Apple Plans $1 Billion iDataCenter

1sockchuck writes "Apple is planning a major East Coast data center to boost the capacity of its online operations, and may invest more than $1 billion in building and operating the huge server farm. That's nearly twice what Google and Microsoft typically invest in their massive cloud computing centers. The scope of the project raises interesting questions about Apple's plans, and has politicians in North Carolina jumping through hoops to pass incentives to win the project. The proposed NC incentives build on a package for Google that later proved controversial."

Comments

dollars != capacity

[Anonymous Coward]

"The $1B price tag is nearly twice what Microsoft and Google typically invest..."

Is that because Apple is using its own hardware? Google and MS should be able to get a hell of a lot cheaper hardware using commodity mobos than Apple using its own expensive machines. Of course, Apple's margins are 50%, so one wonders if they're charging themselves retail or wholesale.

Of course

[Darkness404]

may invest more than $1 billion in building and operating the huge server farm. That's nearly twice what Google and Microsoft typically invest in their massive cloud

Of course, this is Apple, all Apple hardware is going to me more expensive then typical PC hardware. On the plus side all machines can be running OS X.

Re:let me guess

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple is a computer company. They have more virgins than they know what to do with.

I figured out the Data Center Configuration!

[failedlogic]

Pffft! This is so easy to figure out, they don't need a veil of secrecy. I've already figured out the datacenter setup.

I decided Apple should setup a lot of Mac Pros for their data center. Reason: Cost to Performance Ratio. Don't go telling me Apple is more expensive than Dell. You cannot compare the two since Dell does not sell AppleCare.

I went on the Apple Website, to order 999 Maxed out Mac Pro systems with RAID cards, 32 GB of RAM and max hard drives, and 3 year Apple care. Did the same thing with some Xserves (but this has support contract + something called a "Promise VTrak E-Class 16x SAS RAID Subsystem"). Whatever. My only concern is maxing out the shopping cart so that I know I am getting the best possible configuration. Note: Apple's systems are more expensive in the Europe which is why they are setting up in the US.

I also included next business day shipping (at 999 systems its $5,000 and BTW is was the same price as 2 business day shipping so I'm not splurging).

Here's my tally:
999 Mac Pro (Maxed out) Total = ~ $16,000,000
999 XServe (Maxed out)Total = ~ $86,000,000

So for $1 Billion, Apple could have

(1,000,000,000/16,000,000) * 99 = 6,187.5 Mad Pro Systems
(1,000,000,000 / 86,000,000) = 11.627907 * 99 = 1,151.16279 XServe Systems

Footnote: Use these numbers with a grain of salt as I explain below.

1) I didn't account if Apple will give themselves a discount. If they wait for back-to-school time, they might give themselves a free iPod and printer with each system purchase. Probably not the Xserves though. All the more in favor of the Mac Pro.

2) Also, I used Google to do the math. Since they likely want to compete with Apple, they might be up to what I am doing (even before it is indexed) and are intentionally fudging the numbers.