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North Slope Server Farm
A nameless cringer writes: "Netricity proposes an Internet data storage center on Alaska's North Slope to take advantage of the isolation (maybe a polar bear would break in), cold (easy to A/C; just open some vents to the outside), and abundant natural gas to run the generators. There's already a fat pipe running down the Alaska Pipeline to 'america.' Oil pipeline & data pipeline -- two good targets ... " And like anything else about the North Slope, raises hard-to-answer questions about the preservation of nature vs. human comfort.
That fat pipe runs to the "Southern" coast of Alaska... no further... either they are going to have to run fiber to the lower 48 (submarine cable or down ALCAN)... or have to do a satellite shot.. and satellite shots to Geosynchronous Satellites... from far North Lattitudes.... isn't the same cup of tea as from lower 48... if you don't understand the phenomena alluded to in this posting... then you don't know SHF RF in general or the dynamics of Satellite Links... from any perspective... Look it up... the Russians use Molnya (sp) orbits for Satellite comms... very different approach to business than GeoSync orbits..
Idiot.
As far as ambient cooling, it's easy to forget that it can get fairly warm up there for 2-3 months of the year. The record high in Barrow, at the extreme northern tip of Alaska on the coast, is 78F. Inland (except at high elevation) it's going to be somewhat higher, and the normal summer temperatures will be substantially higher (Barrow's normal diurnal temperature range in mid-July is 34-46F). So there will definitely need to be air conditioning -- very substantial air conditioning -- for the 1-5% of the year when the temperature exceeds 50F. The daily insolation up there is also very high, due to the continuous daylight in the summer, even if the sunlight's weaker than at lower latitudes.
To take this to extremes, the average annual temperature in Verhojansk, Russia is about 2F. Problem is that the record low is about -90, but the record high is 98F, which is probably a bit higher than the record high in Key West. Average case planning isn't enough; they've got to take into account worst cases, too. That means figuring out what to do up to temperatures of maybe 85F or higher.
Dumping excess heat in the permafrost isn't a very good solution, either. Ice isn't a terribly efficient conductor of heat (neither is stagnant water), so it will simply melt the permafrost. That's bad news, because suddenly you're sitting on top of a swamp and your foundation isn't much good. Not to mention that it's messy environmentally, too. I believe the pipeline and associated structures are well-insulated, as much to protect the permafrost as to keep the oil flowing.
It might actually make more sense to do this in Valdez, at the southern terminus -- it's a lot more accessible, it's still fairly cold most of the year, and the ocean is available as a heat sink all year round (the ocean up there is pretty cold at all times).
You're really not that far off -- the normal mean in Fairbanks in July is in fact 63, but again that's a) mean, and b) normal. It could be considerably higher during a warm summer, and even in a normal summer there could be days or weeks of very much warmer weather. The record high there is 99; the record high for Alaska is 100 at Ft. Yukon, which is above the arctic circle.
Like I said in another post, Valdez would make a better site, anyway, if someone wanted to do this. Even there (or anywhere), there's the whole issue of single point of failure, which is bad juju however you look at it.
You have to think about earthquakes and volcanos: Alaska is not very friendly about that. Winter storms aren't precisely friendly.
Whoever has this plan, also has a very romantic idea of Alaska.
I think there are better places in North Russia, Norway, or Canada.
Indeed Lord Ender, I've been running this same argument for years. As a philosophy major, I have honed my acceptable definition of the word 'nature' to the following:
Probable reasons for continued use of the poor colloquial definition: Locke's state of nature hypothesis. biblical notion of a pre-Fall more natural, i.e., better, state. the historical etymology from the Latin for born suggesting that what is there at the conception [of a thing, e.g., the earth] is what is natural, i.e., better, than what is unnatural [or artificial], i.e., worse.
Street Creds - Yeah yeah, this sure looks like a poststructuralist account. Sorry about that, but a deconstruction, a genealogy, is occasionally useful, especially when dealing with such an obvious case of origin (see Derrida). That said, I am all about the precise usage of this word and generally prefer a different warm and fuzzy term for our simpler terran coinhabitants and the sorts of environment and ecology they each require for survival.
