Amazon's Cloud Data Center To Follow Google To Oregon

1sockchuck writes "All your online data doesn't really live in a big, fluffy cloud. It resides in servers and data centers. That's why Amazon.com is quietly building a large data center complex in Oregon along the Columbia River, not far from Google's secret data lair in The Dalles. Amazon Web Services started as a way to monetize excess data center capacity for its retail operation, but has grown to the point where it requires dedicated infrastructure. Amazon recently said that its S3 cloud storage service is hosting 29 billion objects."

Comments

I feel a slight sense of jealousy

[CdBee]

.. my files are getting to see parts of the world I've never even been to, via Jungledisk. Anyway, as an S3 customer, the more data centres they have, the better.

On an Ecological level I hope electricity in Oregon is mainly nuclear, wind or Hydro....

Re:I feel a slight sense of jealousy

[lysergic.acid]

yea, data redundancy and backups are useless if you don't use off-site data protection for disaster recovery. even small businesses can greatly benefit from geographical redundancy.

even though the label i work at is based in California, we still took a major hit from Hurricane Katrina because the masters for several albums in our back catalog were kept at a recording studio that got flooded. after that happened, my boss starting holding onto copies of the masters himself here at the office and also backing up all the digital data onto an external hard drive that he gave to his dad for safe keeping.

of course, for businesses with large volumes of data that are constantly updated, cloud storage is probably the best solution. through multitenancy small to medium-sized businesses can enjoy the same level of data protection as large enterprises like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, etc.

Re:I feel a slight sense of jealousy

[hairyfeet]

What I don't get is if it is power they want,why they don't come to AR. We got Nuclear power(so it's cheap) and we have a TON of abandoned Titan 2 missile silos that would be kick ass for data centers. They are deep enough underground that the cooling bills would be a whole lot cheaper,they would probably get a huge break on their insurance because nobody is going to get through those blast doors without permission,and they have been selling the things so cheap that some folks are actually turning them into houses. Plus I'm sure they have plenty of power and communication lines already run to hook them into the defense grid,and here in AR they are happy to give out huge tax breaks for anyone willing to bring their business here. It seems to me like it would be an easy way to save money on a data center.

Re:I feel a slight sense of jealousy

[mcrbids]

As a hosted application provider, we provide no less than THREE separate geographical locations for DR of the data: the redundant, primary hosting cluster, a smaller, backup hosting cluster, and a non-hosted "if it gets this bad it's really, really bad" backup. Offsite backups happen automatically every night, so at any point, you'll never lose more than 24 hours worth of data. We've always offered this level of redundancy.

In a few months, we'll bring this 24 hour maximum latency down to less than 5 minutes!

You can argue "data security" all you want, but we've had a number of customers sign up when they lost all their data due to data security issues. In one case, their servers were actually stolen! (ie: physically GONE, no backups, geez...) If you choose a competent hosting provider, a hosted application can dramatically improve the security and reliability of access to your data.

Re:Google is absurd about this

[Tubal-Cain]

Uh, I can see the buildings just fine in google maps (maps.google.com, not that maps.google.ca address you gave.

Re:These places are designed to be risk-averse

[Ariake Shikima]

Yeah except they seem not to remember the flood of 1947 that wiped out the Portland/Vancouver suburb of Vanport. Plus, right there next to active volcanoes... Make you wonder why they didn't build it inn the crated or Mt. St Helens. Or at least up next to Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood. At least there you'd get the Lodge from The Shining to look at as you wander the dark corridors of the creepy volcano-dwelling data center.

My prediction

[aztektum]

Like Google they will be spending their power savings $$ advertising on Craigslist's Portland job ads page. The Dalle's is not exactly flush with computer savvy talent.

Re:That Oregon Columbia electricity is not "clean"

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

You know what they call what happens to a salmon that goes through a hydro dam? Turbine induced stress.

No, I'm not kidding.

Re:That Oregon Columbia electricity is not "clean"

[Anonymous Coward]

A dam-installed hydro turbine is a slow thing, not a blender or a jet engine.

Turbine-passage survival is a complicated function of gap sizes, runner blade angles, wicket gate openings and overhang, and water passageway flow patterns.

The very latest set of retrofits at the Columbia and Snake dams had a goal of 98% survivability for turbine-passing fish, and higher for flume-passing fish. These retrofits are not only better for the fish, but produce more power.

Re:That Oregon Columbia electricity is not "clean"

[Anonymous Coward]

We have something called fish ladders,
and a report was just released stating that
a river with dams and fish ladders is equal to a river with no dams on it,
with respect to rate of fish surviving to breeding grounds.