Cleveland is home to several smaller data centers known as carrier hotels or colocation centers, which are tucked away in office buildings and a former factory in downtown Cleveland.

What are Carrier Hotels?

These data centers lease space for business and government servers, offering a secure place for clients to host networks and back up data in case of disasters. They also serve as way stations in the web of fiber cables and hardware that make up the internet.

According to David Dunn, the chief operating officer of H5 Data Centers, which operates a carrier hotel in Cleveland, these facilities are like a cross between self-storage companies for data and telephone switchboards for the internet. "Your internet connection at home, the apps that you use, how you make phone calls, how you interact with any app, it’s generally going through a carrier hotel," he said.

Local Data Centers

H5’s Cleveland data center on Rockwell Avenue is one such facility. The center has a large red Rock and Roll Hall of Fame mural that quotes Bob Marley’s "One Love" above the parking lot. The building, once home to a manufacturer, is almost anonymous, with opaque windows facing townhomes across Rockwell.

Another data center, BlueBridge, is located in the Sterling Building at East 13th Street and Euclid Avenue in Playhouse Square. The company offers cloud storage, space for customer-owned servers, cybersecurity, and connections to internet providers and other web services.

BlueBridge’s managing director and partner, Kevin Goodman, said the company is conscious of its facility’s environmental impact and is listening to the concerns of protesters. "Overarching reality is we live in a web and data-centered world, and data is the lifeblood of companies, firms, institutions, law enforcement, government, etc.," he said.

Cuyahoga County relies on BlueBridge for connections, cooling, security, and fire suppression that the county government couldn’t provide on its own for in-house servers. The county connects to its internet providers AT&T and Verizon at BlueBridge, and county servers at the data center host internal applications, such as one used for property appraisals.

Original reporting: Signal Cleveland — read the source article.