Seattle Datacenter Deployment Part I
December 12th, 2006 by mhalligan 
We began our datacenter deployment “officially” three weeks ago by signing with Fortress in Seattle. A week later, Dirk & I flew to Seattle to survey our new space and meetup with a sales lead. For posterity’s sake, I photoblogged our journey.
Our day began with taking off from Oakland Airport at 7:20 AM, arriving into SEATAC at around 9:30 AM. We picked up our Cadillac DTS at about 10:15 (we figured if we’d be driving around a wet, cold, rainy, unfamiliar city all day we might as well be in something huge, unwieldy, and comfortable) and headed to the datacenter.
After clowning around a while with Dirk, it became abundantly clear that it would have been a good idea for me to check my voicemail and confirm schedules before we went to the datacenter. Naturally, our 10:45 AM meeting had been pushed back until 2:30 PM, and we headed north to downtown Seattle for coffee with Devin Day from JellyBarn
Michelle Hyde took us out for lunch at the Dahlia Lounge just a few blocks away from PikePlace Market Market. Michelle is our awesome rep from BandwidthAdvisors.com, the telco broker that set us up with Fortress. Michelle made our datacenter search not only easy, but pleasurable, and has forced much coconut creme pie on us. If you’re looking for space in the Seattle area, you’ll do well by contacting them!
Proof that I love my XTi, II shot off this picture of a building accross the street from the Dahlia Lounge after lunch. The building is next to the Westin building. Then we headed back down to the Datacenter to meet up with Fortress. By now, Dirk was annoyed at me popping out my camera every 30 seconds 
Tim Daughtery took the time to show Dirk around the datacenter before we actually got to work. Here he is in the wiring room, pointing out the Cisco GSR12k that he was decommissioning to replace with his shiny new Force10 routers. The lighting might be bad, but the routers are still awesome!
We’re moving our offices to the third floor of the building that our datacenter is in. This big empty space in 3 months will be BitPusher’s Headquarters, where our eventual 24×7 NOC will reside. Isn’t it pretty?
We were pleasantly surprised to find out that our new office actually has a view. These buildings are the main campus of the Sabey Corporation, a real estate developer who develops a number of technical properties. Some of these buildings include Abovenet and MSN’s Seattle datacenters. Just out of view of this frame is the Seattle Police Department’s driver training school. It’s where Seattle officers learn how to safely run cars off the road. I’m planning on installing a webcam.
To end a great day, we headed back downtown to have lunch with Lee at the OceanAire Seafood Room, a kitschy seafood restaurant at 7th & Pine in downtown Seattle. Lee is one of the many wonderful volunteers who helps make LOPSA run. Dinner was great, far too much food to list, but I definitely recommend the pickled herring.
April 12th, 2007 at 7:29 am
The property in the valley is actually a Metro Bus Driver training course, but the SPD uses it a few times a year as a skidpad. Mostly you see busses slowly going around the course and learning how to back up.
I’m pretty sure MSN is still up at Canyon Park in Bothell. Down here are X-box Live, Microsoft.com, and other outposts of the Empire. You see, for some reason Microsoft keeps following us (d.f) around the region.
Wait until August when the Blue Angels are at Boeing Field. The building decks come in handy then. If your space doesn’t have one, come on upstairs.
–chuck
May 22nd, 2007 at 12:51 am
Sadly, they lock the deck on our datacenter floor, but there is one on the 2nd floor, where we’ll be renting an office. I’m glad to hear this, because one of the best features of our old apartment in San Francisco was being 2 blocks from Seacliff, which had the best view of the Blue Angels in the city.
We’ll definitely be bumping into you come come August!