Dell provides data center space for Bitcoin ASIC Hosting

Dell headquarters RR1, Round Rock, Texas, United States.

Dell has struck a partnership with Bitcoin ASIC Hosting – a Seattle-based colocation provider for Bitcoin miners – to supply colocation space for the hosting company’s customers at Dell’s Western Technology Center in Quincy, Washington.

According to DatacenterDynamics, the 40,000-square-foot Western Technology Center is a Tier III facility with 10.8MW of power available. By leasing space in the facility, Bitcoin ASIC said it avoided high-cost power and was able to obtain redundant connectivity, cooling, and backup emergency power. The center uses green electricity from hydroelectric dams on the Columbia River, allowing for significant cuts to electricity costs.

Allen Oh, Bitcoin ASIC Hosting’s co-founder, told DatacenterDynamics that his company’s customers cannot afford to be offline for a long time, so it was searching for a colocation provider to transfer its operations quickly and efficiently.

“We got our racks and servers moved and online in less than ten days, with less than 12 hours of downtime,” said Oh.

Bitcoin ASIC Hosting has been running its own data center in central Washington state for approximately three years, but that center is fairly small and nearly at capacity, reports Data Center Knowledge. Dell’s facility has approximately 5 megawatts of redundant power, but the hosting company is only using 1 megawatt, said Oh.

He told Data Center Knowledge that Bitcoin ASIC Hosting has a three-year deal with Dell to serve as an exclusive reseller of excess capacity in the data center, meaning the hosting company has 4 megawatts of capacity at its disposal.

One key reason Dell’s facility was attractive to Bitcoin ASIC Hosting was that Dell was willing to accept significant short-term contracts – down to three months, said Oh – which is not something a typical colocation company would allow.

“Unless there’s a really large client willing to sign a year-long contract or longer, there really isn’t much competition out there in terms of upper-tier data centers,” said Oh to Data Center Knowledge.

The hosting company does not focus on large “industrial” miners; rather, many of its customers are individuals with one or two boxes that require storage somewhere.

A full-fledged data center offering redundant infrastructure, Dell’s facility is unusual from the standpoint of Bitcoin mining operations.

“It’s very attractive to a lot of people that want to have a worry-free mining operation,” Oh said. “All other data centers that are colocating bitcoin miners that are publicly selling their space are probably ‘Tier 0’ data centers.”

Oh explained to Data Center Knowledge that his company was able to negotiate a price with Dell that would work favorably for Bitcoin ASIC Hosting and his customers.

Data Center Knowledge reports that the hosting company is currently developing another 1-megawatt center in Wenatchee, Washington. Unlike the older center, the new one will be more full-fledged, offering raised floors, high-capacity power distribution units, and cold and hot aisle containment.

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