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This is a random question, but has anyone considered building data centers just at high elevations to save on cooling? Maybe that's why there are data centers

This is a random question, but has anyone considered building data centers just at high elevations to save on cooling? Maybe that's why there are data centers in Salt Lake City. High elevation, nearby talent pool, relatively central to the US.

WaltPurvis 7y ago
Salt Lake City has a higher average temperature than Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Minneapolis, and many other cities at much lower elevations. Salt Lake City isn't even significantly cooler than San Francisco and Seattle. https://www.currentresults.com/Weather/US/average-annual-temperatures-large-cities.php https://www.currentresults.com/Weather/US/average-annual-tem... Perhaps if you could build a data center at 10,000+ or 12,000+ feet, it might make a difference.
- Avamander 7y ago
  Thinner air makes it more difficult to effectively cool, even with cooler air. I've even seen things have an "High altitude mode" that make the fan spin harder.
  - WaltPurvis 7y ago
    Good point. I wonder if you could pressurize the data center and offset this effect?
    - perl4ever 7y ago
      PV=nRT
djhaskin987 7y ago
I live in Utah County, approximately 40 minutes south of Salt Lake City. I live less than 20 minutes away from Eagle Mountain, where they are going to build a new Facebook data center, and less than 20 minutes away from a rather large NSA data center installation in Bluffdale. We also have C7 and Rackspace 10s of minutes north of me and Adobe HQ 10 minutes away as well. I don't know why people use Salt Lake City as a location for data centers in the sense of its cheaper to cool. We are high elevation, but we are a high-elevation desert. It's usually pretty hot here. We have winters, true, and it's way dry here, but the winters are rather mild, especially compared to places like Wisconsin or Chicago, where I am originally from. It must be because of cheap electricity and/or tax laws. We have a lot of wind power here, and some coal power as well. One thing's for sure: cooling isn't why they build datacenters here. I have no idea why but I'm not complaining either :)
- jdsully 7y ago
  The lower the humidity the more efficient evaporative cooling is. These data centers don’t use traditional AC.
  - yellowapple 7y ago
    This is, as it so happens, why we sweat "more" in higher humidity (given a constant temperature relative to a non-humid atmosphere), and why humidity adds to perceived temperature. We're actually still sweating either way, but when the air's already humid there's nowhere for that sweat to go, so it stays on your body (and with it, the heat it was supposed to wick away).
- tracker1 7y ago
  As mentioned in another comment, cooling towers (evaporative) work very well in high desert areas. Phoenix is pretty popular for banking corporation data centers because of relative geographic stability, but I'd guess the cooling costs are a bit higher, I know some data centers have very thick walls and very tight security in the area. Also, it is quite a bit cooler than say Las Vegas or Phoenix, while being more central. The relatively mild winters is also a benefit in terms of geographic stability, you're less likely to see structural issues than you would in other areas of the country with more wild swings. It's also possible for certain components to be too cold as well. Tax incentives and a relatively less expensive labor pool don't hurt either.
jandrewrogers 7y ago
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.
bdd 7y ago
You probably want year round low humidity and relatively low temperatures following the seasonal curves. Oregon's High Desert (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Desert_(Oregon) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Desert_(Oregon)) is a good one. Apple and Facebook have data centers in Prineville, OR. Google has a GCP data center in The Dalles. Amazon has at least one in Port of Morrow and one in Port of Umatilla. In fact they can be all lined up on a 236 mile stretch. https://goo.gl/maps/inGGCCk2qBb8Bg5z5 https://goo.gl/maps/inGGCCk2qBb8Bg5z5 Back in 2011 Facebook published about the efficiency of Prineville data center, mentioning 100% outside air direct evaporative cooling https://engineering.fb.com/core-data/designing-a-very-efficient-data-center/ https://engineering.fb.com/core-data/designing-a-very-effici... and efficiency of water use https://www.opencompute.org/blog/water-efficiency-at-facebooks-prineville-data-center https://www.opencompute.org/blog/water-efficiency-at-faceboo... ...Now in 2019 we have data centers in various locations across the world but efficiency goals are no different if not more ambitious. So something more flexible was developed and now in production. https://engineering.fb.com/data-center-engineering/statepoint-liquid-cooling/ https://engineering.fb.com/data-center-engineering/statepoin... IIRC it doesn't mean we high deserts aren't special anymore. They still are.

