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Nuclear Bunker Houses World's Toughest Server Farm
Lanxon writes "Deep inside the Swiss Alps, a former nuclear bunker is now the ultimate hiding place for the world's most sensitive secrets — the Swiss Fort Knox. In a lengthy feature, Wired gains access to the server farm designed to survive a full-scale military attack. From the article: 'As we punch our codes at the checkpoint, the yellow door opens into what looks like a city of server towers, their green LEDs flickering as a technician in a white jumpsuit runs diagnostic checks. [Later], we are in a dimly lit tunnel next to what looks like a metal oven door carved into the side of the rock. "These are expansion rooms in case you have an atomic explosion outside," Christoph Oschwald, a retired Swiss paratrooper turned contractor, says. The thinking behind the rooms, he explains, is that if there were a nuclear explosion, the rush of high-pressure air would fill them through vents in the opposite side. Then, the vents would snap shut, trapping the air before it had a chance of damaging the fortress. "There is a lot of protection you can't see," he says. We stroll past an intricate network of insulated pipelines that carry water up from the underground glacial lake to the cooling system.'"
So is this where they store the schematics for their Swiss Army Knives?
Might survive a nuclear attack, but not some script kiddie and an admin that likes pictures of Pam Anderson.
I guess with all this safety and protection some guy named Homer from Springfield need not apply?
Is the infrastructure getting data to/from these servers going to withstand a nuclear blast? Do the servers run Linux?? Does anyone know if their "Apocalypse Level" technical support package is for the hosting customer only or will they extend it to site subscribers as well???
(*SNIP!*)
Underground glacial lake for cooling?
I thought it was the CO2 that was melting the glaciers in Europe, not farmville.
This is deja vu all over again. First off, if it's not a chain of similar setups you have a single site problem - BLAM goes your redundancy. Secondly, define "nuclear attack". If that means "survive the EMP from a nuclear blast" there would be some value in it, but that's going to be a tad hard to prove without seriously upsetting neighboring Gstaad with radiation :-).
However, most importantly, this stopped being news several years ago - if this is a new setup it's just yet-another-one, if it's not it's not news either. Some of these setups are quite cute, but the idea isn't exactly novel.
Ah, got it. The hint is in the article: "Rauber and his team, a public-relations representative" - who paid who for what here?
Yawn.
Insert
World's toughest server farm that you know about.
It's not nearly as secure now that we all know that it exists and where it is...
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
will it survive a backhoe cutting the data lines?
Proper availability is generally achieved through redundancy, not silly stunts like this.
If things get so bad that Switzerland is getting nuked, then my data will be one of the least of my worries.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
The article states "Wired has been instructed not to disclose its exact whereabouts." However it also gives a fair amount of info about it's location. I'm not familiar with the Swiss Alps, but there's probably at least a couple of people on the Internet who are.
What we know is:
It's in or near the "tiny village of Saanen, in the canton of Bern."
You have to "pass a Tissot boutique abutting a tractor dealership before the road dives into dense forest and follows a stream."
It "appears to be nothing more than a timber operation, with lorries moving wooden payloads around a gravelly clearing."
Is there enough there to find this place?
Who would nuke Switzerland?
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