-l
n.b.- I have intentionally avoided any argument for or against protection of environments relatively devoid of artificial structures.
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Things like thousands of miles of data cables. Never mind that you might want to hook up not just to North America, but also to Asia and Europe. Enviromental factors in terms of the cold effect on equipment. Effects from Solar Storms (northern lights, etc)
Eh...ditch the thousands of miles of data cables and use a sattelite uplink. Encrypted, of course. The auroras might give some problems with this though - I'm no expert in that field, but it would seem to me that they might have some effect. Perhaps a way to utilize the periodic auroras could be found (ok, now I'm just getting silly and speculating)
Now that I'm thinking about it, why not start junking the old obsolete sattelites up there and replacing 'em with sattelite-based data storage...oh...wait...NASA's too busy watching coffee grow...dang.
Hrmm..problem is the infrastructure is expensive and involves burying the cables, which is extremely poor for the environment, etc...etc...etc...
;P
Wireless seemed like a good idea, but if what you say is true, traditional sattelite methods wouldn't work too well.
Sounds like we need something new to be able to do this well. Grr... And Alaska seemed so perfect a location for this type of thing. Maybe a giant spike at the rotational North Pole...nah
The idea of orbital datahavens still sounds good to me though - too bad it'll never happen.
I think this plan is silly. Everyone knows there are no penguins in the northern hemisphere, no matter how cold it may be. Here's my proposed solution:
Buy hundreds of laptops and fit them with wireless LAN cards. Remove the standard casing and put the insides into a penguin-shaped case. Put wheels powered by an electric on the bottom of each penguin and let them loose at the South Pole. You now have highly redundant, mobile, distributed data storage. If you can't visualize what I mean, watch a few episodes of the Batman TV series, I'm sure at least one must feature motorized penguins running amok.
The only question is what OS to run on these servers.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Natural does not necessarily equal good, and while humans are natural, so is the black plague. For the most part, humans have played to their very lowest and most 'natural' instincts in short-sightedly laying waste to much of the earth.
Nature is always changing, animals are always evolving and becoming extinct.
That's a superficially sound observation, but it is also fundamentally utter bullshit. Humans operate in a timeframe far, far faster than natural selection, and no multicellular organism can evolve fast enough to survive the changes we are creating. Only organisms naturally well-adapted to humans -- things like rats, cockroaches, and various molds and mildews -- are benefiting from our presence. And only unicellular organisms are actually evolving fast enough to keep up with us, but these are mainly the drug-resistant pathogens that will probably wipe us out for our failure to regulate our own population.
Recognizing that man is part of nature is not the same as recognizing man's place in nature. But that requires appealing to faculties that operate in higher parts of the brain than the R-complex.
--
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
No need to go that far out of town.
Soil maintains a constant temperature. Several thousand feet of it give an enormous thermal mass.
Put server farms in played-out salt mines (they're already being used for document storage.) The holes, really BIG holes, are already there.
Its dry, secure as Hell (you'd literally have to tunnel through thousand foot thick firewalls,) and you can put a power generating station near the opening.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
The slope is already fully armed with sysadmin, tech support staff and everything else needed to survive for the oil company purposes. It wouldn't take much to lure more techies up there especially for a hosting company of some sort.
Most permanent employees on the slope (aka north slope) work on shifts. Commonly a shift such as two weeks on, two weeks off. The average workday is officially 12 hours for most people but depending on your job/company/etc. it can be anywhere from 12-16. And yes, no weekends while you are up, you work 7 days a week.
The advantages of this system? Unless you are a smoker you don't have to spend a single dime while you are up north (at oil fields alcohol is banned). At least working for the oil companies they supply everything from food/soda/snacks to living facilities and exercise areas. Then when you come home you are off... no office, no nothing. you can sleep all day and stay up all night and travel at any point as long as you are back at the airport to catch the plane to head back up for work (oh ya, the planes are normally company covered too). For someone who is a roamer or likes having large chunks of time off this is great. 6 months a year off of work and with many companies you continue to accrue normal vacation time too which is an extra bonus.
