Microsoft Plans Data Center in Siberia

miller60 writes "Microsoft has announced plans to build a data center in Siberia. The facility near the city of Irkutsk will be able to hold 10,000 servers. Officials in Microsoft's Russian business unit said the region had a stable power supply, and will be able to support a 50 megawatt utility feed. The average winter temperature is below zero in Irkutsk (which is perhaps best known to gamers as a territory in Risk). Microsoft recently announced huge data center projects in Chicago and Dublin, Ireland, and is clearly ramping up its worldwide infrastructure platform as it competes with Google." No doubt this will save a fortune on cooling costs- they can just crack a window.

Comments

Interesting

[Panaqqa]

I guess Ballmer's not satisfied anymore with throwing chairs at people. He's decided to add Siberian exile to the mix.

Re:Interesting

[Hoi Polloi]

Finally, a gulgag for "undesireable" Microsoft employees.

"Reduce your bug count or we're shipping you off to Siberia."

Re:Interesting

[Hoi Polloi]

c/gulgag/gulag

Re:Interesting

[PopeRatzo]

No, it's just because property values aren't quite as prohibitive as Redmond. I understand you can get a nice starter home in Siberia for less than $950k.

Plus there's less chance of their employees driving down to Cupertino to take a better job.

Re:Interesting

[Hognoxious]

Are they going to call it the gulagplex?

Re:Interesting

[rice_burners_suck]

Google is a MUCH BETTER company than Microsoft.

Microsoft is inferior to Google.

Google is superior to Microsoft.

Microsoft is not as good as Google.

Whoosh! Whoosh! Bam! Crash!
/me ducks to avoid flying chairs.

In Soviet Russia...

[OhHellWithIt]

... data center cools you.

Re:In Soviet Russia...

[Atlantic Wall]

Damn you! You guys are too fast.

Re:In Soviet Russia...

[rvw]

... data center cools you. No no, they are about to introduce the new service "CoolMail"!

Save money

[eightball01]

They won't even need air conditioning. Just leave a door open.

Re:Save money

[arivanov]

When people think of Siberia, they think only of the winter. Well, it actually has a summer as well with up to +30C. It is the so called extreme continental climate which only Russia has - down to -40C winter, +36 in the middle of summer.

I would not want to design the cooling/heating system for a datacenter to cope with that.

Also, where are they going to get the fiber to hook the thing up? It is not like there is plenty of abundant network infrastructure there.

Re:Save money

[Nos.]

The Canadian prairies can hit those extremes as well. We have lots of server rooms in this area of the world. Considering we've been dealing with these temperature fluxuations for a long time, we've learned how to deal with them. We're warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Its not really that tough. Insulation works both ways.

Re:Save money

[Entropius]

You, however, are Canadians, and fairly smart.

It's only a short step from Vancouver to Washington, but -- trust me -- the monkeys in Redmond aren't as bright.

Re:Save money

[LWATCDR]

My guess is that they will look for a site near a river. The water in the river well tend to always be on the cold side. The key is that there is probably a lot of cheap power from "stranded" natural gas near the site and the land is really cheap.
I have heard that Siberia has a lot of tech. My guess is that Siberia was the USSRs New Mexico. A remote place full of high tech.

Re:Save money

[Anonymous Coward]

The coldest parts of Sibera can go down to the -70*C, and in some areas there can be a temperature range over 100*C between winter and summer. This is why Russian cars have the best air conditioning - it's a matter of life and death. Below 50*C can be very, very scary to be in. The warmer parts of Antarctica have a very tame climate in comparison.

Re:Save money

[CastrTroy]

Seems to me that operating in those conditions would be better than operating in California. Where it's 30 degrees in the summer, and 15 degrees in the winter. They would need cooling pretty much year round. Whereas in Edmonton or Siberia, they would only need cooling for half of the year.

Re:Save money

[thegnu]

We're warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Its not really that tough. Insulation works both ways.

Yeah, but I think the stuff's way too creepy to use. For example, how it know what to keep out? How? Tell me.
O KTHXB YE TEHNGU

Re:Save money

[Calinous]

Plenty of places have that extreme continental climate - just that the winters are not so cold (the summers can be hotter than that).
      Designing cooling/heating systems for Syberia are not so different than for other places - especially when the temperature change is slow (seasonal)

Re:Save money

[Calinous]

Yes, just that there is less technology overall, and much much more space.
      Nobody went to Syberia by his/her own accord/desire. That place was far away (until Aeroflot introduced flights to those places), and winter is freezing

Re:Save money

[rolfc]

Yes, when it is below 50*C, you can't even keep the tent warm, to get a good nights sleep. You have to go out and chop firewood to keep the warmth. That is my experince from the once Swedish Army.

Re:Save money

[Anonymous Coward]

Heating/Cooling costs of the living facilities for the engineers will not be cheap in the extreme temps of that area

Re:Save money

[LWATCDR]

I would say that under estimating Russian tech is really a big mistake.
They have had free access to Western sources now for many years. They spent decades doing more with less and now have access to a lot of US high tech.

Re:Save money

[Creepy]

Incidentally, I was going to point out that Siberia has the highest temperature variance in the world, but you did first. Russia is not alone in extreme continental cooling/heating, however, as many regions that border the tropical and arctic border also have high variance. In fact, Minnesota in midwestern North America has an average temperature variance only .6C less than Siberia, as I recall (ranking #2).

As far as extreme cold goes, Siberia easily beats any non-arctic competitors, with one city recording a record low of -71C. I don't believe it ever gets close to 36C in that town, however, probably much closer to the near arctic Canadian mining town I stayed in for a summer as a kid (my mom's best friend taught elementary school there) - highs were lucky to break into double digits in July and the record high was, I believe, 17C.

Re:Save money

[ajs318]

If it's a Microsoft data centre, it'll most probably be running Windows -- in which case, the only "engineering" work to be done will be occasionally to power-cycle one of the machines when it misbehaves. There are businesses in the Third World where they have trained monkeys to do that, but I'm sure Microsoft will be able to afford a shiny GUI-based "virtual fusebox" application, allowing the power to any socket to be cut and restored from anywhere in the world.

Alternatively, if they're machines Microsoft wants to use for anything far too important to trust to Windows, they'll be running FreeBSD -- in which case, the only "engineering" work to be done will be occasionally replacing truly-dead machines with new ones.

Re:Save money

[Scrameustache]

the so called extreme continental climate which only Russia has Sure, Chekov, sure.

Re:Save money

[Baddas]

It's somewhat offset by the fact that Vancouver has better weed.

Re:Save money

[Anonymous Coward]

OK.... so I can stop heating my house in Edmonton right now? I somehow doubt a pile of servers will keep me warm.

Re:Save money

[Anonymous Coward]

This has to be the single most ignorant post I have ever read on Slashdot.

This is where Google defectors will go...

[Anonymous Coward]

"So Bob, we hear you're thinking about taking a job with Google. That's great. But, we'd like to make you an offer to stay. Just put this blindfold on, and we'll take you on a short plane ride to your new office. We believe you'll end up staying the rest of your life."

Crack a window?

[pegr]

I thought Windows was already cracked.... /oblig. Sorry, somebody had to say it...

too cold

[javilon]

I am not sure computers work well below -10 degrees celsius :-)

Re:too cold

[moosesocks]

1) Siberia gets a lot colder than -10C. -10C is 14F. That's not cold at all -- a -10C winter day in Virginia wouldn't be considered all that odd.

