W. Pennsylvania data center (WPA-1)

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Iron Mountain’s West Pennsylvania WPA-1 data center is 220 feet underground in a former limestone mine. The 330,000 ft2 facility is part of a 200-acre campus with power capacity of 15.5 MW.

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W. Pennsylvania Data Center

Enhanced benefits of Iron Mountain's underground facility in Boyers, PA

Iron Mountain’s underground facility in Boyers, Pennsylvania serves as a highly secure and resilient location for data centers, records management, media archives, and digital transformation services. This 200-acre underground complex is trusted by government agencies, financial institutions, healthcare providers, and major corporations for high-security storage, digital infrastructure, and long-term preservation of sensitive assets.

By leveraging its natural underground environment, the facility offers protection against physical threats, natural disasters, and environmental risks, making it an ideal solution for mission-critical data, classified records, historical documents, valuable media archives, and digital conversion services.

Why this matters

For organizations that require maximum security, disaster resilience, digital transformation services, and long-term data preservation, Iron Mountain’s underground facility in Boyers, PA, provides a unique and strategic advantage. The underground environment not only protects assets from external threats but also enables energy-efficient, high-compliance, and sustainable operations—a critical factor in today's risk-conscious and environmentally focused world.

Why underground?

Unmatched security & protection
  • Highly Secure Location – Being 220 feet below ground provides a natural layer of security that reduces exposure to external threats, including physical attacks, espionage, and unauthorized access.
  • Limited Entry Points – Access to the facility is tightly controlled with armed checkpoints, biometric authentication, and mantraps, making unauthorized entry extremely difficult.
  • Perimeter Defense & Surveillance – Equipped with CCTV monitoring, metal detectors, and 24/7 security personnel, ensuring constant surveillance and controlled access.
Disaster resilience
  • Protection from Natural Disasters – Unlike traditional above-ground facilities, this underground site is naturally shielded from hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, floods, and earthquakes.
  • Fire & Flood Resistance – The limestone environment is naturally non-flammable and does not require traditional fire suppression systems that could damage sensitive media or data assets.
  • Temperature & Humidity Stability – The underground setting naturally maintains a stable climate, reducing risks associated with extreme temperature fluctuations and humidity damage.
Digital transformation and digitization capabilities
  • Intelligent Document Processing – The Boyers facility offers advanced digitization services to help organizations transition from physical to digital records, ensuring greater accessibility and efficiency.
  • Secure Digital Storage & Retrieval – Digitized records can be securely stored and retrieved while maintaining compliance with regulatory requirements.
  • Supports Long-Term Digital Preservation – Enhances records management strategies by safeguarding valuable historical, government, and corporate documents in digital formats.
Energy efficiency & sustainability
  • Geothermal Cooling Advantage – The facility benefits from naturally cool underground temperatures, reducing the need for energy-intensive cooling solutions.
  • Optimal Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE): Due to its stable underground climate and underground aquifer, this natural cooling contributes to higher energy efficiency and low optimal PUE.
  • Matched by 100% Renewable Power – The facility is 100% matched by renewable energy sources, aligning with modern sustainability goals.
Long-term data & asset preservation
  • Ideal for Media & Archive Storage – The underground setting reduces exposure to environmental pollutants, UV light, and oxidation, preserving delicate materials such as historical records, digital media, film archives, and government documents.
  • Secure Data Center Operations – Mission-critical data storage and backup services benefit from a low-risk, high-resilience environment, ensuring business continuity in case of cyberattacks.
Compliance & regulatory alignment
  • Government-Grade Security & Compliance – The facility is trusted by federal agencies, financial institutions, and healthcare providers, meeting stringent standards such as FedRAMP, NIST 800-53, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, and ISO 27001.
  • FISMA HIGH & FedRAMP-Certified – These certifications demonstrate adherence to the highest levels of data security and operational integrity, making it an attractive choice for government and enterprise customers.

Colocate with confidence

Located less than an hour north of Pittsburgh, Iron Mountain’s West Pennsylvania WPA-1 data center is 220 feet underground in a former limestone mine. Its location ensures unbeatable levels of security and protection from manmade or natural disasters. The 330,000 ft2 facility is part of a 200-acre campus with power capacity of 15.5 MW. Due its ultra-efficient design and operations the data center is a DOE Better Buildings Showcase Project, harnessing a 35-acre underground reservoir to create a geothermal cooling system which optimizes energy efficiency.

Why choose Iron Mountain WPA-1?

Whether you are an enterprise looking for a large deployment or a growing local company hosting a few critical cabinets, WPA-1 can provide the space, standards and power configurations you need.

  • Protection
    Extensive ultra-secure underground facility ideal for DR and storage, protect IT assets from man-made & natural disasters
  • Efficiency
    Award-winning energy-efficiency using a natural aquifer to drive market-leading PUE, and 100% renewable energy.
  • Ecosystems
    Wide selection of carriers and cloud on-ramps for easy interconnection.
  • Compliance
    Mitigate regulatory risk with the industry’s most comprehensive compliance program.  

Beneficial relationships

More than five years ago, we determined that we needed more flexibility and we got it. Today we have a data center that provides Marriott with a tremendous capability for disaster recovery, and we have a great partner in Iron Mountain.
Marriott

Wholesale & retail colocation options

Whether you are an enterprise looking to protect a large deployment or a growing local company hosting a few critical cabinets, WPA-1 provides private suites, secure cages, and individual cabinets.

Built to protect enterprise, government

WPA-1 security features include a guarded campus entrance,metal detectors, 3-factor access controls, fully background-checked officers/employees and numerous others. We can also handle special requests like SCIFs for Federal Agencies.

Manage your data center remotely

Our smart hands services are delivered by tenured, local professionals you know and trust, accessible 24x7x365.Repeatable, vetted and documented smart hands processes and procedures allow us to acknowledge most requests within 30 minutes. 

There are many data center choices. There is only one Iron Mountain.

Founded in 1951, Iron Mountain is a global leader in storage and information management services. We serve 230,000+ customers (including more than 90% of the Fortune 1000) in 53 countries from 1,400+ facilities comprising 85 million square feet. Iron Mountain has offered reliable, secure and compliant colocation services since our first wholesale data center customer deployed in the 1980’s.

Proven track record. 30+ years of colocation excellence.

  • Est. 1951: 65+ years of operational excellence
  • 30+ years of colocation excellence

Beneficial relationships

  • 230,000+ customers
  • More than 90% of Fortune 1000
  • 100+ Federal Agencies

Network connectivity

  • Easy access to carriers, clouds and IT service providers

Services

  • On-site smart hands
  • Cloud on-ramp
  • Cross connect
  • IP transit
  • Metro wave
  • Peering
  • Private network transport

The safe choice

  • Comprehensive compliance support
  • Stable financials, publicly traded
  • Easy to “sell” to internal stakeholders
 

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