4 ms·

Russia, The Final Frontier For Data Centers?

12 points by crocus 18y ago

bprater 18y ago
How does latency affect users in other countries? Worth worrying about?
- ruslan 18y ago
  It's a wide-spread myth that the weather is cold in Siberia. I do live in Tyumen (West Siberia) and it's +32C here now. So, you cannot save on aircooling. The two more myths are, that wild bears are all leaning around over here and one can drill oil right in his backyard. There are no problems with BW, as for the past 8 years Transtelecom and Rostelecom -- both nationwide telcos, deployed a number of transcontinental fiber cables all along the TransSib (the rail-road connecting farthest east and west points of Russia). On both ends they are peering to EU and to Japan/China/Korea. The average ping from Tyumen to my servers co-located in Mountain View is 180-200ms and the most part of it constitutes by european backbones.
  - tx 18y ago
    200ms is very slow. I wouldn't put my business on anything slower than 100ms, I manage servers at three different US data centers and ping is within 50..70ms range for all of them, including cheap slicehost.
    - DenisM 18y ago
      so put your data centers for American use in America, and for European/Japanese use in Russia. Duh?
    - osipov 18y ago
      according to the article, building a data center in russia seems to make sense when optimizing for 1) flops per dollar of watt-hour 2) high absolute value of flops. for example, google may be interested in shifting their compute/flops intensive tasks (e.g. building search index) to the servers in russia and then replicating the index globally.
henning 18y ago
If my understanding of the commercial malware industry is accurate, operating a data center in Russia would be great, until you're muscled into being a spam operation by local organized crime.
- osipov 18y ago
  wow...that's not even wrong
- DenisM 18y ago
  That's only until black bears break in and steal all your vodka supply, therefore neutralizing your sysadmins. Dude, seriously. Russia is not Somalia or wild west.
  - henning 18y ago
    No, it isn't. It's just a place where if you're a spam kingpin and you anger the wrong people, you'll get whacked. Congratulations to everyone disagreeing with me by downmodding. Stay classy.
    - DenisM 18y ago
      They are totally out to get you. Putin wants to nationalize your startup, Russian mob wants to force you into spam slavery (and will kill you if you don't do good job) and HN particpants want to silence you. Or maybe you are blowing it out of proportion. Either one.
Alex3917 18y ago
I still don't understand why more data centers don't just use lake source cooling. With a relatively modest upfront investment these companies could reduce the amount of electricity they use for cooling by 90%.
- asdflkj 18y ago
  Probably because energy used for cooling is only a fraction of total energy used, so other considerations take precedence.
DanielBMarkham 18y ago
Would you really drop several hundred million in investment in a country that just decided to nationalize all of its oil industry? A country with a history of nationalizing things so that the rich plutocrats keep geting richer? Maybe Microsoft, but not me.
- osipov 18y ago
  >just decided to nationalize all of its oil industry that's false. do you by any chance get your news from the Anglophone media?
  - tx 18y ago
    His nick implies, at least statistically speaking, that he lives in a informational isolation and has no access to news, unless he knows more than one language [and uses it]. For English speakers the only source of information about international affairs, IMO, is books: Internet and TV are useless. For Daniel I'd recommend "Bad Money" by Kevin Phillips.
    - DanielBMarkham 18y ago
      Aside from my ability or non-ability to speak Russian, I'm curious as to how my nick would imply that I "live in a [sic] informational isolation and has no access to news..." I'm also looking forward to a book that Amazon touts "In Bad Money, Phillips describes the consequences of our misguided economic policies, our mounting debt, our collapsing housing market, our threatened oil, and the end of American domination of world markets. America’s current challenges (and failures) run striking parallels to the decline of previous leading world economic powers—especially the Dutch and British. Global overreach, worn-out politics, excessive debt, and exhausted energy regimes are all chilling signals that the United States is crumbling as the world superpower." Gee. Must be quite the fun guy to run into at parties. I'm not going to get into Russian corruption and associated risk involved with investing there. I'll let the world markets make those calls. I stand by my original comment until persuaded otherwise, and statistical analysis of my nick ain't cutting the mustard, gentlemen.

