Other perks: Electro Magnetic Pulse protection up to military standards, multistage air filtering to screen out particles larger than three microns. Dust and particles are not a computer's friends and can really gum up the works. Also on-site are a 16,000-gallon water supply for fire suppression, a six-day fuel reserve and a backup 750 kW generator.

The site is equipped with the Nortel communications systems and American Power Conversion power gear, including line conditioners.

Going green with renewable energy

In contrast to the data centers described above, which force-fit technology gear into existing structures, AISO.net started from scratch to build a "green" data center relying on alternative energy, says Phil Nail, chief technology officer at Affordable Internet Services Online, a Web hoster and design firm in California.

Aiso.net, which hosted the Live Earth Web effort, uses solar panels to run its IBM X Series servers, NetApps clustered SAN servers and a whole lot of VMware. It also relies on solar tubes to pipe in natural light and recycles its "gray" water for landscaping. Special air conditioning units monitor outside temperature so when it drops to below 60 degrees outside, the building brings that air inside.

Nail estimates the energy investment paid for itself within a few years.

The 2,000-square foot data center is steel-framed and uses no wood except for its interior door frames. Walls are 12 inches thick and are insulated with recycled material. Not to rest on its laurels, Aiso.net is now working on a green roof -- basically a rooftop garden that will be stocked with drought-resistant plants. That addition should reduce its cooling costs by more than 50 percent, the company says.

Aiso.net is redundant to a fare-thee-well, Nail says. "We use remote management, we have redundant monitoring servers. I even carry two cell phones on two different providers in case there's a problem with cell coverage," he explains.

In the mines

DeBeers Canada put the data center for its newly opened Snap Lake diamond mine into two cargo ship containers retrofitted with doors, windows and insulation for IT use. The environment is punishing. The data center is in Canada's Northwest Territories in the Arctic Circle, some 190 miles north of DeBeers' regional office in Yellowknife. Temperatures at the mine site can hit the 90s in the summer and plummet to negative 20 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter.

"We built out walls, windows and have two racks of servers and put in giant truck air conditioners on both ends," says Ben Lacasse, IT superintendent. Shipping containers don't have windows and have cargo doors instead of the usual type, so windows had to be put in after the fact.

While the mine just opened for business, the data center itself has been in operation for a year, and has handled the load and temps just fine, Lacasse said.