2) As long as you don't get a frost buildup, solid-state electronics will generally work just fine in cold environments. Hard drives *might* have some mechanical difficulties if you take them really far below zero, and laptop batteries tend to have a tough time maintaining a charge in the cold. Apart from that, though, you could probably let it get that cold without worrying about the servers themselves. However, the admins running the servers might mutiny if you subject them those sorts of conditions ;-)

3) The servers aren't going to be outdoors. Duh.

Re:too cold

[CastrTroy]

The biggest problem at that temperature wouldn't be the cold, but condensation. If you have any techs in the room, just breathing is going to make the air quite moist.

Re:too cold

[morgan_greywolf]

I am not sure computers work well below -10 degrees celsius :-) Microsoft should build a datacenter around here. Where I'm at it's currently 75 degrees F and sunny. We're looking at a high of 80, very slight chance of rain. Of course, I live near Tampa, FL. :D

Re:too cold

[Calinous]

Yes, that's why overclocking works best with externally heated processors.

      There are plenty of problems in sub-zero temperatures - but electronics love it. The fastest processors run cooled with liquid nitrogen. I don't think Siberia is so cold that the nitrogen in air liquefies

Re:too cold

[SharpFang]

Hard drives hate sub-zero temperatures. LCDs will work like a snail below some 4C, and may break permanently at minus several. Coolers wear off faster (though that's not a big problem). Anything non-solid-state parts is at risk - grease and axle oil solidifies, plastic bearings become brittle, thermal distortion locks axles in metal bearings and displaces micrometer-aligned mechanisms. Also, in serious frost, capacitors freeze. But I think you need more than Siberia for that.

A system that was kept in sub-zero temperature while switched off, should be left for some time in a plus temperature to 'thaw' before you switch it on, because of moisture condensing on the cool parts.

OTOH, as long as the systems keep running, they will keep themselves at a positive temperature. The CPUs are good heaters.

Re:too cold

[moosesocks]

This is true, and just underscores the silliness of the whole discussion.

The datacenter will be kept at a reasonably comfortable temperature. Some sort of heat exchanger will probably still be necessary to keep things consistent, although traditional air-conditioning shouldn't be necessary in the wintertime. (Mean outdoor temperature in February is -20C, -2.2F)

The difficult thing for subarctic climates, however, is the fact that (contrary to popular belief) the summers are actually quite pleasant. Irkutsk's mean temperature in July is a balmy 64F, 18C. To keep a large data center going at that high of an ambient temperature will require at least a modest amount of air-conditioning (or a whole lot of ventilation).

Although their cooling requirements are probably a bit less than a typical datacenter down south, ARSC in Fairbanks, Alaska does indeed maintain a large bank of air-conditioning equipment to cool its server room. (Fairbanks is colder in the winter, and warmer than the summer than Irkutsk, and claims the largest temperature "gap" on the planet).

Re:too cold

[hughk]

There have been temperatures in Sib towns down to about -57C. This makes Minnesota winters look quite balmy by comparison. The big problem tends to be the dry air, all humidity has been frozen out so if you heat without humidifying, it is hell for electronics because of the static build-up.

Re:too cold

[afidel]

Tower Minnesota got down to -60F which is ~-51C, Prospect Creek Alaska got down to -80 which is ~-62C. Those temps are fairly recent too, 1996 and 1971, link.

Re:too cold

[Anonymous Coward]

Not too cold, a data center without cooling can get real hot real fast.
With 10,000 servers this will enable the environmental controls to regulate
a decent temperature in the data center.

My server room when the A/C fails can get to 120 in an hour in the summertime
2.5 hours in the winter, and that is only about ~100 servers and ~30 network
devices.

Because I don't have control of the building I had to implement Openmanage on the
Windows boxes and a i2C script on the linux machines to perform thermal shutdowns
when the A/C fails (usually after a power outage).

Re:too cold

[jeorgen]

and laptop batteries tend to have a tough time maintaining a charge in the cold.

They maintain charge very well in cold, but the chemical activity is very low due to the low temperature.

Re:too cold

[hughk]

The -57 was from a couple of years back in Pyatigorsk. Apparently they recently had it in Irkutsk as well but I don't know when.

Meh

[JoeCommodore]

Anyone who knows would start building up their data centers in Australia as you can get the whole area and it's an easily defensible region which will increase your build stats. Then wait till after the other data centers fight it out in Asia and Europe you move in and take over.

Re:Meh

[g4b]

Maybe microsoft gets two customers extra when they reveal their new triple-bound-office-product in the next round, you'll never know!

However, I would have built it in Kamchatka, and named the next Windows Version after it.

Unfortunately we are still at Windows "V" after "X", and since everything goes backwards for "backwards compatibility", the letter "K" for a windows version is still far away... so it will be "Windows Uran", which, closing the circle, happens to be found in Siberia!

Now try to beat this tactics!

Re:Meh

[Elemenope]

You joke, but it kind of creeps me out just how "world domination'-y this Google/Microsoft data center rush is. I mean, people around here bitch about barriers to market entry in things like phone or ISP service; the information-collator business will make competition costs in those businesses look like setting up competing lemonade stands by comparison.

These guys are playing Risk for ten, perhaps twenty years from now (banking of course on the world not ending in fire by 2020; then again, what do you have to lose if you're wrong?) and nobody else is even on the field. Is there even anybody who is the Risk version of Australia here who is quietly building data centers that nobody's paying attention to, waiting for the giants to beat each other to death?

Re:Meh

[Znork]

"These guys are playing Risk for ten, perhaps twenty years from now"

Mmm. I wouldn't worry that much. You know, someone who's actually been in the IT industry for ten, twenty years knows that in ten, twenty years you can buy the capacity in their datacenter for $100 and keep it in your pocket.

Well, maybe not that bad, but you get the drift. Computers are the absolutely worst thing to ever sink money into. You buy the capacity you need today at todays prices, you dont build a huge farm of junk that will be obsolete before you finish plugging in cables.

I find the whole thing rather amusing. It's like the 80's all over again, I just expect Ballmer to come out with 'five datacenters will be enough for the whole world' any day now.

What I cant quite figure out is if google is just playing with MS and half their datacenters are in cardboard and just intended to trick MS into wasting money, or if google actually has use for the amount of power they seem to be using.

What I can say is this; simply having the biggest datacenter has never been particularly profitable for anyone, and I dont expect that to change soon.

Re:Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

That only works well if the other data centers fight. If they agree to spheres of influence in say, North America, Europe and Africa and South America and then compete only in Asia (especially the middle east), then the advantages of Australia aren't that great.

Re:Meh

[Elemenope]

Perhaps. I agree that it seems, re: Moore's Law et al., that a huge infrastructure investment in *boxes and racks* is foolhardy. However, what if the investment is just a placeholder for more valuable enduring capital? If, ten years from now, the limiter is not bandwidth but power consumption (energy crisis?), would it not be a huge advantage to have installations already well-established, and worry about what goes in them as computers become ever more powerful? The jokes about "how about a beowulf cluster of those!" won't be so funny when a company can roll out a massively parallel installation at the drop of the proverbial hat because they already have the power, facility, and distribution infrastructure in place to welcome the next big GHz bump or new computing paradigm.

