One of the chief costs associated with a data center is the power to keep the computers cool. Because the ambient temperature in the mine is 55 to 60 degrees Farenheit, Marriott will be able to reduce its energy consumption, as well as lower operating costs. The company also plans to take advantage of the mine's underground water supply to cool its equipment via chilling towers.

Marriott had hoped to pursue the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) designation from the U.S. Green Building Council. But there is currently no process to certify a subterranean environment, according to Charles Doughty, VP of "The Underground" at Iron Mountain. But the mere reuse of an existing facility reduces the environmental impact that new construction would have brought.

The dual nature of Marriott's RDC—as not only a disaster recovery facility, but also a second data center—provides an added boon. The development, quality assurance and test systems in the underground facility will be active on a daily basis, until they're needed in an emergency recovery situation.

"The reason we did that is it saves us a lot of money. We're dually using those systems," says Blanchard. "That prevents us from having to go out and purchase and power a set of infrastructure that does nothing but sit there and wait for a disaster."

The systems will be identical to those in the production environment, so staffers won't need to brush up their skills on different technology in a disaster scenario. Virtual servers will ease the movement of some workloads from one set of hardware to another, even possibly from servers at the primary data center to servers at the new RDC, Blanchard says.

Initial plans call for two Marriott employees to work on provisioning and maintenance work at the underground site, with the potential to add more staff and space, if necessary, to accommodate business growth. Marriott has some 115,000 rooms in the pipeline over the next several years, according to a company spokesperson.

"Building this second data center," says Blanchard, "we position ourselves to be able to accommodate that kind of [business] growth."

© 2009 CXO Media Inc.