Iron Mountain's Experimental Room 48

twailgum writes "Twenty-two stories underground in Iron Mountain's Western Pennsylvania facility, 'you'll find Room 48, an experiment in data center energy efficiency. Open for just six months, the room is used by Iron Mountain to discover the best way to use geothermal conditions and engineering designs to establish the perfect environment for electronic documents. Room 48 is also being used to devise a geothermal-based environment that can be tapped to create efficient, low-cost data centers.'"

Comments

iron mountain facility

[Icegryphon]

Ever since I have seen the History channel episode I found the idea quite fascinating.
Always wondered who and how they plan out which direction they use to cut new rooms.

Re:iron mountain facility

[The Archon V2.0]

Always wondered who and how they plan out which direction they use to cut new rooms.

Computerized simulations. Right now they have a massive military force built up just in case they hit adamantine and follow the vein to a glowing pit.

Ideal environment

[zmaragdus]

perfect environment for electronic documents

Kernel Butler: Would you like a defragmentation this evening, sir?
Document: No thank you. I would however like an integrity scan.
Kernel Butler: Right away sir. Anything for Mrs. Backup?
Backup: No thank you. I just got all my bits redone at the BZip2 fitness center. I've been trying to watch my size and nothing's been working until -
Document: Oh, do be quiet. You've been prattling on about your size for ages. Nothing's wrong with size. I've just cleared 1MB and I'm none the worse for it.
Kernel Butler: Anything else, sir or madame?
Document: No, that will be all.
Kernel Butler: Thank you. I will schedule your scan immediately, sir. Goodnight.

Is it worth the cost?

[manyxcxi]

I wonder if the cost of digging into the side of the hill and carving out all these facilities is recouped through energy savings very quickly. I guess it all depends on the number of machines they would be running and the cost of electricity in their area- but if it takes 20 years, or even 10 to recoup the cost is it worth it?

Re:Is it worth the cost?

[Thud457]

The Iron Mountain facility in PA is recycling a old limestone mine, so it didn't cost them anything (extra) to dig out the space.

Re:Is it worth the cost?

[ServerIrv]

The probability of digging into any old hillside and create a facility like this is quite low and would be quite expensive. The reason this exists is due to a (profitable) mining operation in the first place. So, that should answer your question. Yes, mining is a profitable business and it is worth the cost to take natural elements out of a mountain. Once the resources have been harvested simply starting a data center in the space left over would be worth the cost. Another geological bonus for this location is a nearby underground lake that can be used as for thermal transfer.

Re:Is it worth the cost?

[nitehawk214]

I am from the area, and the Pennsylvania mine was almost solely government records for a long time. Iron Mountain took over in the late 90's. You see Iron Mountain trucks all over Pittsburgh collecting records now.

What about the rest of us?

[vvaduva]

Very cool stuff, but the rest of us who don't own mines don't really benefit from this solution. TFA says the mine layout and the underground lake are an "anomaly" of nature to begin with. We need solutions for "normal" data centers.

Either way, this was a great read. Thanks for sharing.

Re:What about the rest of us?

[Thanshin]

Very cool stuff, but the rest of us who don't own mines don't really benefit from this solution. TFA says the mine layout and the underground lake are an "anomaly" of nature to begin with. We need solutions for "normal" data centers.

Ah, the classic Dwarven Fortress "Your build only works with an underground lake, a magma river and a giant spider inhabited chasm" problem.

I suggest the classic Dwarven Fortress solution: "Select your site based on the natural elements and build the artificial ones." Oh and also "Don't let workers bring cats to the data center."

Re:What about the rest of us?

[Tekfactory]

Well, if you don't want any geothermal heat for electricity, you can use one of these for just cooling.

I worked for an outfit where I had to audit a facility that was built in an old Limestone Quarry (basically a flat underground mine, not an open pit mine) there were 3 million square feet of useful space underground around 80-100 feet deep. There are lots of these facilities in the Kansas City area, most of them are used for warehousing.

Anyhow for our needs it was constant temperature in the 60s and constant humidity, unfortunately despite poured concrete floors, and cinder block partition walls, there was a lot of dust from the unpainted ceilings. Also folks periodically found rocks in their workspaces that would fall from the ceiling.

