If you've started shopping for data center space on the East Coast, you've probably heard the same answer everywhere: Northern Virginia. It's the most connected data center market in the country. It's also one of the hardest places to get power right now.
For mid-market organizations moving servers out of an office, adding disaster recovery, or standing up AI and GPU infrastructure, that matters. You don't need the densest interconnection ecosystem on the planet. You need reliable power, room to grow, strong security, and a team that answers the phone.
TL;DR: Northern Virginia is capacity-constrained and priced for hyperscalers. Pennsylvania sits in the same PJM power grid with available capacity, lower operating pressure, and faster timelines. Evaluate any colocation provider on power, redundancy, density, connectivity, security, and who owns the outcome when something goes wrong. Most providers stop at the cage door. The better model puts the facility and the cybersecurity under one accountable team.
Demand has outrun power. Hyperscalers and AI builds have absorbed most of the available capacity in Northern Virginia, and the numbers make the problem concrete.
CBRE’s H1 2026 North America Data Center Report puts Northern Virginia vacancy at 0.2%, with just 10.8 MW available. More than 80% of all capacity under construction in North America is already preleased before a single rack goes in.
For a mid-market buyer that needs 20 racks or 500 kW, the problem isn't that data centers don't exist. It's that the ones with available power are either committed to hyperscale tenants or priced and contracted for them. You're not losing to a better offer; you're not in the market they're selling to.
For many organizations, yes. Pennsylvania sits in the same PJM Interconnection power grid, positioned between the New York and Washington corridors, with significantly lower land and operating pressure than Ashburn. Philadelphia and Pittsburgh get most of the attention, but Western and Central Pennsylvania offer something increasingly rare: available power close to utility infrastructure, without a 3-year queue.
Pennsylvania makes the most sense when:
The trade-off is honest: you won't get the same carrier density or cross-connect ecosystem as Ashburn. But for mid-market workloads where resilience and security matter more than hyperscale interconnection, that's a trade most organizations should make willingly.
If critical systems are running from an office closet or a converted server room, probably. Most of those rooms were never designed for IT. They lack redundant power, precision cooling, and real physical access control. One building outage, one HVAC failure, one burst pipe can take the whole business offline.
Data center colocation lets you keep ownership and control of your hardware while the facility handles power, cooling, physical security, and connectivity. It's often a better fit than public cloud for workloads with:
It's not all-or-nothing. Many organizations colocate primary servers or backup infrastructure and keep everything else where it is. The decision is workload-by-workload, not a wholesale migration.
These are the questions worth asking every provider on your list before you sign anything.
| Question to ask | Why it matters | What good looks like |
|---|---|---|
| What's the redundancy design? | One failure shouldn't take you down | Tier 3, 2N power and cooling |
| How much power per rack can you deliver? | AI and GPU gear needs far more than standard servers | Clear kW-per-rack limits, liquid-cooling options |
| How much critical capacity is available, and when? | “Coming soon” doesn't run servers | Capacity available now, with an expansion path |
| How many carriers are on site? | Resilience and pricing leverage | Multiple carriers, not one |
| Who handles on-site help, and what does it cost? | Surprise remote-hands bills add up | Smart Hands included |
| Who monitors the facility? | Someone has to be watching at 3 a.m. | On-site NOC and SOC |
| Can you secure what's inside the rack? | Physical security isn't cybersecurity | Managed security that extends to hosted systems |
| What happens if our office goes down? | Continuity is people, not just servers | On-site continuity and incident-response space |
The last two questions are where most providers go quiet. Badge readers and cages protect the building. They don't protect the systems inside it, and most facilities won't tell you that upfront.
Some can. Most can't.
A traditional enterprise rack draws 3 to 5 kW. Modern GPU platforms, like NVIDIA’s B200 and B300 generation, push well past that. Dense AI deployments can approach 100 kW per rack. That's not a power problem you solve by plugging in more circuits; it requires engineered power delivery, liquid cooling infrastructure, and a team that plans the deployment before equipment arrives.
Before you sign, confirm three things:
A provider who says “we can support that” but can't describe how they cool it at 80 kW/rack is not a provider who has done it. Ask for specifics.
Here's the gap most buyers miss, and it's the one that tends to hurt them later.
A colocation provider protects the building. Badge readers, cameras, and cages keep unauthorized people away from your hardware. None of that watches the traffic, identities, and vulnerabilities on the systems inside it.
That gap usually leaves hosted infrastructure as its own security island, managed by a separate vendor (if anyone is managing it at all). When something goes wrong, you get finger-pointing between the facility, your IT provider, and your security vendor. Nobody owns the outcome.
The cleaner model is one team that owns both: the facility your systems live in and the cybersecurity program that protects them. With managed security extended to your colocated environment, your hosted systems are monitored as part of the same program covering the rest of your environment. One point of accountability. No seams for threats to hide in.
Most organizations don't find out until something breaks. A business cyber risk assessment gives you a clear picture of your exposure across your full environment, including colocated systems, without jargon or a sales pitch attached.
See where your hosted infrastructure stands before you move it into a facility.
Colocation pricing isn't one number. It's driven by a handful of variables that compound quickly if you're not comparing apples to apples.
The main cost drivers:
Watch for this: Quotes that look low often exclude Smart Hands, cross-connects, or security as separate line items. Get an all-in number before comparing providers.
The fastest way to a real number is to bring your equipment list, power needs, and uptime requirements to a short scoping conversation. Any provider worth working with should be able to give you a straight answer.
viLogics operates its own data center in Ebensburg, Western Pennsylvania, built specifically for mid-market organizations that need reliable infrastructure and security from one accountable team. Not a referral to a third-party facility. Not a reseller arrangement. We own the building and the security program.
What's included in every colocation contract:
viLogics migrated the American Red Cross from a legacy data center environment in Eagan, Minnesota, to its Pennsylvania infrastructure while maintaining operational continuity. That initial lift-and-shift moved legacy servers, appliances, applications, and supporting infrastructure, creating the foundation for a five-year modernization program. Using the confirmed core IT budget as the baseline, the program helped reduce annual core IT operating costs from more than $230 million to approximately $84 million through consolidation, modernization, and service optimization.
If you're evaluating providers against the questions in the table above, here's how we answer them: Tier 3 redundancy, available power now, five carriers, Smart Hands included, on-site NOC and SOC, and managed security that doesn't stop at the cage door.
Ready to talk capacity? If your infrastructure has outgrown its current home, or you need AI-ready power without the Northern Virginia wait, start the conversation. Bring your equipment list and uptime requirements and we'll tell you plainly whether colocation fits.
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