Also, I imagine that the market in data analysis and search is only just beginning. How much computing power would you need to, say, search all recorded video on the net using a single frame from the video? Could be possible, but man would that be a bitch on processing, back-end. Similar to searching for an image from a fragment of an image. These are the services I expect to see just following along from the paradigm of finding texts from a fragment of text, extrapolated to our other media paradigms.

Think bigger. Imagine a context algorithm that recognizes two-dimensional images as three-dimensional objects, and apply it to an engine that takes a photo of a location and identifies it with that location, based on the items (e.g. landmarks) in that photo. Or a searchable human gene database; (well shit, I didn't know I was Obama's 8th cousin. Does that make Cheney my 14th cousin? I wonder if I have the Republican gene...). Those will be a bitch to back end.

Point being, costs of computing diminish at an accelerated rate, but costs of infrastructure (particularly power) are less plastic. Providing the next big information service will still depend, for consumers, on fast response times, which means a whole new generation of back-end server rack forests. The barriers to entry are having the meatspace brick-and-mortar facilities (with their private roads and power plants), not the computers that go in them. That's why these moves by MS and Google are scary to me.

Re:Meh

[Znork]

"would it not be a huge advantage to have installations already well-established"

Perhaps. But consider the alternatives we've already seen like rack-in-a-trailer container mounts. You could basically move to the where the power's cheap (hmmm, I'd better patent putting computer centers on Iceland as they dont appear to have gotten that idea yet). Anyways, the rapid commoditization of server capacity works against the first-mover advantage, in ten years I wouldn't be surprised to see us having compute-cubes you could put together like Legos, with builtin PXE-to-mesh-complete servers that join up new nodes.

The main advantage, I think, would be the roll-out infrastructure and software managing the specific tasks, but thanks largely to OSS clusters have become much easier. Perhaps there are some huge advances in paralellized computing waiting around the corner (a welcome one would be vastly improved languages for the purpose), but I think it'll be hard to lock that market in.

"How much computing power would you need to, say, search all recorded video on the net using a single frame from the video?"

Probably a lot :) I can imagine IO would be even worse tho. Not to mention the lawyer power you'd need defending your right to search those video archives.

I get where you're coming from tho, I'd be worried too, but while I agree there are a whole host of upcoming new data-analysis possibilities I dont think it'll be that easy to either corner the market nor to monetize them.

Re:Meh

[Glonoinha]

You know, someone who's actually been in the IT industry for ten, twenty years knows that in ten, twenty years you can buy the capacity in their datacenter for $100 and keep it in your pocket.

Well, maybe not that bad, but you get the drift.

Actually yes, that bad. In comparing my home system to my very first home system, bought roughly 17 years ago, I find that I have roughly 1,000x more CPU (based purely on clock speed, not taking into account pipelining, caching, etc), 8,000x more memory, and 50,000x more hard drive space.

If things keep progressing at that speed, and there's no reason to think they won't (single chips won't, but parallelizing is already taking up the slack) and in 20 years a high end home system will have ... well the CPU power of 1,000 current machines, the memory currently spread across 8,000 machines, and the drive space currently spread across 50,000 machines. In other words, in twenty years that entire data center will have less horsepower and capacity than some of the systems we will have already retired and are probably using to hold open doors. You will offer to give away machines with more capacity / horsepower than that entire data center, and nobody will take it away for free.

Where do I think systems are going? Unified memory model using massive quantities of persistent memory that does not need refreshing and is as fast as current 'core' memory. Once flash memory is replaced with something quite a bit faster, the line between operational memory and long term storage blurs - and the line becomes 'working storage' vs 'committed updates'. Throw in an inference engine that works across the entire data stream, and give it the ability to dynamically determine what it is trying to determine based on the data in the stream - and BINGO : that's where we are headed.

Re:Meh

[Glonoinha]

Consider Moore's Law for a minute, in the context of power consumption (from your post.)

Your current desktop is about 1,000x more powerful than the desktops we had about 20 years ago. It has 8,000x more memory and 50,000x more hard drive space. And yet it is still plugged into the same wall plug it was back then. Same amount of energy, plus or minus (discounting a crazy overclocked CPU / video card - but still you can get away with plugging it into the same wall socket.)

I don't have a point, just considering something out loud.

Re:Meh

[zippthorne]

You get crap for that, and if you are actually defeated all the way up to the choke point, you've already lost the game.

South America and Africa are the continents to go for. No one ever expects Africa to be the lynchpin because of latent racism.

Re:Meh

[thirdrock68]

Mmm. I wouldn't worry that much. You know, someone who's actually been in the IT industry for ten, twenty years knows that in ten, twenty years you can buy the capacity in their datacenter for $100 and keep it in your pocket.


You mean in twenty years I'll be able to buy the personal data of 6 billion people for $100 ???!!!! That's fricken amazing !!

Oh .... you were referrring to the hardware. bah. idiot.

Clearly

[TheSpoom]

This is just so they can threaten to ship out unruly employees ;^)

An honest question.

[SlipperHat]

Not to troll, but why is this news? What is newsworthy about a company expanding into another country? You could say "Oh it's Siberia!", but Siberia is a place like any other.

Re:An honest question.

[hbean]

Because the company is microsoft, and the place is siberia...its like the odd couple with computers...and tundras.

Re:An honest question.

[glop]

Well, I found the news interesting. I wouldn't want a report for every data center but I find that this kind of information is newsworthy because:
  - it involves a lot of computers
  - Microsoft comes from a shrinkwrap background not online business
  - Siberia summons images of cold, wild, hostile environments
  - This is a datacenter far from where most of the users live and is therefore an interesting consequence of the Internet

So I mod the article up any day and welcome our Siberian overlords.

Re:An honest question.

[papasui]

We must stop the traitor dog Kasparov at any cost!

Re:An honest question.

[vertinox]

Not to troll, but why is this news? What is newsworthy about a company expanding into another country? You could say "Oh it's Siberia!", but Siberia is a place like any other.

I'm not sure about people who don't live in the US, but for Americans (strangley enough) the term "Siberia" holds a special place for us. As a kid who grew up during the Regan administration everyone would talk about how bad the Soviets were and that if you spoke out against the government you were sent to Siberia regardless and how much better we were for not doing that.

Eventually it got to be a cliche joke (which is why the "In Soviet Russia...") and Americans often joke among each other about being carted off to Siberia for minor offenses.

Now these days I'm sure if you asked the average Russian about what he thought of Siberia and he would most likley think of it as a place much like North Dakato in which it was boring and he wouldn't have any idea why anyone would live there, but if you asked an American, he'd conjure up images of Russian guards in great coats drunk on vodka forcing some poor Microsoft employee to work on the servers while a big picture of Stalin looked down on them in the camp.

Re:An honest question.

[Elektroschock]

There are many persons in Russia who don't like the software company. Just think of the scale of opposition to Open XML in Russia. It is a kind of base in Russia for Microsoft's interests. A minor investment.

Re:An honest question.

[natenovs]

"a kid who grew up during the Regan" ...or anyone who has read Dostoevsky

Re:An honest question.

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I'm not Russian, but Siberia is, as a whole, a beautiful region. There are some sizable cities there too, but not many compared to the size of the region.

I think that's where some of the gulags were - prison labor camps, and those are the ones referenced in some jokes and threats.

Re:An honest question.

[dirkdidit]

Perhaps the fact that Microsoft has a fairly major office in Fargo, North Dakota is testament to how similar North Dakota is to Siberia.