Many like the wages, depending on the company its just like any other job, good, bad or otherwise but the thing that really pumps people up is the overtime since its 4 hours a day guaranteed and you are working 7 days a week so there is even more in there.
Anyway, its not that bad. For me I like sleeping in my own bed but my experiences with the slope as a whole have been good. Lots of rules to follow (usually with good reason) but its a pretty nifty way to live for many people.
With what I just said - its not a problem to lure people to the slope. Pay them well, tell them they will get all the soda and snack food you can stuff in their faces and that they will have 6 months off a year and they will come. Oh yes, they will come.
-Alan
Having lived in Alaska for 3 years, I can tell you, it is going to cost big bucks. I have been waiting patiently for this to happen, though... the location is ideal.
On the upside, there was a wealth of good tech talent up there that can be had relatively cheaply. Hell, I would go back up there for a while to help with that. (Still have family up there anyway)... where can I send my resume? 8^)
Jethro
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
So what are they going to do if there is a major pipeline break that puts the pipeline out of service for an extended period?
Presently, there are negotiations underway to run a full blown LNG pipeline down either the Alaska Highway or through the Mackenzie Valley in Canada's Northwest Territories from the North Slope to the lower 48. Like any project of this scale, there are many legal and environmental issues that have to be resolved before this happens.
Incidentally, a data center of this size would require more bandwidth than the entire state of Alaska has running into it.
I guess the current job, er, climate makes this the best time in the last decade to float such a scheme though.
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Poliglut
The one thing Bush got right was that the problem right now is that there is more demand than supply. He says that means we must explore more and relax environmental standards so we can build up our production capabilities. You say conservation is the way to go.
I say, you're both wrong.
We need to do both of what you guys say, but neither will solve the problem.
The problem was demand exceeding supply. That situation did not come about because we didn't have enought conservation, nor becuase of environmental concerns. The problem came about because energy was so cheap in the early 90's that there was no money in building power plants. There are many now under way (see this story on Poliglut for a graph of the last twenty years), but the reason demand exceeded supply was because there was no money in building new plants for a while and that even now that there is, it takes a while to build them.
P.S. None of this should be taken as an argument against conservation, just that it's a fools paradise to believe it would have helped CA this time.
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Poliglut
Huh? Anchorage (one of the warmer parts of Alaska), for example, only averages above 65 for nine days in the heat of July, after that it's all downhill.
On the North Slope things are much colder. That same July peak only has them at 46.
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Poliglut
a. Don't build them in hot climates.
This is the only legit part of the post. Of course, if the cost of energy is less than the cost of labor (remember that a lot of the labor is in hot climates!) then hot climates still make a lost of sense. Labor is your largest cost after all.
b. If you do build them in hot climates you should have to build a large solar panel array on the top of the facility.
That's great as a throw away comment. That solar array isn't going to give you nearly the power you need, nor produce it efficiently. Remember, it's the cost per megawatt that counts and solar isn't cost competative yet even if you could run a data center on only solar.
c. When it's cold outside, open the windows. Nothing is dumber than having the air conditioning on in the winter! If dust bothers you, suck in outside air and filter it.
Think climate control, not air conditioning. The moisture is important too. Opening windows (except in a desert and you already said we can't build there) will corrode all your systems. In the colder days you talk about the air conditioners are very efficient in terms of heat transfer and act mostly as humidity control.
d. In hot climates build them underground. Once you get a few feet down the earth's crust is actually pretty cool. Extend large heat sinks into the surrounding terrain to use the earth's natural cooling.
Once again you have a decent idea for homes, but it doesn't scale to the energy requirements of a data center.
e. the source of the problem is the heat generated by equipment, why not design coller equipment instead? This is possible, there just is a lack of motivation to do it
They have. One P4 throwing off 50 watts, but running 200 web servers is a lot more efficient thatn 200 486's.
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Poliglut
Get over it. Alaska is not your personal nature preserve. Too many tree huggers in the lower 48, make that the urban areas of the lower 48, think that every piece of federal land should be turned into a national park. Screw the people who actually live there. They should be content with being allowed to contemplate the natural splendor of the wilderness. So what if they don't have self determination, jobs or a functioning local economy. All miners and lumberjacks are environmental rapists.