WaltPurvis 7y ago

Salt Lake City has a higher average temperature than Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Minneapolis, and many other cities at much lower elevations. Salt Lake City isn't even significantly cooler than San Francisco and Seattle. https://www.currentresults.com/Weather/US/average-annual-temperatures-large-cities.php https://www.currentresults.com/Weather/US/average-annual-tem... Perhaps if you could build a data center at 10,000+ or 12,000+ feet, it might make a difference.

Avamander 7y ago
Thinner air makes it more difficult to effectively cool, even with cooler air. I've even seen things have an "High altitude mode" that make the fan spin harder.
- WaltPurvis 7y ago
  Good point. I wonder if you could pressurize the data center and offset this effect?
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    PV=nRT

djhaskin987 7y ago

I live in Utah County, approximately 40 minutes south of Salt Lake City. I live less than 20 minutes away from Eagle Mountain, where they are going to build a new Facebook data center, and less than 20 minutes away from a rather large NSA data center installation in Bluffdale. We also have C7 and Rackspace 10s of minutes north of me and Adobe HQ 10 minutes away as well. I don't know why people use Salt Lake City as a location for data centers in the sense of its cheaper to cool. We are high elevation, but we are a high-elevation desert. It's usually pretty hot here. We have winters, true, and it's way dry here, but the winters are rather mild, especially compared to places like Wisconsin or Chicago, where I am originally from. It must be because of cheap electricity and/or tax laws. We have a lot of wind power here, and some coal power as well. One thing's for sure: cooling isn't why they build datacenters here. I have no idea why but I'm not complaining either :)

jdsully 7y ago
The lower the humidity the more efficient evaporative cooling is. These data centers don’t use traditional AC.
- yellowapple 7y ago
  This is, as it so happens, why we sweat "more" in higher humidity (given a constant temperature relative to a non-humid atmosphere), and why humidity adds to perceived temperature. We're actually still sweating either way, but when the air's already humid there's nowhere for that sweat to go, so it stays on your body (and with it, the heat it was supposed to wick away).
tracker1 7y ago
As mentioned in another comment, cooling towers (evaporative) work very well in high desert areas. Phoenix is pretty popular for banking corporation data centers because of relative geographic stability, but I'd guess the cooling costs are a bit higher, I know some data centers have very thick walls and very tight security in the area. Also, it is quite a bit cooler than say Las Vegas or Phoenix, while being more central. The relatively mild winters is also a benefit in terms of geographic stability, you're less likely to see structural issues than you would in other areas of the country with more wild swings. It's also possible for certain components to be too cold as well. Tax incentives and a relatively less expensive labor pool don't hurt either.

jandrewrogers 7y ago

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.

bdd 7y ago

You probably want year round low humidity and relatively low temperatures following the seasonal curves. Oregon's High Desert (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Desert_(Oregon) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Desert_(Oregon)) is a good one. Apple and Facebook have data centers in Prineville, OR. Google has a GCP data center in The Dalles. Amazon has at least one in Port of Morrow and one in Port of Umatilla. In fact they can be all lined up on a 236 mile stretch. https://goo.gl/maps/inGGCCk2qBb8Bg5z5 https://goo.gl/maps/inGGCCk2qBb8Bg5z5 Back in 2011 Facebook published about the efficiency of Prineville data center, mentioning 100% outside air direct evaporative cooling https://engineering.fb.com/core-data/designing-a-very-efficient-data-center/ https://engineering.fb.com/core-data/designing-a-very-effici... and efficiency of water use https://www.opencompute.org/blog/water-efficiency-at-facebooks-prineville-data-center https://www.opencompute.org/blog/water-efficiency-at-faceboo... ...Now in 2019 we have data centers in various locations across the world but efficiency goals are no different if not more ambitious. So something more flexible was developed and now in production. https://engineering.fb.com/data-center-engineering/statepoint-liquid-cooling/ https://engineering.fb.com/data-center-engineering/statepoin... IIRC it doesn't mean we high deserts aren't special anymore. They still are.