Frederick County, Maryland
Hyperscale Campus
Why Frederick County, Maryland?
With industrial zoning, access to significant power capacity, and close proximity to Ashburn’s internet ecosystem, Frederick County, Maryland is an attractive and strategic alternative to Northern Virginia.
Master-planned for four multi-story data center facilities, Aligned’s Frederick County hyperscale campus is part of Quantum Loophole’s 2,100-acre, environmentally friendly “clean cloud community.” The campus offers efficient design for sustainable power and water use, investments in robust fiber connectivity, and ample availability for future development.
Located just 20 miles from the center of Ashburn, Virginia’s interconnection ecosystem in Loudoun County (about the same distance to Manassas), Quantum Loophole’s Frederick County site not only provides the equivalent of Virginia’s sales and use tax exemption associated with data center infrastructure and servers, it also takes advantage of Maryland’s exemption of personal property tax on certain data center infrastructure and servers.
Quantum Loophole’s planned custom fiber build, QLoop, will connect the Frederick County site to Loudoun County, Virginia via an ultra-high count fiber optic cable system, enabling automatic cross connections and fully redundant regional fiber connectivity capable of sub-millisecond latency between the two counties. This aspect could prove significantly beneficial to hyperscale, colocation and enterprise data center owners and operators.
Connectivity
- Access to QLoop Fiber Network, a 43-mile fiber ring that will connect Quantum Frederick and Ashburn, VA
- Network ring will offer capacity for more than 200,000 strands of fiber connecting to the Ashburn Internet ecosystem in under one half millisecond Round Trip Time (RTT)
- Diverse meet-me-rooms and fiber entrances
Power
- 1+GW utility power available to campus, from diverse 230kV substations
- Utility provider: FirstEnergy/Potomac Edison
- Concurrently maintainable UPS
- N+2 power generation
- Redundant A+B distribution
- Revenue-grade metering
Security
- 8’ Impasse steel security fencing with laser intrusion detection
- Multi-layer security design
- Card reader access
- 24x7x365 on-site security guards
- Multiple checkpoints: mantraps, dual authentication (biometrics and RFID badge readers)
- Event-driven IP video surveillance and visual light-based alerts
Fire Protection
- Separately zoned data halls
- Very Early Smoke Detection Apparatus (VESDA)
- Dual interlock pre-action system
Sustainability
- Aligned is 100% sustainability financed
- Waterless data centers
- 100% renewable energy available
- 100% of IT load matched with renewable energy sources
- Industry-leading PUE, WUE, and CUE
- Reclaimed water for mechanical plant
- Embodied carbon tracking
- Supply chain decarbonization
Cooling
- Our hot aisle containment strategy absorbs heat at its source – supporting standard and high power densities and allowing you to scale vertically and horizontally – without stranding capacity.
- Configurable to client needs (i.e., N, N+1, 2N)
Compliance
- System and Organization Control (SOC) 2 Type 2 and SOC 1 Type 2
- PCI DSS
- HIPAA
- HITECH
- FISMA / NIST 800-53
- ISO 27001:2013
Community
- Campus closely aligned with Livable Frederick Master Plan (LFMP)
- Increased tax revenue with incremental growth year-over-year for Frederick Country
- Addition of well-paying jobs to the community
- Local business partnership opportunities
- Commitment to preserving existing historical sites
- Commitment to sustainable and environmentally friendly development
- Nature-first design aesthetic to protect views and reduce visibility from public roadways