An orgy room? Oh yeah, that's exactly what *I* want to see in such a facility.
"Oh My God! Who shaved the fucking walruses?"
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
Sure it is well-cooled and isolated. But who exactly is going to sys admin a site on the North Slope? How much will you have to pay to have a nerd give up his life to administer that site? Think about it: no women, no electronics superstore, no Borders, no cops, no boss on site, unfettered access to pr0n, nobody watching,... wait a minute, maybe it won't be that hard to find someone after all...
j
Opinions change daily as new information arrives. Stay tuned.
I wonder what the ping times to alaska would be?
Yes, there is some impact, thats why i said, no real impact rather then no impact at all. Truth is, the north slope is not what most ppl think. Durring the winter months it's basicly a wasteland. While there are a few heards of several thousand moose/caribou and arctic fox in the area, over the years they have learned to stear clear of the buildings and traffic really isn't a problem.
The handful of roads and trucks that do exist there are built for the pipeline security and maintainace folks, this has been in place for years and no offence, but it's damn hard to miss a 7 foot moose with a 6 foot acrossed rack in a giant field of white. For the 14 years my relative worked up there, there was only 1 moose fatiality due to a truck and thats cause the moose rammed it while it was parked.
This new facility in the short term will have some effect yes, due to noise of construction ect. Once the facility is built things will return to normal (if it can be called that). As for high voltage systems, guess they will have to use those fences or do what most of the buildings there do, keep them on the inside and underground. Same for the cooling systems.
Most people don't know that almost everything ever done on the north slope had to go through tremendous amounts regulations as to have as little of an effect on the wild life as possible. So there was much moved into areas that just can't be accessed by animals. It's not perfect, but it's one of the best jobs that humans could do aside from not building anything there at all.
Trying to be different, just like everyone else.
There really wont be any impact on the animal life in the area if this site goes up. I have a relative that worked on the North Slope for many years in the employ of the oil corp. While he was there he filmed the wild life and the effect that the oil facilitied had on them as well as human presence.
Many were shocked to find that after the construction was finished the wildlife moved right back in and hardly payed the large pipes any attention. While they will keep their distance from humans they seem to care less about all the steel and concreat.
As for who would stay up there and for how long, my relatives shift was 3 weeks up at the slope and 2 weeks at home and the company flew him there and back. He always seemed to like the schedule as he felt like he was always getting a 2 week vacation.
The only real problems I can see with something liek this is hardware breakage and replacement. If something goes down and there isn't a replacement on site, it could take a few days pending on a few factors.
1. Availability of a replacement
2. Shipping time to a staging point (Usualy Ancorage)
3. Flight time (weather is a massive factor here as the cross to the slope is well into the arctice circle and the plane must cross the Brooks Range)
Other then those areas, the only other thing I could suggest is that there be 3-4 ppl on site all the time since human interaction is a must even for the most anti-social person in a place like that where going outside could mean facing -70+ temps and everyting is all white for most of the year.
Trying to be different, just like everyone else.
Just throw engine-block heaters on the suckers, for starting up only.
--
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Wouldn't this be more of a target out in the wild? Think about it, if your a company who's going to (fall for this `plan') wouldn't you think someone would have an easier time breaking into some place where they probably have about > 25 law enforcement agents, most of whom are likely not trained properly (not to troll, but think about some high tech espionage case) what are they gonna do call for Gentle Ben or something?
Might sound like a cool idea but I think it has issues. Sweden, Norway, and parts of Finland (their nothern parts) have equally cool places full of the resources too, maybe the EU should jump at the idea. Maybe not, when the crap hits the fan who are you going to turn to an Eskimo who only knows fishing and shit?
They should set up a colo space in meat market like environments filled with freon cooled rack spaces powered by potatoes is what I think somewhere in Idaho
Want Root?
Alaskan summers are nice and warm with mean temp of 75 degrees. And of course 24 hours of daylight. So this facillity will have to have air as well as heat. Plus, if something goes wrong during a storm, the admin had better live in the building.
