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Facebook is due to commence construction on its 12th data center in the United States with a new $800 million, 907,000-square-foot facility located in DeKalb, Illinois. The data center will be powered by 100% renewable energy and will use 80% less water than the average data center, the... View full entry
Microsoft has been experimenting with undersea data centers for years, and the current installation in the Orkney Islands will be deployed for around five years. There are 12 racks with 864 servers and 27.6 petabytes (27,600 terabytes) of storage [...] The data center is powered by a giant undersea cable that also connects it back to the internet, and the findings could mean the company will scale this project up to more powerful data centers in the future. — theverge.com
Microsoft has now installed a webcam by its undersea data center located off the shores of Scotland. The video stream is part of the company's efforts to observe environmental conditions of Project Natick, a research project aimed at determining the feasibility of subsea data centers powered by... View full entry
With the cloud being increasingly lifestyled and infrastructured into a range of everyday social and economic practices and processes, data centres continue to grow in size. Far from a massive database in the sky, it is the planet’s surface and our everyday lives that are gradually being colonised by the cloud. — Failed Architecture
This piece by Alexander Taylor, a social anthropologist at the University of Cambridge, looks back on the evolution of data center infrastructure, which continues to grow larger as our everyday lives become increasingly influenced by cloud computing. View full entry
![“Often people think of [data centers] as almost like cathedrals of servers. Very clean computer equipment, white walls and things—the reality is, these are factories,” states Tate Cantrell, CTO of the data-center company Verne Global, in this article by Ingrid Burrington. Credit: Wikipedia](https://archinect.gumlet.io/uploads/1d/1d54j3zthigxg3yq.jpeg?fit=crop&auto=compress%2Cformat&enlarge=true&w=514 "“Often people think of [data centers] as almost like cathedrals of servers. Very clean computer equipment, white walls and things—the reality is, these are factories,” states Tate Cantrell, CTO of the data-center company Verne Global, in this article by Ingrid Burrington. Credit: Wikipedia")
The impact of data centers—really, of computation in general—isn’t something that really galvanizes the public, partly because that impact typically happens at a remove from everyday life. The average amount of power to charge a phone or a laptop is negligible, but the amount of power required to stream a video or use an app on either device invokes services from data centers distributed across the globe, each of which uses energy to perform various processes [...] — the Atlantic
"Still, it seems weird that most people—most engineers building the platforms people use every day, even—lack the basic comprehension that different online activities have different energy impacts, or that an individual’s online activities have energy impact at all beyond a laptop’s... View full entry
Google's satellite imaging allows us to virtually tour remote or inaccessible locales the world over, and with recently improved resolutions and initiatives from the Google Cultural Institute, our gaze can go farther and more intimately into places we may never physically visit. Google's interest... View full entry
There’s no smooth sailing for at least one of Google’s mysterious barges.
Parts of the $4 million boat, located in Portland, Maine, are being sold for scrap, a Google spokesperson has confirmed to Fortune.
Google’s three barges sparked a media storm of inquiries when they first appeared in 2013, raising questions about their purpose. Were they floating data centers? A secret lab to design and launch Google’s next stunning project?
— fortune.com
Previously:Google's barge explanation: Bilge?San Francisco's bay barge mystery: Floating data center or Google Glass store? View full entry
The newly announced second building at Facebook’s data center in Luleå, Sweden, will be the first of the social network’s data centers to be built using its new rapid deployment data center concept, which leans on modular and lean construction principles, much like those demonstrated by Swedish furniture giant Ikea. — allfacebook.com
The mystery surrounding a large structure built on a barge docked in San Francisco bay is deepening. Is it a floating Google data center? A floating Google Glass store? Or something else altogether? — news.cnet.com
Meanwhile, (not-so-secret) construction boom at Google's fellow bay area competitors: Cupertino council clears huge Apple 'spaceship' campus for liftoff City Planners Approve Frank Gehry-Designed Facebook Campus in Menlo Park UPDATE: Google's barge explanation: Bilge? View full entry
Sears Holdings, the 120-year old retailer (which now includes Kmart), plans to start converting its struggling and defunct department stores into data centers, Data Center Knowledge reported today. A new unit of the company, Ubiquity Critical Environments, will lead the charge.
Thanks to Walmart, specialty shops, an economic downturn and—the sweet irony—online shopping, department stores are heading toward extinction, and Sears is feeling the pain particularly hard.
— motherboard.vice.com
Stoll’s images capture vast and mind-meltingly valuable landscapes that are hidden in plain sight, housed in unassuming warehouses and suburban data centers all over the world. — fastcodesign.com
Staffers at some London data centers won’t be burdened with long commutes when the 2012 Olympics roll into town this summer and jam up city streets. Instead, they’ll have futuristic sleeping pods to crash in so they can never leave work.
In the past month, a London company called PodTime has sold 19 pods at £1,375 ($2,190) a pop to three collocation facilities, including a data center operated by Interxion, says Jon Gray, the founder of the 1-year-old company.
— wired.com
