7 Crazy Cool Data Centers
Some data centers are built in modern buildings, and some are in old paper mills or Cold War defense bunkers.
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What used to be the printing facility for the Sears catalog is now a 1.1 million-square-foot data center with space for 210,000 servers and 300,000 gallons of fuel for backup generators, according to CIO.com. Apparently data centers and printing presses have similar needs, and the building is already equipped with tall ceilings, reinforced floors, and high-capacity air ducts.
Tucked into the Swiss Alps is the former command and control center for the Swiss Air Force, which is now home to the Deltalis RadixCloud data center. Its mountain geography provides cold air and water to cool the facility at a low cost.
RadixCloud consists of many multi-story buildings carved directly into the rock of an Alps mountain, writes Green Data Center Conference. Its location, combined with its history as a military center, gives the center the security it needs to store sensitive and private information.
Google chose a former paper mill for its excessive floor space and proximity to the Gulf of Finland. The Gulf provides a constant supply of frigid water, which is pumped through a tunnel before it's turned into fresh water. The fresh water is sent to cool the servers before being remixed and cooled once more to go back into the bay. This way, Google minimizes the environmental impact of warm water and avoids the need for refrigerants for cooling, reports Network World.
Iron Mountain, a data management company, lives up to its name. Its primary data center is located 22 stories below ground in a 1,000-acre Pennsylvania limestone mine, also known as Room 48. The facility is an experiment in discovering the best means of leveraging geothermal conditions and engineering to create an ideal environment for electronic files.
At its underground facility, the company stores records for highly sensitive government agencies and corporations within tunnels of limestone rock made to withstand the servers' heat. Its rows of servers are stored in metal containers that trap electrical heat and force it up through perforated ceiling tiles, reports Computer World.
Located 100 feet below Stockholm, the Pionen White Mountains data center stores data within a Cold War-era defense bunker. The facility houses the headquarters for Bahnhof, a Swedish Internet Service Provider, reports Forbes. In order to fit all of its backup generators and server racks, Bahnhof had to blast out 141,000 extra cubic feet of space.
Bahnhof uses a variety of military technologies, including dual submarine engines, to power backup generators in case of power failure. This facility also has a massive saltwater fish tank, and greenhouses to help employees feel less like they're in a cave, writes CIO.com.
Citigroup's data center regulates temperature with fresh air and a green roof of living plants that helps cut back on runoff from the building while maintaining a cool environment. The facility also leverages osmosis to reduce sediment build-up in its cooling towers. The process saves 13 million gallons of water per year.
The social media giant relies on the cold Arctic Circle air to cool the servers in its Lulea, Sweden data center. The air is first treated with water vapor to ensure proper humidity before going to the servers. Afterwards, some of the air is used to heat Facebook's offices. The entire center runs on hydroelectric power.
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All data centers share a few commonalities: They generate massive amounts of heat while draining equally large amounts of energy. However, some businesses are getting creative with how and where they store data.
Data centers are more than just massive facilities packed with overheating servers and air conditioners. Most contain the best hardware and software available in modern technology, with the capacity to send and receive millions of pieces of data per second, which is especially important as cloud computing matures and more companies invest in moving apps and data to the cloud.
As more businesses begin to invest in cloud capabilities, the use of data centers becomes less of an option and more of a priority. Small and midsize businesses are especially exhibiting a strong growing interest in new forms of data storage.
"As SMBs take steps to enhance their IT infrastructure, the availability of advanced storage resources has been an important part of their thinking," said Ray Boggs, VP for IDC's small and medium business research, in a recent report. "Cloud storage in particular has been a growing part of portfolio of storage technology that SMBs have been using and plan to expand in the future."
[IT Stereotypes: Time to Change]
The major trends driving the design and development of data centers have been subject to change over time. Now, with skyrocketing energy costs and increased attention on sustainability, companies of all sizes have begun to revamp their strategies in order to cut back on how much energy their facilities consume.
Most modern data centers are designed for power efficiency, as increasingly larger facilities try to consume less, and more natural, forms of energy. Many of the world's largest data hosts are trying to maximize their use of air and water that's naturally cool enough to balance the heat generated by their many servers. This goal has motivated plenty of service providers to build their data centers in colder climates.
Some businesses have gotten more creative with their environmental strategies. At its data center in Frankfurt, Germany, Citigroup has a "green" roof made of living plants that help cool the building and reduce runoff. It also uses reverse osmosis as a means of decreasing sediment build-up in its cooling towers, which saves 13 million gallons of water per year, reports CIO.com.
In an interesting twist on sustainability, businesses large and small have begun to store their data in repurposed old buildings. Many structures, such as Google's Finland-based data center, located in an old paper mill, already have sufficient space to house thousands of machines.
In terms of design and location, there are a few data centers that stand out from the pack based on their geographic placement, architectural innovation, massive size, and environmentally friendly strategy. Let's take a look at some of the most intriguing facilities.
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