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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.
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
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.
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.
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.
I think I am going to live my life by that axiom.
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--hongpong.com
A New York Jew who gets Fed loans to complete his college education in computer science at NYIT is forced to work in Alaska...