Tonaquint Hails Its Tornado-Hardened Data Center In Oklahoma

The secure building boasts 100 percent up time and claims it is rated for 310 mph winds. The facility is located in what’s known as Tornado Alley, where 74 twisters touched down in 2023, and it is just 25 miles from the speediest tornado windspeed ever recorded.

Salt Lake City-based data center provider Tonaquint said it is in the process of completely redesigned and upgrading its recently acquired, 65,000-square-foot data center near Oklahoma City making the facility ready for AI workloads.

“This state-of-the-art facility will be well-prepared for the demands of new clients and the increasing capacity requirements of AI workloads,” Terry Morrison, COO and CTO of Tonaquint, wrote in a statement. “These enhancements further position this facility as one of the region’s most future-forward and resilient data centers.”

Tonaquint bought the parcel late last year and spent the last few months transforming it from single-client capabilities to now able to handle multiple clients. Starting with 2.5-MW of power, Tonaquint said the four-acre campus will eventually house a 12-MW of capacity.

The high-security building that houses the Tier III data center has been hardened to withstand “tornado-force winds up to 310 mph,” Tonaquint stated. According to Arizona State University, the highest ever recorded tornado windspeed was captured 25 miles away in Bridge Creek, Oklahoma by Doppler Radar and clocked in at 302 mph.

Located near Will Rogers World Airport, Tonaquint said the data center will begin client delivery in April. Oklahoma was host to 74 tornados in 2023, up from 58 in 2022, and higher than the 63 that touched down in 2021, according to the National Weather Service.

Midwest data center market is growing with Iowa-based LightEdge announcing its purchase of a 3MW Minnesota facility Thursday. LightEdge, which was founded in 1996, now runs 12 Tier III data centers across the country.

Tonaquint said it is a specialized data center provider offering cloud, colocation, backup, disaster recovery, network-as-a-service. The company’s sellers and engineers serve mostly mid-market companies. Its data centers are focused in the western mountain regions of the U.S. as well as the southwest, with facilities in Boisy and St. George, Utah.

Tonaquint is a specialized data center provider offering cloud, colocation, backup, disaster recovery and network-as-a-service solutions to mid-market organizations through its facilities in the Mountain West and Southwest regions of the United States. The Oklahoma City acquisition is in addition to Tonaquint’s existing platform in Boise, Idaho and St. George, Utah.

The company was founded in Utah in 2008 where the company grew until it acquired Fiberpipe Data Centers Inc., in 2020.

That set up Tonaquint to provide more comprehensive data center products to customers in health care, financial services, as well as high-growth and emerging markets.

The company is a VMware Premier Cloud Provider, was named a VEEAM Impact Partner, and WCSP Impact Partner of the Year in 2022, won the Best of VMworld in 2018 with a gold award for virtualization and cloud infrastructure, and was named Zerto’s 2022 Cloud Partner of the Year.

Tonaquint was acquired in 2022 by Dutch infrastructure investment firm DIF Capital Partners.