Someone you trust is one of us.
Hey look, as long as you have a permit, hunt to your hearts content. Even trophy hunting has its place, though I think it is some what of a waste. Population control, especially in Alaska, is important to the ecosystem. Otherwise the animals overpopulate, kill the ground, then half of them starve to death and the cycle has to repeat itself at a loss. Usually there is some disease in there as well...
Its probably good you can't finish the caribou in one sitting, otherwise you'd never get to experience caribou jerky, or freeze it, thaw it and grind it into caribou chili (not as good as moose chili though).
As I said, I'm environmentally concious. I did not say I'm a (...ponder what I used to taunt my ex as...) a tree-hugging, whale-kissing earth-muffin with a big bowl of granola on the side.
You say you want a revolution?
Is this really a media hack to tweak people about the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Buch League's plans to drill it for oil and cut down all the trees to make government paperwork?
You'd have much better luck putting a hosting center on one of the First Nations reservations outside of Victoria BC. Some of them don't have treaties with the Canadian government, so there're interesting possibilities for using their sovereignty rights and tax status, and they're English-speaking and near the networks.
For that matter, you'd have much better luck putting a hosting center on some or a slightly-used nuclear missile bunker in the UK.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Live near the facility?
Live in the facility. Seems logical.
It isn't a lack of technology but a lack of regulation that's the problem. Nobody wants to make more efficient equipment of facilities because it's going to hit them in the pocketbook. So why not be smarter about it?
Instead of building a co-lo facility where you couldn't find any skilled labor to run it, why not build one near a source of cool water instead. Then you could exchange the heat into a moving current of a large body of water. The heat you add would be negligible to the environment, and you'd save money. It could also be built near a source of skilled labor. Nuclear power plants already do this.
Some more ideas on better co-lo facilities:
a. Don't build them in hot climates.
b. If you do build them in hot climates you should have to build a large solar panel array on the top of the facility.
c. When it's cold outside, open the windows. Nothing is dumber than having the air conditioning on in the winter! If dust bothers you, suck in outside air and filter it.
d. In hot climates build them underground. Once you get a few feet down the earth's crust is actually pretty cool. Extend large heat sinks into the surrounding terrain to use the earth's natural cooling.
e. the source of the problem is the heat generated by equipment, why not design coller equipment instead? This is possible, there just is a lack of motivation to do it
This is idiotic. The article states that there will be at least 1/2 million servers in the data center. Even if they had a farm of OS/390 machines, they would still need a large quantity of SysAdmins... Any benefit gained by this location (availability of natural gas, cold) would be immediately lost in paying experienced sysadmins hugh amounts to live near the facility.
If they need lots of gas, why not locate near a gas pipeline, and for cooling, near a river or other large body of water? Nuclear power plants use rivers/lakes/ocean for cooling, why not data centers?
Never mind the fact that there seems to be only one (!!) fiber optic cable connecting them to the internet.... Let's talk about the cost of laying another cable going through another location.
Sounds like a stupid idea thought up by some marketing idiots.
-- CKM
internet systems architect - scalability - commerce
-- I don't have a cool sig.
I thought the days of insane dot-com concepts were over.
Silly me.
Buildings that have to be on the ground, eg. Airplane Hangars, Firestations, have thermal siphons that are like radiators for the ground.
They keep the ground frozen with metal fins and ammonia.
I have a fan running in my room and office because it's *over* insulated.
Email me if you want a picture, i'll send you JPG.
Solid-state components prob'ly don't mind subzero temps, but the drives sure will. To pick one example, this Maxtor SCSI drive is only rated to run above 5C. Heck, NON-operating temperature is only -40C.
--
As long as you stay happily with your computer, you're warm and safe. This should be a natural geek advantage where real estate is concerned: who needs to pay a premium for views or climate?
