SOUTHFIELD, Mich. — MojoHost has opened its new flagship Michigan data center, officially named the MojoHost Zen1, or "Zen" for short.
The new data center supports all MojoHost services, including newly-built dedicated servers and virtual private servers (VPS), as well as clients using the MojoCDN bandwidth service and its proprietary MojoCloud object storage.
MojoHost, a rep noted, “has always called Michigan home since the company began hosting there in 1999. Now, 16 years after moving its physical hardware to Florida, the company has come home, making an impressive footprint in Michigan with its 17,000-square-foot data center, which may also be one of the world's most green hosting facilities.”
Instead of having the company's headquarters in Michigan and its primary data center thousands of miles away in Miami, the company now operates its offices from the heavily secured Zen data center facility in Southfield, Michigan.
MojoHost CEO and founder Brad Mitchell said, “We live and breathe hosting. It feels great to have our entire North American team working together inside the Zen data center. This is the largest and most ambitious project that MojoHost has ever undertaken. It is with great pride today that we announce our official opening and invite the world to experience true premium hosting. It is now not just about our customer service but about brand-new servers in a facility unlike anything else on Earth."
“Best of all if any of our customers develop any artificial intelligence bent on the destruction of the human race, we'll be here to pull the plug and save the planet,” Mitchell continued in jest.
A rep explained that the name "Zen" was not just about MojoHost's "That's Good Mojo" mantra or its yin-yang symbology.
“It also is meant to embody that its data center is to be ‘one with the world,’ and that means hosting as power efficient as possible,” the rep noted. “These centers use enormous power to fuel the world's data connectivity, so the solution is (obviously) to use less energy. However, that is different from what most companies do when they build data centers at scale. Focus is often on saving costs even though using today's leading technology will save much more money (and the environment) long term.”
'Green Choices' for MojoHost's Zen Center
The multi-million dollar facility combines leading technology alongside "green choices."
“When planning the facility,” the rep noted, “Earth-friendly decisions were made whenever possible and affordable.”
According to the company, instead of corrosive batteries that need to be replaced in short lifetimes, MojoHost installed dual A and B side 250kVa flywheels with an aggregate of 1MW output. The APC 48U high-end cabinets are extra-wide and extra-deep, allowing for the most accessible cable management and best airflow. Environmentally friendly exterior redundant true A and B side water-glycol chilled water plants cool the data center at the rack level. These parallel units supply cold water and return hot water to every Motivair Chilled Door in the building. Hot air exhausted from servers is exchanged directly within the rear cabinet door. Each cabinet door can cool 15kVa, so the ‘exhaust’ from each is room temperature air.
“In a marvel of engineering,” the rep added, “the MojoHost Zen1 data center has no hot spots.”
The facility also operates as the company's Network Operations Center (NOC), outfitted with security measures such as exterior windows in the office spaces with 3M coating to prevent a break-in, dozens of cameras deployed inside and outside, and all external access points protected by retinal scans and key cards. Secure internal areas are protected by various security measures, including additional biometrics (fingerprinting) and key card.
Power System Designed for Reliability
As a primary power customer, MojoHost owns two redundant 1.5-megawatt transformers, the rep noted. Six 500kVa generators operate in parallel banks if things go badly, first drawing from on-site 4,000-gallon fuel storage. On its own, the data center can run fully unplugged for several days, giving ample time for contracted daily emergency re-fueling.
Whether power is flowing through primary power, flywheel, or backup generators, power is deployed to all servers redundantly via Raritan switched/metered per outlet PDUs. There are additional options available to maximize power usage and reliability within each cabinet.
The engineering and design of both power and cooling, the rep explained, “considered many failure scenarios, guaranteeing exceptional uptime and management options in the face of a disaster or failure. The added 24-hour security service, front and rear ‘man-trap’ entrances, and exterior equipment protected by razor wire atop 12-foot-high fences show that MojoHost hasn't left anything to chance.”
Network connectivity is achieved through four separate dark fiber paths leaving the site. Current connections are fully expandable — they include 100G to Lumen, 100G to Telia Company, 200G to Cogent, and 100G Peering DET-IX. Additional carriers are available such as Comcast, Hurricane Electric, Zayo, Verizon and others.
MojoHost owns and operates its own autonomous system number (ASN) 27589, which controls more than 80,000 IP addresses, the rep noted. The Noction platform is utilized for intelligent management of Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) performance. The platform manages real-time performance, identifying packet loss, internet black holes, and latency. Intelligent routing enables the MojoHost data center to make 40,000 route changes per day down to a /24 level. Currently configured for performance only, it will move traffic from one carrier to another when it sees a latency improvement of 5ms or better, a black hole on the internet, or packet loss to any destination network.
From Michigan to the World
Since 2015, when MojoHost publicly announced its international expansion to the Netherlands, with a Haarlem data center and the MojoHost.eu portal, the company has continued to work on sustainable growth.
“Its choices have been strategic,” the rep said. “When the company moved its hosting from Michigan to the Miami Equinix facility in 2006, it tapped into one of the most powerful data connections in the world, as all fiber for South America goes through that location. Similarly, its previous expansion to Europe improved connection speeds and value to customers. Now with the first data center of its own, MojoHost is building not only the future of the company but also for its customers (and the world) with a mighty and power-efficient data center that will lead us all into the future of premium hosting.”
For more information, visit MojoHost.com.