Both areas share a few commonalities: cheap labor, cheap electricity and rural enough to be isolated from any major events that tend bigger cities tend to be prone to. Microsoft sees this and is using it to their advantage, just like any other company would.

Re:An honest question.

[greenguy]

and welcome our Siberian overlords.

In Soviet Russia, Siberian overlords welcome you!

Re:An honest question.

[MMC Monster]

For those not in the U.S., think about someplace like Guantanamo.

Re:An honest question.

[lazyDog86]

Well the news is obvious: they are finally collocating a data center with the warehouse that they have been sending all those bug reports for years.

Re:An honest question.

[barzok]

Fargo is even a relatively safe distance from a major USAF nuclear installation.

Re:An honest question.

[foremank]

In Russia, we felt the same about Nebraska in the US. We heard horrible tales that citizens who do not obey Ronald Reagan (now G.W. Bush), they get sent to exile in Nebraska. It even become cliche joke (which is why the "In Nebraska...") and Russians often joke among each other about being carted off to Nebraska for minor offenses.

Re:An honest question.

[weicco]

Heh. In Finland we have saying "oot ihan nebraskassa" which is in English something like "you are deep in Nebraska" which means that you are in deep shit. And of course we have many sayings about Siberia also ;)

Re:An honest question.

[Anonymous Coward]

The interest (for me) comes from reading
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's
"One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich"
in high school.

It appears a lot has changed since those days.
Also, being of Lituanian discent, I know a lot
of where a lot of my fellow countrymen were sent.
And why they never returned.

Like I said. A lot has changed, and it is the change
that is interesting.

Re:An honest question.

[Anonymous Coward]

Either this is a joke or you were living in some obscure location in Russia. I was living in 4 Russian cities and never heard anything like that. I'm not sure that many Russians realize what is the difference between Nebraska and any other US state. I think that if Russians were to use such a joke they more likely were talking about Alaska.

Re:An honest question.

[Anonymous Coward]

As a kid who grew up during the Regan administration everyone would talk about how bad the Soviets were ...

You cannot even spell Reagan right, can you?

Re:An honest question.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's right everyone. The old threats of the GULAG never existed. It was just American propaganda.

I wonder how many elderly Russians would spit on you for mocking their fears and pains in the name of damning Reagan as a monster.

Re:An honest question.

[SamoVasGledamo]

Score 5: Informative I fail to see why this has not been modded Funny. You do realize that the Parent is joking?

Re:An honest question.

[RealGrouchy]

No, he's talking about that time when the White House had Fear Factor as a corporate sponsor, and the Oval Office was used as Joe Regan's dressing room.

Trust me, you did not want to use the cafeteria during that period!

- RG>

Re:An honest question.

[dirkdidit]

I'm thinking that if the nuclear missiles are used or fired upon, we probably have bigger things to worry about than data centers and Microsoft's business software division in Fargo.

Re:An honest question.

[calculadoru]

images of Russian guards in great coats drunk on vodka forcing some poor Microsoft employee to work on the servers while a big picture of Stalin looked down on them in the camp.

Hey man, I know this is Slashdot and everything, but there ought to be limits on how cruel you can allow your imagination to become.

Re:An honest question.

[Anonymous Coward]

Although as an American I am familiar with the Siberia jokes, my father always threatened to ship us kids off to Nebraska if we were bad. For those who don't know, Nebraska is about the most boring place in the US. While the Dakotas are fairly inhospitable, at least there is scenery. Nebraska is like one huge farm!

dom

Re:An honest question.

[tehcyder]

if you asked an American, he'd conjure up images of Russian guards in great coats drunk on vodka forcing some poor Microsoft employee to work on the servers while a big picture of Stalin looked down on them in the camp.

You know Stalin died in 1953, right?

Risk

[Dystopian Rebel]

This is just part of Microsoft's plan to gather a force to cross the Bering Strait and... attack North America!

Risk games are endless. Sometime in a distant post-ice-age future, the war-like Mikrosoftsi will attack the southern tribes with deadly chairs.

Stable power??

[pixelated77]

From TFA : "The region was attractive to Microsoft due to its stable power supply..."

Am I the only one that can think of a few other places with stable power supply? Seriously, what's the upside to a datacenter in Irkutsk?

Re:Stable power??

[ilovegeorgebush]

It's outside the Ludicrous rule of the United States Government.

Oh wait...out of the frying pan into the fire?

Re:Stable power??

[capnchicken]

It's not weak like Ukraine

Re:Stable power??

[faloi]

Seriously, what's the upside to a datacenter in Irkutsk?

The upside is you throw a lot of money at a country that's recently stepped up anti-piracy efforts (albeit biased against dissidents), thus getting a "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" arrangement. Microsoft helps boost the Russian economy, possibly even throwing extra money to help offset "improvement costs" in the area, and Russia continues to make sure those nasty pirates stay away (at least the pirates engaging in double-plus ungood speech).

But then again, I am pretty cynical when it comes to money and politics.

Re:Stable power??

[Anonymous Coward]

Somewhere with stable government too might be better.

Re:Stable power??

[Anonymous Coward]

The up side? Duh! Isn't there a lot of oil fields popping up in that part of the world? So wouldn't that put M$ near a.) some booming population centers? and b.) a whole bunch of Rubles?

Re:Stable power??

[Anonymous Coward]

I can think of at least one upside: electricity is DIRT CHEAP there.

Re:Stable power??

[yuriyg]

You post is interesting (as in mod-parent-up!), but I have a small correction:

a country that's recently stepped up anti-piracy efforts (albeit biased against dissidents) should be "a country that's recently stepped up anti-dissident efforts (lately via anti-piracy laws)"
From what I'm hearing, piracy in Russia is a bad as ever.

Exile?

[kimvette]

Is that where Microsoft is sending employees who run Linux at home now?

Re:Exile?

[gmac63]

Gives new meaning to "... when you pry it from my cold, dead, fingers."

More like: "Pry it from your cold, dead, fingers? We have a solution for that!"

Re:Exile?

[Creepy]

Welcome to Gulag call center. We run nice operation. Give bad folks good jobs. Everyone is sandwich*, so no-one escape. Perfect for your need.

*the sandwich is the skinny guy you take with you when you escape a Gulag so you don't starve to death crossing Siberia.

But...

[ocop]

Cooling and overhead have to be ALOT cheaper. Great idea so long as none of my data is stored in an increasingly authoritarian state (US jokes notwithstanding).

Oops, Putin read your hotmail!

Crack? Window?

[RandoX]

Some days it's just too easy.

It's All About Cooling

[pyite]

Even in climates where it's only cool part of the year, efficient data centers have cooling towers so that they can save crazy amounts of money on HVAC. I would bet that more and more data centers will spring up in cooler climates, especially as KW/square foot footprints increase more and more. It's getting very difficult to cool cabinets efficiently.

Re:It's All About Cooling

[Panaqqa]

I'm actually surprised that we are not seeing more data centres in Canada precisely because of this. Where I am right now in central Ontario, we have 5 inches of snow on the ground and the temperature is at -3 Celsius (27 Fahrenheit). If I had to set up a server farm somewhere, I would seriously look at my own location. Power from two separate reliable sources on the grid and less than 5 months of shorts and T-shirt weather (compared to 6 in Toronto and higher in most parts of the US). Significant savings on cooling costs almost certainly. And Siberia would be better than here.

gotta be kidding...

