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.'"

Comments

What secrets do the Swiss have?

[orphiuchus]

So is this where they store the schematics for their Swiss Army Knives?

Re:What secrets do the Swiss have?

[Amarantine]

Or Nazi gold...

I always thought Nazi Gold was a right-extremist radio station?

Re:What secrets do the Swiss have?

[jcl-xen0n]

Ah, there's your mistake; "Nazi" stands for "National Socialist", so the Nazis were left-wing, not right. Of course, the current crop of lefties would VERY much like us all to forget that part.....

Hoping you're trolling, but anyway - National Socialist was just a _name_ as the Party was born out of the German Labor movement, indeed like a lot of left-wing parties. That's where the connection begins and ends however - you certainly can't call many of the Nazi policies "left wing": - extermination of disabled / homosexuals / Jews / Gypsy(Roma) - promotion of idea of _one_ perfect race - class system that discriminated against particular groups ... and that's just for starters. Pray tell, apart from having the word "Socialist" in their name, how on Earth can you describe the Nazis as being left-wing?

Not so tough...

[HockeyPuck]

Might survive a nuclear attack, but not some script kiddie and an admin that likes pictures of Pam Anderson.

Re:Not so tough...

[Pharmboy]

Reminds me of the Simpson's episode, where Mr. Burns and Smithers go through a series of complex doors to get to the control room, just to discover that someone left the BACK DOOR open, a screen door, flapping in the breeze. Proverbial "a chain is only as strong as its weakest link".

Hmmm

[WrongSizeGlass]

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???

Re:Hmmm

[gman003]

The "infrastructure" seems to be a secure courier handing over hard drives in a lockbox. This is more like offline backup, not online.

Glacial lake for cooling?

[gatzke]

Underground glacial lake for cooling?

I thought it was the CO2 that was melting the glaciers in Europe, not farmville.

Exactly how often are we going to hear this?

[cheros]

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.

Ahem...

[pedantic bore]

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...

Pointless

[Leebert]

Proper availability is generally achieved through redundancy, not silly stunts like this.

Re:Pointless

[Nefarious Wheel]

Proper availability is generally achieved through redundancy, not silly stunts like this.

Proper availability is generally achieved by multiply-redundant, geographically distributed, block-replicated silly stunts like this. Who says it's just one bunker?

Way down on my list

[paiute]

If things get so bad that Switzerland is getting nuked, then my data will be one of the least of my worries.

Wait.

[Samantha Wright]

Who would nuke Switzerland?