4 ms·

Just look on satellites for giant buildings with no cars or semi trailers parked in the parking lots. I wonder if data centers will have to start doubling as a

Just look on satellites for giant buildings with no cars or semi trailers parked in the parking lots. I wonder if data centers will have to start doubling as automobile junkyards to conceal themselves.

throwaway894345 6mo ago
Some Paris data centers are disguised as apartment buildings with the classic Hausmannian facade, and then you open up Google maps and see a ton of AC units stacked on the roof. These aren’t likely major cloud data centers mind you, and the motivation for concealing them has more to do with the city’s aesthetic codes than military defense.
- breppp 6mo ago
  or less aesthetic versions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/33_Thomas_Street#/media/File:AT&T_Long_Lines_33_Thomas_Street.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/33_Thomas_Street#/media/File:A...
  - jmalicki 6mo ago
    Even that isn't a serious data center (on the level of national security concerns). Wall St is run from Mahwah, NJ.
time0ut 6mo ago
Some data centers are more valuable as targets than others. For example, those comprising us-gov-east-1 and us-gov-west-1 or, god forbid, us-east-1. I don’t expect it is a difficult task to find them and other critical infrastructure for a state, but probably more involved than popping open google maps.
- jmalicki 6mo ago
  The US government's security priority should be moving critical us-east-1 services into Cheyenne Mountain.
  - throwup238 6mo ago
    Probably cheaper to just take over 33 Thomas Street [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/33_Thomas_Street https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/33_Thomas_Street
    - jmalicki 6mo ago
      That is not safe in the same way. That is way more of a worse target than the existing us-east-1.
- jdxcode 6mo ago
  I've always wondered what "us-east-1" is, presumably it's more than just 1 building
  - arjie 6mo ago
    That's a region. It's not only many buildings, it's many zones, each of which are many datacenters. A region is just a virtual partition for their services. A zone is a fault domain for their services, and a single zone is met by many datacenters, each of which can have many buildings. Or at the least, I know of at least one datacenter which has multiple buildings, that is within one zone that has multiple datacenters, that is within one region that has multiple zones.
  - wglass 6mo ago
    Loudoun county in Virginia, near Washington-Dulles airport. Taxes on data centers built by AWS and other firms provide almost 40% of the county budget.

throwaway894345 6mo ago

Some Paris data centers are disguised as apartment buildings with the classic Hausmannian facade, and then you open up Google maps and see a ton of AC units stacked on the roof. These aren’t likely major cloud data centers mind you, and the motivation for concealing them has more to do with the city’s aesthetic codes than military defense.

breppp 6mo ago
or less aesthetic versions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/33_Thomas_Street#/media/File:AT&T_Long_Lines_33_Thomas_Street.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/33_Thomas_Street#/media/File:A...
- jmalicki 6mo ago
  Even that isn't a serious data center (on the level of national security concerns). Wall St is run from Mahwah, NJ.

time0ut 6mo ago

Some data centers are more valuable as targets than others. For example, those comprising us-gov-east-1 and us-gov-west-1 or, god forbid, us-east-1. I don’t expect it is a difficult task to find them and other critical infrastructure for a state, but probably more involved than popping open google maps.

jmalicki 6mo ago
The US government's security priority should be moving critical us-east-1 services into Cheyenne Mountain.
- throwup238 6mo ago
  Probably cheaper to just take over 33 Thomas Street [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/33_Thomas_Street https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/33_Thomas_Street
  - jmalicki 6mo ago
    That is not safe in the same way. That is way more of a worse target than the existing us-east-1.
jdxcode 6mo ago
I've always wondered what "us-east-1" is, presumably it's more than just 1 building
- arjie 6mo ago
  That's a region. It's not only many buildings, it's many zones, each of which are many datacenters. A region is just a virtual partition for their services. A zone is a fault domain for their services, and a single zone is met by many datacenters, each of which can have many buildings. Or at the least, I know of at least one datacenter which has multiple buildings, that is within one zone that has multiple datacenters, that is within one region that has multiple zones.
- wglass 6mo ago
  Loudoun county in Virginia, near Washington-Dulles airport. Taxes on data centers built by AWS and other firms provide almost 40% of the county budget.