[Austrosearch]

April fools is still a ways off guys...

New say to handle deadlines

[MECC]

Get those changes in on time, or its off to the eastern front for you.

Some kidding aside, one chief reason (among others) to have facilities on the other side of the planet is just that - overnight labor capable of delivering a PM customer change request that can be delivered the next morning AM.

But, it's just for Microsoft.

[drspliff]

Nobody would in their right mind build a shared-use data center in the middle of nowhere because neither the population or the tranist are there.

I presume that by Microsoft doing this it will house only their servers (so shipping them in bulk for a 5000km trip won't really be a significant cost) and they'll be making their own arrangements for uplinks to Russia, Europe and China; probably by laying their own fiber.

Out of curiosity - how will they persuade sysadmins & rack monkeys to emmigrate to Siberia? I can't imagine the long winters and complete lack of night life would be of any interest, unless their thinking of staffing the whole thing with native Russians?

Re:But, it's just for Microsoft.

[Entropius]

complete lack of night life

We're talking Microsoft employees here. They don't care.

Re:But, it's just for Microsoft.

[flyingfsck]

The night life is great. Once it started, the midnight party carry on for 6 months...

Re:But, it's just for Microsoft.

[larien]

You don't actually need to be onsite to manage most servers these days. I'm in a team managing about 1100 servers (yes, I know some people probably manage more, this isn't a willy-waving contest) and I rarely have to go onsite in the data centres to do anything. Really, you only need physical access for:

• server installs
• parts replacement (which you can just palm off to the vendor)
• cabling changes
• tape changes
• hitting a power button when it's completely hung (although most systems have remote power these days)

A small team of people onsite can handle that easily and they don't need to be that technically skilled and your "real" admins can be anywhere in the world.

Re:But, it's just for Microsoft.

[rsmeds]

It's not exactly in the middle of nowhere, though. The city of Irkutsk has a population of approx. 600.000, and the Irkutsk oblast (region) is 2,5 million. So the population (and therefore available workforce) is most certainly there.

Besides, Microsoft already has departments in Russia, so the employees for this data center will probably come mainly from those. Also, comp.sci education in Russian universities has a fairly good reputation, so recruiting new people shouldn't be a problem.

A more obvious site would perhaps have been Novosibirsk (1,4 million), home to Novosibirsk State University -- the science captial of the Soviet Union.

However, I suspect Irkutsk was chosen partly because it is located (more or less) in the middle of Russia -- about halfway from St. Petersburg in the west to Vladivostok in the East -- and because labor is cheaper in Siberia than in Moscow or St.Petersburg.

Granted, the night life is far from what we've come to expect in most of Europe or the US, but there are bars, clubs and even a couple of decent restaurants. I had the best sushi of my life in Irkusk a couple of years ago.

Re:But, it's just for Microsoft.

[jbburks]

Let's see - where do I start:

Irkutsk is on the Trans-Siberian Railway, the main East-West transport axis. You can bet there's a lot of fiber down the railroad right-of-way, so comms won't be a problem.

Irkutsk is on the Angara River, which is fed by Lake Baikal. The Bratsk dam (4,500MW) is one of the largest hydropower dams in the world, and there are three more on the Angara. Can you say "zero carbon emissions" and "reliability"?

I would staff the facility with all but a handful of positions being Russian. You can get CCNA/MCSE level people there for less than $10,000USD/year. And, they are quite competent (think Tetris or some of the Russian hackers).

As another poster points out, it doesn't matter any more where there server is located, with the competent remote support tools that all current OSs have.

I would say it's one of the better decisions Microsoft has made.

Re:But, it's just for Microsoft.

[mapkinase]

Novosibirsk State University -- the science captial of the Soviet Union.

The words of a faithful alumnum :-)

Re:But, it's just for Microsoft.

[Anonymous Coward]

"I had the best sushi of my life in Irkusk a couple of years ago."

You didnt drink the tea tho, did you?

Re:But, it's just for Microsoft.

[hughk]

Irkutsk is quite a major city in Siberia even though it is only some half a mil inhabitants. You must remember that Siberia has a somewhat intellectual tradition due to the number of people who thought for themselves under the Tsar and then the Soviets being shipped there. There are several universities there but the city is concerned as the educated people tend to leave for cities such as Moscow or St. Petersburg where the living is easier. MS may bring some staff over for training but I guess they will have no problems finding locals to run things, all they lack is the experience of running major server farms.

Re:But, it's just for Microsoft.

[Anonymous Coward]

I just finished a year long trip around the world, during which I visited Irkutsk via the Transsiberian Railroad.

It's a far more modern city than you'd expect. It has sushi restaurants, good internet cafes with high speed internet, and CRAZY nightclubs.

I went to a nightclub there several times called Stratosfira. It was your basic enormous room with a bar at one end, a stage at the other, platforms above the stage with gogo dancers, bad euro house dance music, and couches and booths along the edges. The thing that made it great, of course, was the hordes of beautiful young russian women. Believe me, the Microsoft engineers will be happy there.

For some reason, women got in free there, but they had to drink some drink at the door. Apparently it was just some kind of alcoholic punch, but I still found it odd.

The club pretty much didn't get going until 1am, and went until morning. At around 2 or so, the music stopped briefly and a full on fashion model runway show was performed, with lovely young women modeling dresses and bikinis, complete with announcers in tuxes. Between each set of the show, dancing resumed.

There were several young women dancing in sunglasses, which I thought was odd. One russian told me that they did this to conceal the fact that their eyes were bloodshot from drug use. I have no idea if that was true.

Several russian men bought me vodka shots, and insisted that I did them. Several fights broke out (always between russian men), and burly guys in camo jumped in and hauled them out. I didn't ever feel unsafe though -- people were very friendly towards me (with their 10 words of english, and my 2 or 3 phrases in Russian limiting things a bit).

Ken

Re:But, it's just for Microsoft.

[nomadic]

how will they persuade sysadmins & rack monkeys to emmigrate to Siberia? I can't imagine the long winters and complete lack of night life would be of any interest,

Yes, because when I think sysadmin, I picture a bar-hopping, oversexed clubgoer.

Saturday night Star Trek reruns are the same no matter where you watch them...

Re:But, it's just for Microsoft.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is the thought of staffing it with "native Russians" wilder than staffing it with "native Indians"? Whose country has more ridiculous infrastructure and abject poverty and illiteracy?

Re:But, it's just for Microsoft.

[Reservoir Penguin]

Since I live in Novosibirsk I'm also slightly suprised by the choice of the location. 1) Novosibirsk is a major transportation hub on the TSR. 2) Novosibirsk is on the OB river that has more commercial importance than Angara 3) As it has been already said Novosibirsk is home to the prestigious NSU and the SORAN (Siberian branch of the russian academy of sciences). We alredy have Intel compiler group and Sun offices here.

Stage 2 complete

[Anonymous Coward]

Stage 1: Establish super rich international company.
Stage 2: Get some Siberian gulags for prisoners
Stage 3: Hire South African mercenaries and ex-Russian military guys
Stage 4: World domination.

Corporate gulag

[Anonymous Coward]

From now on, MS employees sentenced to prison shall have the option to pay for their crimes without leaving the company.

Microsoft

[joaommp]

Which Gulag do you want to go today?

