A facility just outside Dallas will be Wikimedia’s new data center, as the organization chose Carrollton, Texas-based CyrusOne, as its new collocation provider. CyrusOne provided competitive pricing in addition to a modern facility with highly redundant and efficient power and cooling infrastructure, all of which allowed it to prevail after 18 site visits, and almost half as many bids.

The institution’s primary data center is in Ashburn, Virginia, since 2013, following the slowing down of operations in Tampa, Florida, where it first developed.

Wikimedia said it was seeking a facility that could handle the full load of its global traffic in case of emergency, as well as handle partial load at all times. Power outages are a sensitive item in Wikimedia’s agenda since a 2012 fiber cut knocked its operations offline.

The foundation’s director of technical operations and lead operations architect, Mark Bergsma, wrote “We look forward to working with CyrusOne in years to come as we continue to increase reliability and responsiveness of Wikimedia’s sites and services to provide free knowledge to hundreds of millions of people around the world.”

(Image Credit: Bob Mical)