SECURITY IN SOLID GRANITE
About Perpetual Storage, Inc.
Perpetual Storage, Inc. (PSI) is one of the world's most secure facilities, housing an underground storage vault and data center deep within a solid granite mountain just outside of Salt Lake City, Utah. The climate-controlled, maximum-security vault provides disaster recovery, backup, our innovative hybrid online/offline cloud-based backup system known as Granite Cloud, and long-term storage services for physical media, digital data, and other high-value items in a facility built to exceed Department of Defense standards. PSI’s services are available 24/7/365. Perpetual Storage is a certified ‘Woman-Owned Small Business' privately owned and operated for over 54 years.
The Perpetual Storage, Inc. (PSI) vault is fire-proof, natural and manmade disaster-proof. It is located within a very unique geological formation, a monolithic laccolith (one solid piece of rock). Why is this geologic formation important? It means that even if the area were to experience an earthquake of the highest magnitude, because this formation has no fissures, the shock waves would pass right through our rock and the people inside our facility may not even know that an earthquake had taken place because they would barely (if at all) feel it. PSI’s clients never have to worry about the facility collapsing. While this type of geologic formation exists in very few locations in the U.S., ours is the only one that’s not a national monument, found in a protected national forest, or on Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) lands. It is the only location with commercially available off-site storage. The vault is protected by a six-ton steel vault door that is capable of withstanding a nuclear blast.
The granite mountain extends about three-and-a-half miles from the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon near Salt Lake City, Utah. PSI previously owned the entire mountain until the early 1960s, when property was sold to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) to build its genealogical vault. In 1967, PSI started building a mountain vault for businesses, government agencies and professional organizations to store critical and irreplaceable records. PSI only stores digital and microfilm records in it’s security vault, keeping it paper-free and safe from fire hazards. The data center is located in a part of the facility that is separate from the security vault and is protected inside the mountain. The types of media we store include: hard drives, SSD (hard drives), magnetic tape, flash drives, optical disks (DVDs, CDs and M-Discs), microfilm and microfiche.
The vault is located above the flood plain and outside of flight paths. A geological survey was completed by a professor of geology at Brigham Young University to confirm the strength of the mountain.
What makes PSI different from an underground salt mine?
Salt mines are susceptible to collapsing due to earthquakes or tremors, and water leaks that dissolve the salt columns holding up the caverns. Sink holes are known to develop around these locations. Often it’s difficult or impossible to extinguish fires inside an underground facility that stores paper and other flammable materials. Firefighters typically close the shafts to starve the fire of oxygen, but if the facility has too many natural openings for air flow, this is not possible.
PSI is safe from earthquakes because of the unique formation surrounding its vault. Earthquake shock waves pass through solid objects like our granite formation, which does not move because it is “book-ended” on either side by older mountain formations. PSI also does not store paper or anything flammable in the vault and has a fire suppression system to protect against fire hazard. PSI is also approximately 250 feet above the canyon floor, and therefore, safe from floods.
What makes PSI superior to tilt-up constructed off-site storage facilities or data centers?
Tornadoes, hurricanes, flooding, earthquakes, fires and other natural and man-made disasters all have damaged or destroyed tilt-up constructed off-site storage facilities and data centers. What would be the cost in time, money and embarrassment when this happens and irreplaceable data is lost and the facility is unable to function? Is there a solution to these dangers and vulnerabilities?
The Perpetual Storage, Inc. maximum security vault is encased in a solid granite mountain. It does not sit in a flood plain, liquefaction zone or in an area that has devastating tornadoes or hurricanes. PSI does not store flammable paper records. It has been designed to meet and exceed the stringent U.S. Department of Defense specifications for critical data storage.