An honest answer

[smittyoneeach]

Because a corporation the size of Mr. Softy is going to have very interesting interactions with a country which casually tosses opposition political leaders in jail:
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=garry+kasparov+jail&btnG=Search+News
A cage match featuring Ballmer and his chair of choice against Vladimir might be interesting, if brief:

Currently, Putin is a black belt (6th dan) and is best known for his Harai Goshi (sweeping hip throw). Vladimir Putin is Master of Sports (Soviet and Russian sport title) in Judo and Sambo. After a state visit to Japan, Putin was invited to the Kodokan Institute where he showed the students and Japanese officials different judo techniques.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Putin
Nifty photo collection:
http://www.who-sucks.com/people/getting-to-know-russian-president-vladimir-putin-through-pictures

Re:An honest answer

[Yetihehe]

So it's not so bad. Putin is a ninja and Ballmer fights pirates. They are natural allies.

Re:An honest answer

[smittyoneeach]

Putin would so flog Ballmer like a rented mule.

Silly SlipperHat!

[mattgreen]

How else can we be obsessed with Microsoft if we don't scrutinize every little thing they do? (You obviously have never had a restraining order issued against you.) With every move they make we can lean back in our cheap OfficeMax chairs and scoff at them. "Fools!" we'd say. "This is yet another sign of their impending failure! My year of experience reading articles on Slashdot qualifies me to make this seemingly absurd statement!" Meanwhile we can whisk away petty things like 'reality' and 'logic' so we can make more tired in-jokes that will earn us beloved moderator points so we can feel validated.

Honestly

[TheSpoom]

I know you guys are hopeful but I really doubt Microsoft will open Windows.

How many Resets per hour?

[flyingfsck]

Fifty Megawatt sounds like about 50 Intel X86 servers... Well, OK, 50MW/500W = 100,000 servers Being as unreliable as MS schtuff is, how does MS manage to keep that many servers running all at the same time? Resetting machines must be a full-time job. I've heard of code monkeys and tape trolls, but a 'reset robot' would be a uniquely Microsoft job description.

Re:How many Resets per hour?

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably runs on Linux inside a VM. Automatic restarting.

Re:How many Resets per hour?

[Anonymous Coward]

how does MS manage to keep that many servers running all at the same time?

Ever heard of redundancy? Even 10% of this number is still a fearsome computational power, so what if the others crash.
Meantime a bunch of highly trained siberian bears run through the data center, pressing ctrl-alt-del whenever they see blue screen.

Global warming!!

[patmandu]

We must stop the evil! We'll have Microsoft pumping out tens of thousands of calories into the Siberian air. Is this some devious form of terraforming? Will Siberia's environment slowly be altered to match that of Redmond in preparation for the colonization? Will Siberia be flooded with the resulting rain?

Enquiring minds...

The ONION does it again!

[wilder_card]

Wow, this one really had me rolling in the aisles. Those guys at the Onion are comic geniuses.

Hey, wait a minute...

You have to be specific ... try Oymyakon

[pbhj]

Excerpt from: http://grumen.karelia.ru/?uid=-1&land=eng&page=4_0&lap=0&res=10

"The Northern part of Russia

The northern part of Russia from the Kola Peninsula to the island of Sakhalin is in the sub arctic climatic zone, which features are a long and cold winter and a short but warm summer. Within this zone, in Jakutiya, is the town of Oymyakon, where the absolute minimum of temperature (-71 C) for the northern hemisphere of the Earth has been observed. There the average temperature of January is -49 C, of July 15 C."

But it does appear that even Oymyakon - the coldest permanently inhabited place (there's an antarctic ice station that's colder) - can have summer temps of +25degC.

Relative humidity?

[The Second Horseman]

Wonder what they're going to do to humidify the air. I'd bet it would easily get below 10% RH if they don't do something. A lot of equipment is rated for 10% to 90% these days, but I'd want it over 20%.

Maybe they can use the exhaled breath of a herd of yaks to raise the humidity level. Oh, wait, no, you wouldn't actually get any LEED points for that.

Re:Relative humidity?

[coldcell]

I thought electronics (especially computer electronics) would do excellently in 0% humidity, that's why they can fly into space and stuff. What's the benefit (from a circuit's point of view) of having higher moisture content in the surrounding air? Is it something to do with static buildup?

(btw IANAEE - electrical engineer)

Re:Relative humidity?

[rolfwind]

IANAEE yet either, I can't imagine the circuits would be affected, but perhaps lower RH than 10% would dry out the shielding and insulation of wire pretty quick - causing them to get brittle prematurely. Just a guess.

Re:Relative humidity?

[The Second Horseman]

Yeah, it's static discharge. Aside from it being unpleasant to get zapped constantly, you do have to be a bit concerned about the equipment. Not as much exterior surfaces, but if you're handling components and plugging in cables. Also, it tends to be more comfortable for anyone working in the facility if you keep it above 20%. There's only so much water and lip balm you want to have to keep in your office. "Operating" is usually between 20% to 80% RH (Noncondensing). Somewhere between 40% to 50% is considered optimal. (I've seen as low as 35% - below 35% charge dissipation isn't as easy, apparently)

Stable power?

[six11]

Officials in Microsoft's Russian business unit said the region had a stable power supply

Too bad it can't be said that Russia has a stable political environment.

Re:Stable power?

[maroberts]

As long as they're not thinking of Chernobyl.

Re:Stable power?

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

Too bad it can't be said that Russia has a stable political environment.

Well, actually it does. The majority of Russians are perfectly satisfied with Putin. This is because he cracked down on Chechen terrorists and killed the big ringleaders and essentially ended the war. Because of gas and oil prices skyrocketing, the Russian economy is in very good shape and for a decent number of people, life is good. Putin sends out the police to round up the few people who dare to protest. Russia's elections will be honest, I am absolutely sure of this, because the Russian people will willingly elect his appointed successor by a large majority. There's no real opposition (they keep getting arrested), but the political environment will be stable. There will be no revolution next year after the elections because Putin's successor will win in an honest election and the vast majority of Russians will be OK with him, whoever it is.
My money is that it will be Sergei Ivanov.

What Microsoft might want to consider is that corruption will be a big problem in a remote place like Irkutsk. Believe me, it will take a lot less bribe money than Microsoft thinks if someone wants access to that facility and the servers inside it. This whole thing didn't make any sense to me until I read another post where someone suggested that this is an "I scratch your back, you scratch mine" arrangement where Microsoft sends money and jobs to Mother Russia in exchange for more crackdowns on piracy. That makes perfect sense to me.

Re:Stable power?

[Dogtanian]

I would question the "honesty" (*) of any election where there is no real freedom of expression for anyone opposed to the government, and "there's no real opposition" because "they keep getting arrested". Of course, they wouldn't get arrested if they weren't saying or doing things the Russian government didn't like.

That having been said, my gut reaction is that the Russian people would go for Putin or his successor anyway because they're more comfortable with (de facto) dictatorship than democracy; I think, partly because the Western pro-"democracy", pro-free-market governments fucked up during the 1990s, letting corruption, inequality and insecurity thrive because they tolerated too much in the name of reform. But mainly because the effects of several generations having lived in a totalitarian society has had a very deep malign influence on the Russian mindset, and you can't expect to change this overnight.

For what it's worth, I don't know what would happen if (for whatever reason) Kim Jong-Il was suddenly ousted from power and North Korea was suddenly "free". It's my belief that this would cause horrific social problems and that- unfortunately- it would probably be better to "wean" the people off dictatorship by preserving the illusion that Kim was still alive and was gradually moving the country towards freedom (for whatever bullshit reasons sounded plausible).

