Facebook to build facility @ the Arctic Circle

I had been hearing rumors of this new server farm that Facebook plans on constructing. First off it will be huge. According to the Telegraph, Facebook plans to build three giant server halls covering an area the size of 11 football fields. As we know, these "farm" use copious amounts of power. The servers themselves do use quite a large fraction, but the most watts used for the least bang is the cost of cooling the equipment. That is why Facebook has selected a most unusual place for it's newest facility. Luleå, Sweden, which is located just 60 miles south of the arctic circle. There the mean temperature is 35 degrees Fahrenheit and rarely goes above 80. With such frigid temperatures, the farms will simply use outside air to cool the servers.

Even with this massive cost saving, and not discounting the impact it will have on the environment, the facility will still use 120MW of power, enough to supply 16,000 detached homes, and costing some £45m a year. However even this will be provided by a renewable resource, the nearby Luleå river, which by itself, produces twice as much electricity as the Hoover Dam so Luleå exports more than half the power generated.

Telegraph Article Here

Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine's server failed

SFScope reports that Editor Gordon Van Gelder of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction announces that they had server difficulty last week. Specifically, their secure serve failed, meaning that subscription orders, address changes, and "contact us" messages sent between 12N EDT on 9 October and 12N on 12 October have been lost. He asks that people who contacted them during that period who have not received a confirmation please contact them again.



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Google Wants Server Farms on the High Seas?!

From IO9: The New York Times' Ashlee Vance [reported] that Google has taken out a patent to create "water based datacenters," which are essentially barges that house cargo container-sized server farms.

I just started hearing about these container/server farms. Microsoft has a huge network of them. Each one is pack with rack after rack of servers already networked together. All you do when they arrive is hook up your network connection, power and air conditioning. You NEVER enter the container which is sealed by the manufacturer. When enough of the servers in the container fail the whole thing is swapped out. One of these things is whacked enough, but the picture from Redmond was ACRES of these things stacked several units high. I was impressed by IL&M's server group until I saw what a REAL farm was. And now Google wants to up that ante with offshore barges full of containers? WTFUWT? Some suggestions are that these barges could go where the data is needed, like if a city needed emergency computer power these barges could be moved in complete and ready to go. Other more suspicious persons view data as some view account information and the need for places like the Swiss to give them security. These barges would not be under the control of any one country so in theory, the information would be secure....Still, its a weird world

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graphic from io9 article