eBay opened its Topaz data center earlier this year. Topaz stands as a centerpiece of a multi-year plan to consolidate eBay’s data center footprint from a number of co-located facilities to fewer eBay-owned, operated, and managed centers. Our data centers make up more that 50% of our global power usage.

Dean Nelson, the man leading the charge in building Topaz from the ground up, has a guest blog post over on Green Team Talks:

From the beginning of the design process, every construction decision was looked at with energy efficiency and environmental responsibility in mind. We are also able to make use of Utah’s cool and dry climate to cool the data center for over half of the year which enables the facility to shut down expensive to run chillers.

This month, the team got some great news – the U.S. Green Building Council awarded the facility the prestigious LEED® Gold certification, verified by the Green Building Certification Institute (GBCI). Topaz becomes one of only a small handful of data centers on U.S. soil to achieve LEED Gold – a pretty major accomplishment considering the availability and security requirements needed to run eBay AND PayPal’s servers 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

A huge congrats to Dean and his team. Read all about it over on the Green Team Talks blog.

Also, be sure to follow @ebaygreen on Twitter too.

Cheers!
RBH