What Kind of Data Center Can You Build With $500M?

coondoggie writes "So, if the government gave your company $500 million to spend on building a new data center what would you buy and how would you build it? Well, the Social Security Administration is about to find out. As part of the stimulus bill, or the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the SSA got the tidy little sum to replace its National Computer Center. The SSA in fact says it will need closer to $800 million to fund a new IT infrastructure, including the new data center — the physical building, power and cooling infrastructure, IT hardware, and systems applications. (This is addition to a $72 million backup facility currently under construction in Durham, North Carolina)."

Comments

Re:Good money after bad...

[LatencyKills]

Why is this modded funny? It's just about the only solution that makes any real sense. Close social security, and people who really need it end up on welfare instead. How would that be any different from "means testing" which is what is almost certain to happen anyway? The alternative seems to be to (a) tax present workers to death, virtually guarenteeing that they'll need SS when they retire, and then wash, rinse, and repeat with the next generation or (b) prop up SS by printing more fake government money and let the next generation figure out how to repay the debt (hint: see (a)).