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Google's new data center in Finland
- nirmal 16y agoGoogle plans to employ 50-60 people to run the data center. So far they have found four, so they have some head hunting to do. Google Maps says Hamina is a 2 hour drive from Helsinki, can any Finns comment on if this is an accurate time? Or is it one of those 6 months of the year the roads are dead sort of thing?
- avar 16y agoIf you look closer at Google Maps you'll see that the road from Helsinki to Hamina goes past several other cities, and it looks like this: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Hamina&sll=48.00493,7.82691&sspn=0.006216,0.01472&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Hamina,+Finland&ll=60.494946,26.756945&spn=0.009152,0.045791&t=h&z=15&layer=c&cbll=60.497166,26.764129&panoid=nvBg7cEpfFV9oqcmmshx0A&cbp=12,279.53,,0,20.08 http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&... It's hardly some dirt road in the middle of nowhere, so yes, 2 hours is probably accurate.
- sushi 16y agoYeah It's almost 2 hours 15 minutes drive from Helsinki but driving is the only option to reach Hamina. There is no rail system connecting Hamina (there was one, no longer operational). I have been closely following the news about this particular datacenter and it really is strange that Google hasn't found enough engineers for the job there. I have been seeing the ads for the jobs at Hamina datacentre since last one year or so.
- zeemonkee 16y agoI've only been to Hamina once (nice harbour BTW) but I don't recall if there was a university or technical college there. I'd have thought Helsinki/Espoo, Tampere or Oulu would have been better for communications and near to recruitment grounds.
- sushi 16y agoYou are right. Helsinki/Espoo, Tampere or Oulu would have been far better choices from the point of recruitment but this is a large piece of land and probably Google didn't want to let it go. Besides they must have thought the name Google is enough to get smart people where ever they want. btw this is what centre of Hamina looks like : http://torikamera.haminetti.net/user/toricam.html http://torikamera.haminetti.net/user/toricam.html
- nihilocrat 16y agoThere's a data center in Lenoir, NC which they spun as a way of training and employing laid-off furniture / textile mill workers. The fact that this is in a paper mill shut down two years ago makes me think they would try to do something similar. http://www.google.com/datacenter/lenoir/jobs.html http://www.google.com/datacenter/lenoir/jobs.html
- iuyhgtfvgbhjn 16y agoI assume they are getting a big chunk of local/national/eu grants to support the depressed area and a quick pass on building/environmental permits which you wouldn't get for building it in the capital. Plus as the article says - this is really the St. Petersburg/Stalingrad/Leningrad data center without the political problems of having to keep renaming it.
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- zeemonkee 16y agoSounds about right. Finnish main roads are surprisingly good all year round, and cars by law have to use special tires during the winter season.
- avar 16y agoGoogle page about the data center: http://www.google.com/datacenter/hamina/ http://www.google.com/datacenter/hamina/ I can't see it on Google Street View, unless it's that area of tents on the map. But I don't see anything that looks like a paper mill there. Maybe they just dropped the marker in a random location. Edit: Yes they did, here's an actual Google Maps link: http://maps.google.com/maps?t=h&q=60.536944,27.116944&ie=UTF8&ll=60.540821,27.130566&spn=0.016547,0.11776&z=13&layer=tc&cbll=60.539887,27.125669&panoid=fKiaXsB2CZcsakOg8BuX9g&cbp=11,229.57,,0,2.45 http://maps.google.com/maps?t=h&q=60.536944,27.116944... The street view doesn't show the location, just a guarded gate into the area. Here's a Finnish Wikipedia article about the site (with the coordinates): http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summan_paperitehdas http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summan_paperitehdas And Google Images of the site: http://www.google.fi/images?um=1&tbs=isch:1&sa=1&q=summan+paperitehdas&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai= http://www.google.fi/images?um=1&tbs=isch:1&sa=1&...
- drtse4 16y agoLooks like it is/it was a geocaching location http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=f13ea14e-e452-4248-ad26-272721c7dd8a http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=f13ea...
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- mhb 16y agoHow big an issue is corrosion when using sea water for cooling? I thought this was why fire departments don't use salt water to put out fires.
- Retric 16y agoThey probably use a two loop system so most of their pipes are not filled with salt water.
- The_Fox 16y agoAdditionally, they can use sacrificial anodes to reduce corrosion and apply an electric current to reduce growth of living things.
