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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.
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.
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.