I don't think that would have been necessary- or possible- in Russia, but I do think that the pro-freedom countries fucked up by pressuring Russia to change too fast. On the other hand, a lot of the other former-Soviet countries seem to be handling democracy and freedom quite well, so maybe the Russians just want a strong leader because they're nostalgic for the Soviet era when they had an empire (when it comes to the crunch, I don't buy that the USSR was anything more than a Russian empire masquerading as some sort of communist union).

(*) I mean I'd question the use of the word in a technical sense, even *if* the vote-counting was "fair". To my mind, there's no question that the Russian elections are a meaningless sham if there's no free campaigning.

Reset Robot can be automated, seriously

[davidwr]

You can put watchdog add-in cards or just plain old "ping it" external watchdogs that will cycle the power supply and send a wake-on-lan to reboot the machine.

Of course these external watchdogs can't run Windows. After all, Windows is not supposed to be used where reliability is a concern.

The only way...

[RickBeaver]

... to keep Vista ready PC's cool.

Poor performance dumping ground?

[Digital_Mercenary]

Is this where MS employees who get on the Gates shit list get sent to?

Re:That is until...

[djones101]

And that's a bad thing...how?

Why so many data centers?

[Opportunist]

In Soviet Russia, data stores YOU.

Of course, a lame ISR joke has to be, but this seems to be the goal. We're living in a world where governments world wide (and not only them) want to know more and more about you. If anyone else knows a good reason for MS entering the data storage world, please enlighten me.

They're probably not even after the data, but realized that there's big bucks in information about people. And advertising is maybe the most harmless (even if annoying) reason to collect data.

Data security?

[goombah99]

While your comment was intended as a joke, off shoring data centers in other countires (i.e. US data in the FSU or chinese data in the US) has some interesting possibilities besides exiling employees. Do they have to abide by US laws for that data? Do they have to hand it over to the Siberian state police on demand or reveal the accounts of dissidents putin is trying to crush? Can they encrypt data or will that run afoul of ITAR laws in both host and owner companies?

Additionally, recall that last year Russia and Georgia withheld Gas to western europe in an after the fact, gun to the head, negotiation to raise prices. There are no so abundant gas resources that it is so fungible that one can switch suppliers. The same is true of data centers. Will some future event cause Siberia to turn off the Internet router and demand more money?

Re:Data security?

[Dr. Cody]

Additionally, recall that last year Russia and Georgia withheld Gas to western europe in an after the fact, gun to the head, negotiation to raise prices. There are no so abundant gas resources that it is so fungible that one can switch suppliers. The same is true of data centers. Will some future event cause Siberia to turn off the Internet router and demand more money?

Raise prices to market value.

Re:Data security?

[tehcyder]

Do they have to hand it over to the Siberian state police on demand or reveal the accounts of dissidents putin is trying to crush?

If you're in Russia, you are subject to Russian law, unless you're a foreign embassy.

Location Location Location

[PurPaBOO]

Idiots. Irkutsk is really in the middle of nowhere. I've been there and it's a backwards sh1thole.

Novosibirsk (Russia' third largest city) would be the sensible choice for a datacentre is Siberia.

Re:Location Location Location

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought this too but perhaps this is because it is

1. closer to China
2. closer to Bratsk hydro electric plant

permafrost?

[192939495969798999]

How are they dealing with the permafrost? I thought you couldn't build things in Siberia because the buildings just sink into the mud in the summer.

Re:permafrost?

[LunaticTippy]

Remember, there is a city of 600k people there. Apparently they have a way of dealing with this issue. From Wikipedia's entry on permafrost:

Building on permafrost is difficult due to the heat of the building (or pipeline) melting the permafrost and sinking. This problem has three common solutions. Using foundations on wood piles, building on a thick gravel pad (usually 1-2 meters/3.3-6.6 feet thick), or using anhydrous ammonia heat pipes. The Trans-Alaska Pipeline System uses insulated heat pipes to prevent the pipeline from sinking. Qingzang railway in Tibet was built using a variety of methods to keep the ground cool.

At the Permafrost Research Institute in Yakutsk, it has been found that the sinking of large buildings into the ground (known to the Yakuts before Yakutsk was founded) can be prevented by using stilts extending down to about fifteen metres or more. At this depth the temperature does not change with the seasons, remaining at about -5 C (23F)

The next version of Windows

[jandersen]

- is going to be called 'Gulag', I suppose.

A Cold Day In Hell...

[deweycheetham]

You only thought Microsoft was Evil. This pretty much confirms it. "It's tow the Microsoft line or off to Sibera for you." You only thought you were in Programmer's Hell, now we know where it is....

Cooling solution

[maroberts]

As others have pointed out, Siberia gets very hot in the summer, so teh real solution is to have a datacenter in both the Northern and Southern hemispheres, each alternately only operational for about half the year.

Stable Power Supply?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Officials in Microsoft's Russian business unit said the region had a stable power supply, and will be able to support a 50 megawatt utility feed."

MS is more concerned about a stable power supply in Soviet Russia? Shouldnt they be more concerned about a stable OS?

Re:Stable Power Supply?

[Aczlan]

"Officials in Microsoft's Russian business unit said the region had a stable power supply
"a" power supply, dont you want your servers to have REDUNDANT power supplies???

Datacenter as home heating?

[ThreeGigs]

I was really expecting to see some sort of design whereby the waste heat from the datacenter was used to heat homes or apartment buildings. Charging a price that's half of what it would normally cost to heat a building, and supplying the waste heat from the data center would lead to significantly reduced operating costs for the datacenter, and lower cost heating for neighboring structures. Sounds like a win/win situation if done right.

Re:Datacenter as home heating?

[IkeTo]

Actually I always wonder why there are so many data centers placed at hot places... after all most of the time we don't care whether our data is sent half a globe in the East-West direction or North-South direction. unlucky for those living at those hot regions, the extra cost of air-conditioning to make it work also means that there are a lot more carbon emission and power consumption than really needed, both works to make their place even hotter.

Re:Datacenter as home heating?

[hackstraw]

I was really expecting to see some sort of design whereby the waste heat from the datacenter was used to heat homes or apartment buildings.

I can't seem to find it now, but one supercomputing or data center in Minnesota or some other cold place used to dump the heat from the computers into the parking garage.

That's a damn good strategic idea right there.

[CatOne]

From Irkutsk, you can grab Yakutsk and then pillage the entire Northwest US, running down the coast, taking South America, and fortifying to get +2 armies per turn.

Not *quite* as strategic and easy to hold as Australia, but hey, when you don't get those first 3 cards to match, this could be your salvation play.

Bravo, Microsoft!

maybe not a joke

[peter303]

A lot of the global warming has been blamed on US SUVs and developing world purchase of autos. But the growth of high end electronics may have a significant effect too. large TVs are often the second largest appliance in the home after the refigerator. Some sources attribute most or much of the growth in electric power (50% is coal-burning in US) to computers, data centers, and large TVs.

New zone with more percentual screens of death

[ghostbar38]

Now Siberia will be the new zone with more screens of death per person. A guiness record?

Oops, I LOL'd

[Anonymous Coward]

The word 'kut' means vagina in dutch. Somehow this seems very appropriate for MS...