- j-g-faustus 16y agoYes, that's what they are saying in the linked video, around the 1-minute mark: http://www.hs.fi/talous/artikkeli/Google+raotti+ovea+hakukoneen+uumeniin+Summassa/1135252144819 http://www.hs.fi/talous/artikkeli/Google+raotti+ovea+hakukon... [We will be] taking the heat outside of the building and using cold [sea] water to remove it So it could mean air cooling inside the building, using salt water to cool the air.
- kiiski 16y agoAlso remember that the Baltic sea is a lot less salty than any other sea. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_sea#Salinity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_sea#Salinity
- jparise 16y agoInterestingly, Nokia started off as a Finnish paper mill. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia#Pre-telecommunications_era http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia#Pre-telecommunications_er...
- Alleyfield 16y agoWhat's even more interesting is that prior deciding to produce mobile phones - Nokia's biggest asset was producing rubber boots.
- Ras_ 16y agoNokia's product line up in 1936: http://www.flickr.com/photos/puijo/4997269178/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/puijo/4997269178/
- MikeCapone 16y agoI think this was mentioned in a recent issue of The Economist. Just out of curiosity, is this were you found out about it?
- Alleyfield 16y agoTo fulfill your curiosity - No. I knew it beforehand as I'm a Finn myself. And here's the first logo of Nokia. It's quite, uhm, interesting compared to what they're doing at the moment, wouldn't you agree http://www.about-nokia.com/images/nokia-logo1.jpg http://www.about-nokia.com/images/nokia-logo1.jpg
- Marticus 16y agoI believe this is the final answer for water-cooled systems, haha.
- paulitex 16y agoWas anyone able to glean Google's plans for the huge volumes of heated sea water 'waste'? I sure hope they're not planning on just pumping it back into the Baltic - warming of the world's oceans and seas is a very serious problem (see http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/07/temperature-ocean-life/ http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/07/temperature-ocean-... for a summary). It seems this only shifts their heat dissipation problem from having to cool servers to having to cool large quantities of sea water. Perhaps the latter is an easier problem to solve (gigantic outdoor cooling tubs?) but I don't know.
- jonknee 16y agoMany power plants heat sea water (either for steam or cooling), I think the ocean can handle a data center just fine. Update: I should add that I'm all for environmental study to make sure that they aren't venting it out in a sensitive ecosystem or at a radically different temp. Done correctly this can be an important development towards sustainable data centers.
- Alleyfield 16y agoWe're talking about the baltic sea here. Its average depth is 55m. Besides, it's already quite contaminated so there is a lot of environmental protection going around it. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb/BalticSea_March2000_NASA-S2000084115409_md.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb/BalticSea... As you can see, there really isn't places for the water to flow back and forth, so it's not a case of "the ocean is going to handle it" Always consider the context.
- russss 16y agoYes, but it's still a massive body of water. Local heating of the water may be an environmental issue (although a small one, I think), but heating of the entire Baltic Sea is absolutely negligible.
- jdminhbg 16y agoThis would have to be one hell of a data center to have an appreciable effect on the temperature of the Baltic Sea.
- icco 16y agoI'm kind of confused why we care. It's another data center, big whoop. I am worried about the waste from warming sea water, but other than that, meh?
- jodrellblank 16y agoIf you don't care, why comment? I am impressed at Google putting datacenters in cold climates for cheaper cooling. You know they have enough datacenters and custom software that they can migrate heavy compute jobs around the planet, keeping them running in night regions where the temperature is lower and cooling cheaper?
- icco 16y agoIt's not that I don't care, I just don't understand why this is news. I'd love to know if what you claim they are doing is actually happening, but I didn't see that in this article. From what I can tell, all this article says is "Google is creating a new data center and it is cooled by the ocean."
- herdrick 16y agoI've been wondering for a while why Google and others don't put data centers in Iceland. Electricity there is almost free of charge and has zero carbon footprint - in fact zero emissions of any sort. (It's geothermal.) The location is remote so you would have some extra latency but for lots of stuff that'd be fine.
- jodrellblank 16y agoI wont find it on my iPhone, but there was a recent article about companies doing just that, datacenters being built and fast links run to the UK and mainland Europe. It's quite remote from a get-servers-and-techs there perspective too, though. Might not get a 4 hour onsite warranty as easily.
- avar 16y agoIceland has horrible network connectivity compared to the mainland, and I don't think Google needs to do that much batch-only processing for it to pay off. This is also pertinent: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/datacenter/how-to-kill-the-datacenter-business/438 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/datacenter/how-to-kill-the-datacen...
- iuyhgtfvgbhjn 16y agoPoor international connectivity. Small country, where do you hire a lawyer with expertise in Icelandic IP law? How much jurisprudence is there? Do you trust the government given that they just basically walked away from their bank guarantees
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