Capitol One had a data center event not unlike a Google Data Center event. The local press covered the event in Richmond, VA. How does this look like Google. The VA governor and Capitol One CEO are at a data center event.
Capital One founder, chairman, and chief executive officer, Richard Fairbank, left, and Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, right, connect symbolic cables with the help of Brian Cobb, center, managing vice president of Capital One, during a grand opening ceremony of Capital One's new data center in Chesterfield County on Wednesday, March 12, 2014.
5 years ago you would never see an event like this. Now you see data center openings as PR events.
Operations had already started there. But on Wednesday, the McLean-based company held a ceremony to serve as symbolic opening for the center, located in a highly secured facility surrounded by a wooded area and tall, reinforced fencing.
The security is important because the Meadowville site is one of Capital One’s three primary data centers where the company stores and manages vast amounts of information produced by its business providing financial services to roughly 65 million customers.
The other pattern Capitol One has followed used by Google, eBay and others for high availability is three main data centers.
Capital One is consolidating operations at its eight data centers that it has been operating because of numerous recent acquisitions of other banks and credit card providers.
The data operations are being consolidated into three centers — the one in Chesterfield, one in Henrico County, and one near Chicago.
The latency to the customers isn’t as important as the latency between the data centers. The data centers are all located East of Mississippi.
And just like other efficient data center operators the headcount is low.
The center has about 50 employees now, but the company expects it will employ more than 100 eventually.