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Photo tour of Facebook’s new datacenter
- akent 16y agoI wonder why there are at least two ridiculously big (like, 4096 pixels wide?) embedded images that are forced to width=500 in the HTML? Ever heard of thumbnails?
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- chuhnk 16y agoRackspace are building a datacenter based on the opencompute plans, very cool. Exactly what I had thought about based on the announcement of open compute. Hosting companies, large companies and all sorts will be leveraging this information to increase the scale of computing in datacenters as a whole. I hope more companies will contribute to opencompute so we continue to see improvements like this. The facebook datacenter looks awesome, as you can see they are serious about being a long term company rivalling the likes of google.
- torstesu 16y agoHow can this be more energy efficient than systems using cold ocean water to dump the heat surplus? E.g. The datacenters in iceland, where Opera has its datacenters. Would love some more details.
- rwmj 16y agoThe problem is not what to do with the heat, but how to transfer the heat more efficiently than via air (which is very inefficient so you need lots of energy to blow lots of air around). There's a cute promo video about half way down this page: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2011/04/12/green-revolutions-immersion-cooling-in-action/ http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2011/04/12/green... which shows one company's oil cooling solution.
- Nitramp 16y agoDischarging heat into nature is considered pollution by many countries by now, and in particular discharging it into bodies of water. You might simply not be allowed to do that, or you might have to pay hefty pollution taxes.
- ghshephard 16y ago"Discharging heat into nature is considered pollution by many countries by now" - Citation please. I'm not doubting you, this is just the first I've heard that discharging heat into nature is considered "pollution.", and I'd be interested to hear the context. I suspect it's in rare scenarios where the water it's being discharged into has a limited heat sink (small lake/river?) Regardless, I find it highly dubious that discharging heat _from a data center into an ocean_ is considered pollution by any country in the world. And I'm willing to wager no country in the world charges hefty pollution taxes for doing so. In fact, I'd be surprised if anyone, ever, has been charged pollution taxes for discharging heat into the ocean. The ocean is pretty big. The United States, in an entire year, uses enough energy to only equal 1% of what the Sun does every day in terms of heat loading. From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_energy#Energy_from_the_Sun http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_energy#Energy_from_the_Su... "The total solar energy absorbed by Earth's atmosphere, oceans and land masses is approximately 3,850,000 exajoules (EJ) per year." 1/365 of 3,850,000 exajoules = approx 10,000 exajoules. From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joule http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joule, " Energy in the United States used per year is roughly 105 EJ."
- angstrom 16y agoI'd be surprised if places with active geothermal vents would even notice the human induced heating. In that case Iceland seems like an excellent choice. The main problem is when it comes to active fisheries being located near the effluence.
- jarek 16y agoAnother thing you can do is to simply use the slightly warmer water like you would use cold water. Half of downtown Toronto's office towers (including 151 Front) are cooled with water from Lake Ontario that then enters the city's water supply.
- p0ppe 16y agoOr how about data centers that use the excess heat to provide heating for homes? http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/12/data-center-housed-under-catherdral-heats-homes-in-finland.php http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/12/data-center-housed-u...
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- davidw 16y agoBeing from Oregon, I always get a kick out of seeing this... Facebook, in Prineville. It's a small town that's not much of anywhere. Previously, it was known as the HQ of Les Schwab (free beef!) Tires, but even they moved over to Bend.
- forkandwait 16y agoI knew someone who worked at the Les Schwab HQ. She said that as soon as it was seemly after he passed away, they moved the operation to Bend. I can imagine an interview -- "Look, we want to hire you from Stanford Business School to run this multimillion section of our company, but Les is 85 and as soon as he goes we PROMISE we are moving to Bend." Note -- this may seem sort of horrible, but I am under the impression that Les was the sort of guy to be completely face forward, and could say "Look -- I know you all want to move to a town with a Starbucks, but you just have to wait until I die. And then please keep donating money to the local football team when I go."
- davidw 16y agoLooks like he was a pretty good guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Schwab http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Schwab
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- ck2 16y agoSo this is fun to look at, but considering how datacenters are supposed to be secure, isn't this counterproductive to them?
- lreeves 16y agoGenerally datacenters are weary of photos due to housing hundreds or thousands of different customers, many of which who do not want photographs taken of their equipment or even to have the geographic location of their equipment exposed (governments, financial institutes, etc). At Facebooks datacenter the only occupant is Facebook, so it's nice that they aren't as paranoid and will show these photos. Well, except the "no photos of the older equipment" rule that Scoble apparently ran into :-)
- kreneskyp 16y agoThere were various things we weren't allowed to take pictures of but mostly they were very open. You can't even get to the bathroom without a keycard. I don't think they have a reason to be paranoid.