BTW, dispite the huge "Slashdot Mobility" banner on top, I could *not* post this comment on my cellphone. It kept complaining "No discussion or comments found for this request". So /. already has their data centre in Russia too? ;)

Just another outsourcing

[Leemeng]

If it was only cold weather they wanted, why not find some place in the United States or Canada? Surely there are enough cold locations in the N. American continent.

I believe Microsoft is just after cheap land and cheap labour. Russia is just brimming with cheap, highly-qualified tech talent.

Irktusk

[jnf]

For those of you who are actually the person described as 'best knowing Irktusk from Risk'. (this is all going from memory, and an aged one at that so it may not all still be true) Irktusk is the largest city in Siberia and from what I remember serves (served?) as the primary hub for the government, especially the military in Siberia. From what I remember, in the summer, the average temperature is like -18. I seem to remember Russian graffiti in Chechnya that said something like "Welcome to Hell -From Irktusk" supposedly from Russian troops.

Re:Irktusk

[jnf]

persistent typos ;]

Re:Irktusk

[SamoVasGledamo]

Mod parent FUD. Irkutsk is in a continental climate area, which means that gets severely cold winters and short, but blazingly hot summers. Last time I was there (three years ago, in August) it was around 30C at noon.

I think Russians will remember Siberia's history

[AHumbleOpinion]

but for Americans (strangley enough) the term "Siberia" holds a special place for us. As a kid who grew up during the Regan administration everyone would talk about how bad the Soviets were and that if you spoke out against the government you were sent to Siberia ... Now these days I'm sure if you asked the average Russian about what he thought of Siberia and he would most likley think of it as a place much like North Dakato in which it was boring ... but if you asked an American, he'd conjure up images of Russian guards in great coats

Why in the world would Russian citizens, people who suffered under the soviets and who actually lived under the threat of being sent to Siberia, forget about this dark soviet-era history more quickly than Americans? Also, sending "troublemakers" to Siberia was not a soviet invention, the czars sent a few people east as well. While Russians will be far better informed regarding Siberia's summer beauty than Americans, the dark cold side is embedded pretty deep into their culture.

Now That's What I Call...

[Flwyd]

Cold Storage.

Given the current establishment power-grabbing Russian political scene, if I was a Russian opposition party, I'd request Microsoft not house my data in Siberia.

BRIC

[AHumbleOpinion]

Am I the only one that can think of a few other places with stable power supply? Seriously, what's the upside to a datacenter in Irkutsk?

BRIC - Brazil Russia India China - are expected to lead growth for the next few decades. Microsoft is getting in early, developing an infrastructure that can participate in this growth.

Also, besides vast natural resources, Russia also has vast human resources. A large highly educated and experienced population that is underemployed and inexpensive. Russia is a destination for hi tech and sophisticated outsourcing. There is an expectation that some higher end software engineering is about to go to Russia as some lower end programming went to India. BTW, India is working very hard to move from the historical low end tasks to higher end engineering services as well.

Moving to Irkutsk?

[DollyTheSheep]

So the bits will be kept fresh and crispy?

Microsoft Research, not Siberia

[AHumbleOpinion]

Is that where Microsoft is sending employees who run Linux at home now?

No, they are sent to Microsoft Research. The destination options are Beijing, India, Cambridge, or Silicon Valley.

MS Explorer just sank in the Antarctic

[giafly]

... so I'd have thought they would avoid cold places.

MS Explorer is sinking after hitting an iceberg - pictures
Explorer lists heavily after hitting submerged ice off of Antarctica and began taking on water - pictures
Apparently it went down, and 150 people had to be evacuated. Not sure what the weird boat pics are about... digg

I've heard of this idea before...

[_14k4]

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=359093&cid=21337959

Glad they found ways around the power issues. I wonder how well the commute/staffing will work out over time.

Nearly everybody likes them

[AHumbleOpinion]

The word 'kut' means vagina in dutch. Somehow this seems very appropriate for MS...

As in nearly everyone likes and uses them? :-)

Re:Nearly everybody likes them

[Anonymous Coward]

>>The word 'kut' means vagina in dutch. Somehow this seems very appropriate for MS...

>As in nearly everyone likes and uses them? :-)

And MS uses all of us?

Re:Nearly everybody likes them

[Anonymous Coward]

No, as in "Fuck MS"!

Siberia not exactly like "any other" place.

[Anonymous Coward]

Siberia has gargantuan vast expanses of untouched, unspoiled-by-humans, beautiful rugged wilderness lands with mountains, forests, plains, rivers and lakes. Then there are the towns along the Trans-Siberian railroad(s), that are nasty toxic waste dumps because the industrial development that was done there from the time of the last Czar thru the Soviet era was all done with a don't-give-a-fuck-about-the-environment attitude. One day, when global warming really gets bad, Siberia will become a place highly desireable and ripe for human exploitation. Lets hope the Russian government changes significantly towards true enlightenment by then.

You should try exploring Siberia thru Google Earth sometime, and zoom in on the path of the railroad, and also the extremely isolated areas too. It's absolutely fascinating.

just crack a window

[Anonymous Coward]

So when the arctic ice cap disappears in a few years, we can blame Bill ?

And in related news...

[CodeShark]

The previous reported *cough* fact that hell has frozen over, while technically correct, did not extend to the Siberian peninsula, which, in fact, was already as cold as hell -- and while Steve Ballmer's heart is reportedly that cold where M$ and money is concerned, the fact that an M$ operating system run data center may open a new hole in the polar Siberian ice may also indeed induce a thaw in the netherworld as well.

Which proves my theory that the purveyors of M$ may in fact be minions of.....

***poof* ice chill....

Look at the bright side...

[Anonymous Coward]

Irkutsk, where the data center is build, is probably still on the (inactive) predefined target list of a lot ICBM's in the States. In case we want to get rid of the data center, just push the button :)

Global Warming

[lymond01]

I've been told that if global warming continues, Siberia will be hot property (not too hot, more like New England I suppose...). Microsoft should make sure they have their backup Air Conditioning on generator, just in case. ;-)

It's a big risk, but...

[monkeyboythom]

From Irkutsk you can strike Mongolia, Kamchatka, Siberia, or Yakutsk.

Personally, I found holding all of Australia was the key to taking Asia.

Re:It's a big risk, but...

[Abreu]

It is usually too hard to take all of Asia... just holding Afghanistan is more trouble than its worth...

I suggest starting your bid for global power from Madagascar or Argentina instead.

Re:I think Russians will remember Siberia's histor

[Anonymous Coward]

I was born in Siberia and still live here. I had a few opportunities to move to Moscow or get H1B and move to California but perhaps out of laziness I did not do that. Why bother? Living in Siberia is quite okay with me. Yes, long cold winters are not pleasant but this is not much a problem as I sit most of the day in a warm room with a computer before me.

Meanwhile, in other news ...

[PPH]

... the 350 villagers living within the reach of the Irkutsk telephone exchange look forward to reliable Microsoft Live services.

50 megawatt

[m2shariy]

50 megawatt divided by 10,000 servers gives 5 kilowatts per server.
Isn't that too much?

Putin and MS

[wikinerd]

what a duo

sinking the competition by raising sea level

[asky]

Cooling for 10,000 servers near the polar ice cap means sinking Google headquarters just a little sooner. Google HQ, situated next to the San Francisco bay, must be about 10 feet above sea level.