12 points by crocus 18y ago

bprater 18y ago

How does latency affect users in other countries? Worth worrying about?

ruslan 18y ago
It's a wide-spread myth that the weather is cold in Siberia. I do live in Tyumen (West Siberia) and it's +32C here now. So, you cannot save on aircooling. The two more myths are, that wild bears are all leaning around over here and one can drill oil right in his backyard. There are no problems with BW, as for the past 8 years Transtelecom and Rostelecom -- both nationwide telcos, deployed a number of transcontinental fiber cables all along the TransSib (the rail-road connecting farthest east and west points of Russia). On both ends they are peering to EU and to Japan/China/Korea. The average ping from Tyumen to my servers co-located in Mountain View is 180-200ms and the most part of it constitutes by european backbones.
- tx 18y ago
  200ms is very slow. I wouldn't put my business on anything slower than 100ms, I manage servers at three different US data centers and ping is within 50..70ms range for all of them, including cheap slicehost.
  - DenisM 18y ago
    so put your data centers for American use in America, and for European/Japanese use in Russia. Duh?
  - osipov 18y ago
    according to the article, building a data center in russia seems to make sense when optimizing for 1) flops per dollar of watt-hour 2) high absolute value of flops. for example, google may be interested in shifting their compute/flops intensive tasks (e.g. building search index) to the servers in russia and then replicating the index globally.

henning 18y ago

If my understanding of the commercial malware industry is accurate, operating a data center in Russia would be great, until you're muscled into being a spam operation by local organized crime.

osipov 18y ago
wow...that's not even wrong
DenisM 18y ago
That's only until black bears break in and steal all your vodka supply, therefore neutralizing your sysadmins. Dude, seriously. Russia is not Somalia or wild west.
- henning 18y ago
  No, it isn't. It's just a place where if you're a spam kingpin and you anger the wrong people, you'll get whacked. Congratulations to everyone disagreeing with me by downmodding. Stay classy.
  - DenisM 18y ago
    They are totally out to get you. Putin wants to nationalize your startup, Russian mob wants to force you into spam slavery (and will kill you if you don't do good job) and HN particpants want to silence you. Or maybe you are blowing it out of proportion. Either one.

Alex3917 18y ago

I still don't understand why more data centers don't just use lake source cooling. With a relatively modest upfront investment these companies could reduce the amount of electricity they use for cooling by 90%.

asdflkj 18y ago
Probably because energy used for cooling is only a fraction of total energy used, so other considerations take precedence.

DanielBMarkham 18y ago

Would you really drop several hundred million in investment in a country that just decided to nationalize all of its oil industry? A country with a history of nationalizing things so that the rich plutocrats keep geting richer? Maybe Microsoft, but not me.

osipov 18y ago
>just decided to nationalize all of its oil industry that's false. do you by any chance get your news from the Anglophone media?
- tx 18y ago
  His nick implies, at least statistically speaking, that he lives in a informational isolation and has no access to news, unless he knows more than one language [and uses it]. For English speakers the only source of information about international affairs, IMO, is books: Internet and TV are useless. For Daniel I'd recommend "Bad Money" by Kevin Phillips.
  - DanielBMarkham 18y ago
    Aside from my ability or non-ability to speak Russian, I'm curious as to how my nick would imply that I "live in a [sic] informational isolation and has no access to news..." I'm also looking forward to a book that Amazon touts "In Bad Money, Phillips describes the consequences of our misguided economic policies, our mounting debt, our collapsing housing market, our threatened oil, and the end of American domination of world markets. America’s current challenges (and failures) run striking parallels to the decline of previous leading world economic powers—especially the Dutch and British. Global overreach, worn-out politics, excessive debt, and exhausted energy regimes are all chilling signals that the United States is crumbling as the world superpower." Gee. Must be quite the fun guy to run into at parties. I'm not going to get into Russian corruption and associated risk involved with investing there. I'll let the world markets make those calls. I stand by my original comment until persuaded otherwise, and statistical analysis of my nick ain't cutting the mustard, gentlemen.