There are two major reasons it is popular to site data centers in Salt Lake City. It has nothing to do with elevation.
First, the I-80 corridor is one of the most important and highest density fiber backbone routes on the continent, which runs right through the city. From a network topology standpoint, this makes it a pretty great place to aggregate massive quantities of data from around North America.
Second, it is a large city in one of the most geologically and meteorologically stable places in the continental US, far from an ocean (or anything really), which makes it a good choice for disaster recovery and backup sites. That locale has been used for this purpose for decades, not just for data centers.
tl;dr: Virtually unlimited and extremely well-connnected bandwidth in one of the least disaster-prone regions of the US.
First, the I-80 corridor is one of the most important and highest density fiber backbone routes on the continent, which runs right through the city. From a network topology standpoint, this makes it a pretty great place to aggregate massive quantities of data from around North America.
Second, it is a large city in one of the most geologically and meteorologically stable places in the continental US, far from an ocean (or anything really), which makes it a good choice for disaster recovery and backup sites. That locale has been used for this purpose for decades, not just for data centers.
tl;dr: Virtually unlimited and extremely well-connnected bandwidth in one of the least disaster-prone regions of the US.