3 ms·

There's something eerily true about TFA's observation that data centers have a big footprint but really low headcount. I work in the Atlanta area, and it's amaz

There's something eerily true about TFA's observation that data centers have a big footprint but really low headcount. I work in the Atlanta area, and it's amazing how long you can work in tech without ever setting foot in a data center or even seeing one from the outside. They are truly highly invisible infrastructure, hidden behind more and more layers of abstraction. I'm all for abstractions that don't leak, but I'm not sure it's a purely good thing to get so disconnected from the hardware layer. I used to tag along with our sysadmin sometimes, back when I worked in a place that ran its own data centers - a decade ago - and they aren't really enjoyable places (noisy, not built for human inhabitants), but there's something nice about seeing the actual hardware that runs your applications. It kind of keeps things grounded.

samstave 3y ago
Tangential, but you might like this to mutter upon in the shower: >"Ask HN: At what point do the Cloud's datacenters become national security sites?" [0] Its an interesting aspect to think about when taking a high level objective look at the importance of Datacenters on all aspects of modern society. >>"...Companies like AWS, running data centers for the Department of Defense (DoD) and Intelligence Community (IC), demonstrate close collaboration between private entities and defense agencies. The question remains: are major cloud service providers actively involved in a national security strategy to protect the private internet infrastructure that underpins the global economy, or does the responsibility solely rest with individual companies?..." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38975443 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38975443
nitwit005 3y ago
People have probably seen more data centers than they think, and just not noticed. They just look like large buildings if you pass by on the highway. There used to be a lot of telephone buildings in the US. AT&T built them right in the middle of communities in many cases, but they attempted to match local architecture. Most people never realized they were there.
- kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
  The ones with security fences stand out more obviously.
- pests 3y ago
  Yep. I recently found out the non-descript brick building in the slightly shady part of town actually houses tens of millions of dollars in servers. It was quite the shock to go from the grimey city alley to a perfectly clean, high tech, and highly secure interior.
- Mountain_Skies 3y ago
  So many buildings downtown were getting filled up with telecom and data equipment that the Atlanta city council passed a law about a decade ago to keep it from pushing out all other uses. There are lots of historic buildings that are little more than facades wrapped around these places due to how much fiber runs through downtown making it a very attractive place to locate. The city wants more people downtown so they'd prefer more housing, offices, retail, and hotels (human, not telecom). The law seems to have worked or at least contributed to helping to rebalance uses there.

samstave 3y ago

Tangential, but you might like this to mutter upon in the shower: >"Ask HN: At what point do the Cloud's datacenters become national security sites?" [0] Its an interesting aspect to think about when taking a high level objective look at the importance of Datacenters on all aspects of modern society. >>"...Companies like AWS, running data centers for the Department of Defense (DoD) and Intelligence Community (IC), demonstrate close collaboration between private entities and defense agencies. The question remains: are major cloud service providers actively involved in a national security strategy to protect the private internet infrastructure that underpins the global economy, or does the responsibility solely rest with individual companies?..." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38975443 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38975443

nitwit005 3y ago

People have probably seen more data centers than they think, and just not noticed. They just look like large buildings if you pass by on the highway. There used to be a lot of telephone buildings in the US. AT&T built them right in the middle of communities in many cases, but they attempted to match local architecture. Most people never realized they were there.

kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
The ones with security fences stand out more obviously.
pests 3y ago
Yep. I recently found out the non-descript brick building in the slightly shady part of town actually houses tens of millions of dollars in servers. It was quite the shock to go from the grimey city alley to a perfectly clean, high tech, and highly secure interior.
Mountain_Skies 3y ago
So many buildings downtown were getting filled up with telecom and data equipment that the Atlanta city council passed a law about a decade ago to keep it from pushing out all other uses. There are lots of historic buildings that are little more than facades wrapped around these places due to how much fiber runs through downtown making it a very attractive place to locate. The city wants more people downtown so they'd prefer more housing, offices, retail, and hotels (human, not telecom). The law seems to have worked or at least contributed to helping to rebalance uses there.