New Video of Apple's Enormous iDataCenter
1sockchuck writes "A new aerial video provides a rare look at Apple's new data center in North Carolina, which is expected to begin operations as soon as this week. It reveals the scale of the facility, which at 500,000 square feet will be among the world's largest data centers. The video, shot by a North Carolina real estate agent, also shows additional site preparation work that could support rumors that Apple plans to build another huge data center at the site." This is what drone cameras are for.
I just hope no one holds the database wrong.
Whenever in an argument, remember this.
Why does the video have sound?
Rare aerial video? Is there a square meter of the Earth's surface that hasn't been flown over and photographed in the last month?
So Apple's building a datacenter. Good for them; it'll join all their other datacenters, Apple and otherwise, around the world
. News, for nerds or otherwise, this isn't.
Will they load it up with xserve?
I wonder if Apple is the biggest customer for Xserves?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
It's full of Apples.
"among the world's largest data centers"
But nowhere near the top500.org, which is what counts for nerds.
So, speculationally, it will support the iPad cloud? 6 million fumbling feromonal fingers trying to type "vacation Louisiana", but no weather simulations. Sad.
How can that be the apple datacenter !
What OS will their servers run?
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Steve Jobs: [overheard on an iphone in a coffee shop somewhere in Cupertino] ...As you can see, my young apprentice, your friends have failed. Now witness the streaming power of this fully STACKED and OPERATIONAL data center!
Actually that would be a rather good question and at least an opportunity for Apple to gain more enterprise experience not to mention "eating one's own dog food".
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Large, but not that large. Most US telecoms hubs have several centers at the 500K SF level. Google has more than a dozen data centers with ~ 100,000 square feet each.
With buildout costs ranging from ~ $ 1000 / SF to a rumored 3 times that for Google, this is probably a billion dollar investment for Apple.
Do iPads/Phones/Fish have the bandwidth to stream high-quality music anyway? I remember something about the iPad not getting a great wireless signal.
Also from the article:
"We believe such a service would only enhance the loyalty toward Apple.."
More like the dependence on Apple. This will give them control over your entire media collection. In an instant they could wipe it from existence or do whatever they want with it.
I don't have any Apple devices, but if I did, I know that I would not upload my high-quality, offline available music to a server where it will most probably be re-encoded at a lower bitrate so they can stream it back to me.
Maybe it'll be optional, but from what I've seen of Apple they will force their users to make use of it.
Sounds like the name of a line of Apple branded external hard drives. "You really should buy an iDataCenter drive to backup your files on your new MacBook - only an extra $300 for a 1 TB iDataCenter drive!"
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
I mean a whiter shade of gray.
Steve Jobs says the MacBook Air is the future of the MacBook and the future of the notebook as well. But if that’s to be the case, the machine–and Apple’s ecosystem–needs to evolve a bit more to appeal to that strata of user tethered to the high-capacity hard drives that the Air has summarily dispatched.
So, what's this? You won't be able to store much locally with Apple's new product line? And you'll have to pay more for online storage?
I don't like that at all. No siree!
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
How come they didn't build it in California? Hm.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
Some day all the processing power and storage in that place will fit on something you can hold in your hand. Let's hear from the /. futurist nerds why this will/will not be the case.
iCaramba!
Sorry, it had to be said.
I remember the Death Star being half built and I quote the Emperor "Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational battle station!"
Is it just me, or does the idea of storing data on the equipment(property) of other people bother anyone else?
One question about all of this keeps coming to mind. At what point does that data become theirs, and not mine?
Until someone answers that question to MY satisfaction, I'll stick with my clunky, old HDs. At present, cloud-computing appears to me to be nothing more then a move to further monetize our own data by inserting a middleman between us and said data.
I'm trying to find it on Google maps but can't. Does anyone have coordinates for where this actually is?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I'm sure they've thought of this, but I really hope that the river next to it doesn't flood ....
(Rummages through FEMA's awful web site for flood maps) Well, that's interesting. Apple's probably OK, as the 1% flood line doesn't appear to cover their site. However, there's an interesting line on the map called, "limit of study", that appears to end before the site... Assuming that I have the right location, google maps is here, and here is FEMA's flood map (note: FEMA's link was working earlier, but now appears to be broken -- I hope I got the link right).
At least some offset for the energy use? http://www.physorg.com/news140875649.html
Fandroids hate facts.
Not much different than the first video".
There appeared to be a bee buzzing around in the plane and the noise was just too grating.
the only customer for Xserves?