It worked really well for paper records, but until we dealt with the dust, it played merry hell with our drive arrays.

Re:What about the rest of us?

[uncledrax]

No, they just flock to your datacenter.

The most interesting part is where does one get the magma in Iron Mountain they use to kill off thier nobles^H^H^H^H^H^Hmanagers?

Also I saw a definite lack of levers in the photographs. I'm guessing they don't show them so that way you don't know where the traps are.

Re:What about the rest of us?

[Thanshin]

The most interesting part is where does one get the magma in Iron Mountain they use to kill off thier nobles^H^H^H^H^H^Hmanagers?

"And so we reach Experimental Room 49. Dr. John Hammerer, you may get inside. Would you please press the red button with the big red 'DON'T TOUCH' text. Thank you."

"And now, dear team, as carp infested water fills the chamber I suggest you to think about the consecuences of nobility and promotion."

Re:What about the rest of us?

[Tekfactory]

As I posted elsewhere in the thread, I used to audit an underground facility.

One of their problems was employee turnover, a hundred feet down there aren't any windows or sunlight, one person there quit on their very first day.

I assume like submarine crews, it takes a certain kind of attitude to work underground in a 60 degree room all day with no sunlight. Lighting was provided by the same sort of opressive Fluorescents any cube rat qould recognize. Unlike cube farms, we had rooms the size of football fields (like I said elsewhere these spaces were normally used for warehousing) so you never felt crampt.

Re:What about the rest of us?

[AdmiralAl]

I currently work in one of these Kansas City area limestone caves. My company runs a datacenter/colo here and we don't run into this problem of dust playing merry hell with the drive arrays. The solution...paint the ceiling and install ceiling tiles to create a "normal" room. No rocks, no dust, just a clean and efficient datacenter.

Geothermal energy not renewable and cheap.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Geothermal energy to heat homes is either renewable or cheap, not both at the same time.

I had a colleague from Europe, where geothermal heating was very popular in 1980s. What they did not realize was that the earth is such a insulator that the available "heat" from the ground slowly gets used up and over some 20 years there is nothing left, the earth surrounding the buried pipe got so cold and the heat from the surrounding does not flow in fast enough.

Not an insurmountable problem. They should pump heat back into the ground in summer by using the same pipes as the radiator for their A/C. But if they cheap out during installation, the geothermal heat wont be renewable.

Old news for me at least

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it funny that this is being run as an experiment since I work at a mine.

We've had our datacenter down a '2 level' (~300ft) for years where it's secure (IE: Hard to get to) and a constant 4 celcius regardless of the season.

Only major issue we've had is with regards to humidity and ensuring that the dewatering pumps keep running. (Although... at a 5200 ft in depth it would take a few years for the water to get to the DC if the pumps shut off)

Re:Experimental Room 48

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Iron Mountain HR doesn't know exactly why they must automatically hire any comp sci. PhDs named "Forbin"; but the order stands.

Re:Reference please on "earth's heat being used up

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Will find citations about this problem. Essentially Geothermal building heating systems bury a large loop of pipe in the ground well below the frost line and circulate water through them. They use a heat pump (air conditioner running in reverse) with the ground as the source and the building as the sink. You need to put in mechanical energy to keep the system going. Figure of merit is the measure of how many units of heat is delivered to the building for each unit of energy used to drive the heat pump. Back when I was doing Thermody I (thank you Dr Bhaskar and Dr Venkatesh) this number was between 6 and 8. Now a days I see high efficiency aircons with efficicency ration in the 12, 13 or 14. Not sure if this is directly figure of merit of the heat pump or some factor involved.

Coming to the "earth heat being used up", essentially as the pump operates the earth in immediate contact with the buried loop starts cooling down and heat from further up would "flow" towards the buried loop. After running this system for decades there will be temperature gradient next to the loop. Most places in USA the frost line is 42 inches. That is no matter how cold the air gets, it can not raise the temp 42 inches below the ground above freezing! Shows how good an insulator earth is.

After two decades of operation the ground next to the loop reaches freezing temp. There is the temperature gradient, even though the temperature beyond three of four feet is much above freezing and places six to eight feet from the loop is practically not affected by heat pump running for decades, the heat pump becomes very very inefficient.