InstaPundit! Ahead of the Curve Since 30 Minutes Ago
I am skeptical about the purpose of doing this. Granted it is isolated, but if you can get people and equipment there, it is not isolated enough to discourage anyone who really wanted to get there. Isolation has its disadvantages as well, the police/fire/rescue people would have as much difficulty getting there as anyone and not to mention replacement parts. Since there is only one pipeline, it is easy to cut. Alaska is still inside the United States and is therefore still subject to U.S. law and Alaska State law. I really see no advantage to building there as opposed to some other less isolated area such as Montana where there might be a road and a small town nearby. Heck I hear Area 51 is vacant now.
Jesus died for sombodies sins, but not mine.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
Humans are natural. Just because we make more noticeable changes to our environment than other animals doesn't mean we aren't nature. If a beaver dams a river it is nature, but if people do it, it is polution? There is no one perfect state nature can be in. We are not ruing a 'balance'. Nature is always changing, animals are always evolving and becoming extinct. There is no 'nature' to 'preserve' and we humans are natural, too.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
I would consider working for the company if I could be assured that I would get the standard 2 week on/2 week off slope schedule. The commute is a pain, though.
#use Standard::Disclaimer;
This all just seems like a gimmick to me. I don't think this place really has that much advantage over a data center in a suburban industrial area. There's data and power there too. However, personnel costs are going to be much higher up there. Remote administration can help, but it can't setup new servers, or run cable. How many experienced administrators want to live up there in the freezing cold/middle of nowhere. Also, construction costs would be increased too! Plus, getting computers shipped there will be more expensive.
It just doesn't add up to me.. I mean lately we've seen "lets build a data center on an island", and now "lets build a data center up in glacial cold of Alaska", what's next; "let's build a data center in the middle of the jungle (anyone who can get through all the vines would be good at cabling), or maybe "let's build a data center at the bottom of the ocean (everthing water cooled!, plus there's fat data lines, and power running down there too!"
Things like thousands of miles of data cables. Never mind that you might want to hook up not just to North America, but also to Asia and Europe. Enviromental factors in terms of the cold effect on equipment. Effects from Solar Storms (northern lights, etc)
I am not completely sold on this. Maybe something closer to the Bering Straights.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Having lived up here in Alaska since '96, *and* having worked for one of the major telecoms up here that own some of the fiber going down to the lower 48, all I can say is WTF? This is the most near-sighted view of the project to date. These nitwits are focusing on temperature, power, and security, forgetting that all the while that if people can't get to your service, they're not going to use it. No, I'm not talking about physically, but do any of you people realise what Alaska's bandwidth situation is? Right now, we have three companies that own fiber that will sell you bandwidth (one, Alaska Fiber Star, can't seem to give you a quote on provisioning to save their life, though--*&)(&*^(*&% sales people!). The remaining companies, ACS & GCI both have sold a good chunk of what they have, but neither of them are sitting on so much bandwidth that they can afford to provide the needs of a datacenter on that scale with any kind of real redundancy. In short, I think this is ill-concieved, and not very well thought out. People will very likely want to move a tremendous amount of data in an out of this facility on a regular basis, and I haven't heard anyone involved in this project consider this critical access issue.
Hogwash. The reality is that even with technologies like DWDM, you still have to have fiber that has sufficient reflective qualities along the walls of the fiber across a broader range of frequency. Yes, most fiber these days are adequate to one extent or another for DWDM, but you can't safely make that assumption when you're budgeting a project of this scale, can you? I thought not.
Futhermore, a cable like GCI's, which lays in the ocean, requires repeaters at given intervals. Each repeater is designed to operate over a specific range of frequencies, so one again, you have no guarantees that they're already prepared to do heavy DWDM. As I recall, when they laid their cable, DWDM was still in the early stages in the industry, and didn't have the acceptance levels they do today.
In short, don't think you can solve all of your problems by whipping some magic fiber-fairy out of your ass. Alaska is *not* the most well connected state on the Internet, and that *has* to be a consideration for any Alaskan-based data center.
As an additional side note, did you know that Alaska wastes an incredible amount of bandwidth to the lower 48 just to view Alaskan web sites? The lack of a peering agreement between the two biggest players, ACS & GCI, forces any subscriber on one to send all of their traffic through Seattle, WA, just to visit a site on the other. It's things like that which should illuminate the somewhat ludicrous bandwidth predicaments we find ourselves in up here.