Let's face it... Apple has proved to best cost effective in the recent years, so they'll probably buy cheap dell hardware and assemble them on a Linux grid.
That line in the summary bothers me. Makes me think that the next reply is: "no, that is what drone missiles are for..."
No geo-redundancy here. Better hope they don't happen to get sunk by an extended power-outage or natural disaster or wide-spread software bug that doesn't show up in testing.
Apple sells hardware. All of this is non-revenue generating investment, it's just a way to consume profits.
I know a Lieutenant Commander from Starfleet that would disagree with you.
I guess they don't put the same effort into their data centers as they do into their Apple stores, at least concerning the outside. And why did they build it so wide instead of up?
The writer of the original article and many posters look like they aren't aware of the next release of OS X. This will be a perfect justification for the 30% cut on the App Store. Perhaps they will even offer a service similar to SourceForge to sweeten the deal. With this capacity, they can afford to do it.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
can it play quake?
Nom de dieu de putain de bordel de merde de saloperie de connard d encule de ta mere.
All this speculation about iThis and iThat is premature - this could be nothing more than a new foray into the new market known as cloud computing. Big bets suggest there is money to be made, though I'm not sure anyone has figured out the market enough yet to know how to make it. The very young cloud computing space is already crowded with the likes of Amazon, Intuit, Google, Salesforce, Microsoft, and the list goes on. So it looks like here comes one more in Apple for the giant cage match. Like a lot of new areas of competition it will be interesting to see who buys which operation, which ones fail, and who is left standing at the end.
Mayday! Mayday! I think I'm flying into a mountain! Tell my wife I lo...
-- Braden's law of data: All data spends some of its lifetime in an excel spreadsheet.
have you or have you not read how apple lawyers keep suing people around australia for using the letter "i" in any kind of i.t. brand, and in u.s. the companies that use 'pod'.
either you havent, or the system again allowed a witless fanboi to get mod points.
getting downmodded isnt a problem. the zealotry is.
Read radical news here
It's the iNormous Datacenter. It's magic.
Why do I have this feeling that another company may use part of the storage at this data center in exchange for prominent icon placement by Apple on the Apple TV? I can see Netflix doing this very thing.
The OP asked "Is there a square meter of the Earth's surface that hasn't been flown over and photographed in the last month?"
The answer is NO, by several sources, down to a resolution of less than 3 inches.
Just because you don't have access to it because you can't find better than KH-11 imagery doesn't mean that the imagery doesn't exist.
I have seen embarrassing photos of infamous people sunning themselves, from 490 miles away. :-)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Hardware can come from anywhere, specially the consumer devices which are extremely price sensitive, but you can't/don't want to/ export consumer data.
Would you store all those credit card numbers and transaction records on foreign soil?
Would you store all of those apps, tunes, movies etc. on foreign soil?
Now imagine you live on foreign soil...
Look for Apple store roll-outs in other countries to be preceded by data warehouse expansion as Apple gets more and more involved with using the 'net for content distribution.
Apple will store statistical data for sales world-wide but will keep the financial and transaction data local to each jurisdiction.
Its a matter of accounting and accountability. You don't want to risk any merging or co-mingling of data.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
There is a thing called a volume control.
In fact I have volume controls on my MacBook Pro AND on my speakers.
Wow, who'd have thought of it... Obviously, not you.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Ton vocabulaire te marque comme un Français où un Wallon. (J'ai étudié les jurons. :-)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
next week jobs will announce the i-rocket
"...MILLIONS of dollars!"
*The Security Council bursts out laughing, and the Defense Minister of India offers to end the crisis by pulling out his personal checkbook and writing a check out for the amount*
Your post was very informative, but I couldn't help but get a Dr Evil moment from your state's supposed infrastructure expenditure. My city spends as much on a single duck pond or a bike trail. Hopefully you meant to demand/say BILLIONS! Or, given the strength of the dollar, TRILLIONS!
Lies about crimes
Every patriot thinks their country produces the best quality. But after Mercedes brought one model line here and could not after years of trying match the quality they were getting in Germany, they decided not to do it again. And the quality of American cars, well, speaks for itself.
So I have the option of starting anew in a country with high salaries and a spotty quality record, or I can go to the factory in China that already makes the iPhone and iPad at very high quality with workers who do not expect to spend hours on Gmail and Slashdot *ahem* everyday. Guess which I'm going to choose? The tax rate has nothing to do with it.
Lies about crimes