- daniel1980fl 16y agoisnt this: "You can't even get to the bathroom without a keycard" contradicts this: "I don't think they have a reason to be paranoid"
- kreneskyp 16y agoHah. You got me there.
- ghshephard 16y agoTwo facts: #1. Nobody attacks data centers. No, really, they don't. Have some solid concrete walls, a man trap for people entry. a secure receiving area, and make sure your external doors are locked and you now have more security than is required for any data center short of critical infrastructure (nuclear/air-safety) - and probably enough for that as well. #2. Even if people attacked data centers (which, honestly, they don't) - there was nothing in these tours that would increase their odds of successfully doing so. Much easier to just get a job there if you really had some desire to cause damage.
- maukdaddy 16y agoThis is absolutely fantastic. I've been following the Google datacenter efficiency project for a while, and an opensource competitor will only make things better for the world. I can't wait for the day when more large companies either embrace this concept for their own datacenters or outsource to datacenters built on these technologies.
- cmelbye 16y agoVery cool, but why in the world would he use Instagram? All it did was crop the photo down to a square, so we couldn't see parts of the datacenter that weren't within that square.
- jacobbijani 16y agoSome of them look like polaroids now!
- Scobleizer 16y agoI use Instagram because I have about 10,000 followers on that service. I go where my friends are.
- JeremyBanks 16y agoIt seems silly for the quality of the photos in your article to be impacted by the way you share them on a social network.
- soundlab 16y agoNote the dual axis solar trackers in the field adjacent the facility. They are from Bend, OR solar startup PV Trackers http://www.pvtrackers.com/ http://www.pvtrackers.com/
- forkandwait 16y agoJust a note: In the high desert, "evaporative cooling" (all those water jets, fans, and filters) are refered to as "swamp coolers". Much more poetic.
- jpitz 16y agoY'all should know that we good ol southern folk calls em that too.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- wefqwerq 16y agoWhy is a corporate guy wearing a jacket showing the datacenter ? Doesn't represent the startup spirit IMHO.
- daveman692 16y agoBecause that's how Tom dresses. He's not a "corporate guy" but manages the team who runs our data centers and was directly involved in building this one.
- wefwefq 16y agoHe way he dresses makes him a corporate guy and it definitely does not represent the startup spirit IMHO, I'm disappointed that facebook doesn't have a bigger startup spirit.
- dangrossman 16y agoBut imposing a dress code on him would represent the startup spirit?
- bpodgursky 16y agoHaving "Startup spirit" doesn't mean imposing a new uniform of tshirts and khakis.
- rhizome 16y agoBy the way, why did Rackspace send me there? For those who don’t know, I’m a full-time employee of Rackspace which is the world’s biggest web hosting company. Scoble has a day job at Rackspace?
- Scobleizer 16y agoYes. Here's what I do at Rackspace: http://www.quora.com/What-does-Robert-Scoble-do-at-Rackspace?q=Scoble+Rackspace http://www.quora.com/What-does-Robert-Scoble-do-at-Rackspace...
- rhizome 16y agoNice query-spam suffix. Nothing personal, but it sounds less like a day job and more like a retainer for you to give RS presentations/info based on your normal travels.
- martincmartin 16y agoWhich brought up the question: why Prineville. ... low tax rates and friendly climate to business, etc. In other words, whatever labor is needed is considered unskilled. You found a tech company in the Valley, NYC or Boston because, even though the costs are high, that's where you can attract the talent. When the quality of employees is a non-issue, you may as well place it in a place that's economically depressed, i.e. desperate.
- forkandwait 16y agoI would imagine they will be importing most of the talent -- either from Portland, (inter)nationally, or at least from Bend or Eugene or Corvallis. My guess is that it really is the taxes + land costs + electricity costs + environment (cool high desert is great for evap cooling). Also Oregon has good business taxes, if high income tax. Finally, there is good skiing nearby at Bachelor, nearby Redmond has a great airport, etc.
- fedd 16y agodo all/many queries to facebook go to Prineville and how physically? shouldn't datacenters be in the middle of some thick cable hub?
- jacques_chester 16y agoThe article explains that Prineville is a railroad town. Some time back most railroads switched to using fibre optics for signalling purposes, not least because copper requires more repeaters and is more likely to be dug up by dickheads. The amount of bandwidth needed for railroad signalling is pretty minimal, so many railroad companies now moonlight as telcos. Also, back in the 1990s, a lot of firms laid additional fibre along the railroads because of the existing rights-of-way. Laying alongside a railroad is much faster because the legalities are settled -- you only need to negotiate with one organisation, not every little county you happen to cross. Consequently there is a lot of spare capacity running along railroads.
- mrmuhacks 16y agowould be even more interesting if a tech person could do a tour/photoshoot instead of a non-technical buzzhound.