber connectivity, seismic precautions and fire suppression.
 Fire
Suppression
This state-of-the-art fire suppression system has three levels
of protection. Halon fire extinguishers are located throughout
the data center. We also have a two stage TotalPac double
interlocked dry-pipe preaction system, with tightly defined
zones to isolate and extinguish any fires without affecting
surrounding areas. This system must detect both smoke and
heat to be triggered. A grid of 200 sensors on the ceiling
and 200 under the raised floor plus “VESDA” AnaLaser-brand
laser smoke sensors that are 10,000 times more sensitive than
conventional smoke detectors and capable of detecting incipient
smoldering protect the data center.
• Halon Fire Extinguishers
• VESDA laser smoke detection with dry pipe suppression
• Tightly defined preaction zones for localized fire
extinguishing
• Also monitored and maintained by MCI
 Power
Infrastructure
Our data center power is fed by conditioned UPS (uninterruptible
power supply) electricity, with redundant feeds from dual
2 Megawatt generators that also support critical MCI phone
switches. One generator can power the entire building for
several days time, and there is 20,000 gallons of reserve
diesel fuel on site. These generators are tested monthly per
stringent MCI protocols.
• Redundant power feeds with UPS power
• 2 x 2 megawatt generators that also power MCI’s
local phone switches
• 20,000 gallons of diesel fuel on site, hot-refill
ready
 Fiber
and Bandwidth Providers
The Message Center operates on its own screaming-fast network™,
featuring multi-homed bandwidth with connections to over 40
networks. With connections to major Tier 1 Internet backbones
such as UUNet/MCI, Level 3, NTT/Verio, and AboveNet, with
no low-quality bandwidth and plenty of network capacity for
maximum reliability and scalability.
• Six separate building fiber entrances with 2 fiber
rooms. The Bay Bridge Fiber Consortium terminates in the building
(cross-bay Fiber).
•2 separate fiber entrances on different streets for
an additional layer of redundancy
• Current connections:
- 2 x UUNet OC-12
- Looking Glass Networks Gig-E (NTT/Verio)
- 2 x AboveNet Gig-E
- Yipes Gig-E (Level 3 and WilTel)
- Peering with over 40+ networks at PAIX
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