Good sysadmin = paranoid
No relation to Happy Monkey
You have to stay in this underground bunker, stuffed full of servers and UPS, and you have to live on hot pockets and instant coffee. You can't go outside, since there's only frozen tundra there.
But, you get full internet connectivity, and you can be put on the waiting list for a trip to Mars.
I love caribou, but I've never been able to finish a whole one at one sitting.
Believe me, there is plenty of already less-than-pristine area to but a data center and its attendant folks on, even up on the slope. Too bad the oil company tore down the annex, would have made a good place for the workers building this thing, and the food was better than the BOC.
*whup* "Get along, little electrons. Heeyah!"
I would like to suggest to build a pair of data centers : on in north poal and the other in south. The issue is to utilize the solar power that you can switch from one to the other without providing extra energy. thank god. It is heavenly running, God bless them.
I think I am going to live my life by that axiom.
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--hongpong.com
The numerous disadvantages seem to greatly outweigh the few advantages. It's isolated? So what? How big of a problem are break-in's at the high security server farms in southern california? If its that big of a deal, isolation seems like it would only complicate matters! (serious raid, security people outnumbered, call for backup? riight!) And if their sole internet connection goes down, do they fall back to a satelite or something? It just doesn't seem practical. Is this serious?
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The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason. --Ben Franklin
The technology exists to put all the world's traffic through a single fiber -- so wherever fiber exists, more bandwidht is just a matter of upgradeing the electronics at the ends, and that can be done just as soon as someone is wiling to pay for it.
However, I've never seen any large server project so exposed to a single point of failure -- when frost heaves or sabotage break that fiber, it might take a week to get it back online.
I'd worry about the whole million-square foot building sinking in the permafrost... I suppose there must be construction techniques that overcome this, but they are expensive.
That would take _lots_ of stilts. Also lots of insulation under the floor; wind underneath a building will sure run up the heating bills, not to mention that it's going to be hard keeping techs if their feet get frostbit _indoors_. Pretty expensive. For something this big, I wonder if it might be better to just design it to float in melted permafrost.
This is vapor if I've ever heard it. I don't know where these guys are going to come up with all this "existing bandwidth" that they intend to utilize. I live in AK, and there is not nearly the connectivity to support a project like this. Even assuming that the bandwidth issue is magically taken care of, there are the logistic nightmares involved in building any kind of structure on permafrost, supplying and manning said facility, impact to local communities, impact to wildlife, etc. The list continues... No way is this happening. But for the record (and for all you lower 48'ers reading this), there ARE qualified SysAdmins already living up here, and you'd probably have to pay most of us a helluva lot more to move Outside than to take a 2 on/2 off job on the Slope! (Especially if we could get our hands on all that bandwidth...)
If you insulate it properly you could probably just use the heat from the servers and powerplant to warm it to room temperature. Of course you'll need a backup heater in case everything gets shut down, who knows how being way below freezing would affect things.
Alternatively, you could set the place up to cool the solid state components separately from the drives.
cryptochrome
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
everyone knows you don't get penguins near the north pole.
Cooling is going to be the problem, even on the North Slope. It would be smart to run a pipe out into the Arctic ocean and bring in cold seawater for cooling purposes; a secondary glycol loop running to chiller plates in the servers would make for a relatively cheap and reliable cooling system for the summers. For winter, just circulate the glycol through pipes on the roof or dry cooling towers.
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Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
It may be that this is already quite widespread, but that's not the case from my experience in the field (== substantial). Let's stop to think about this for a second.
"Going down, instead of out" preserves land space and offers several additional benefits:
Of course, this doesn't help the environment out much on the pollution scene, unless of course you happen to utilize local geothermal energy. This frequently has the side effect of putting you at high risk for tremors, however...
Any thoughts?
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Does the spec for IPv6 include a few bits for an "eh?" after every few packets?
A New York Jew who gets Fed loans to complete his college education in computer science at NYIT is forced to work in Alaska...