Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Puts Datacenter In a Barn
aesoteric writes "Microsoft has announced that it will open a new datacenter in Washington State housed in a 'modern' barn-like structure that is 'virtually transparent to ambient outdoor conditions'. It was not the first time Microsoft had toyed with the idea of a datacenter without walls. In September 2008, it successfully ran a stack of HP servers in a tent for seven months, apparently with no failures."
So we've had datacenters in shipping containers, and floating at sea, and now in a barn. Is this just large-scale case-modding for CIO's at rich companies? :-)
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
That would makes sense, as it takes tons of heat to produce cold air, and simply using the existing cold air has a much lower carbon footprint (corporations don't really care, to them it means lower power bills). As for humidity, it should be lower inside the barn than outside, as the heat from the systems will still raise the temperature enough to drop the relative humidity to more reasonable levels. Probably still higher than optimal, but like you said, who cares if you are running cheap enough gear, you would replace it more often anyway.
Reading Wikipedia seems to indicate that it is much drier there than eastern Washington anyway. You could likely balance the humidity with the temperature, ie: if you want lower humidity, you vent less and put up with higher temps within the barn. If it is anything like Spokane, then the main humidity is in the winter, when the air is holding less water to start with and allowing the temp to go up (vent less) will do no harm, while dramatically dropping the humidity. There aren't a lot of places this would work, but this area might just fine.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
I think that's the idea, isn't it?
When you get right down to it, all they're doing is getting free cooling from low ambient temperatures. It's hovering just above freezing there. The only thing they're keeping off is rain. I'm not sure what they're doing about the humidity -- maybe "not caring".
Not caring is exactly what the point of the tent exercise was. Historically the datacenter industry has maintained baseline ideas like 70 percent humidity, 75 degrees temperature...ideas that haven't changed with server technology and durability improving.
The point is if we spend "X" dollars maintaining a datacenter environment for a baseline of reliability. If we spend 75% of X and reliability isn't significantly impacted, then that's a win. But if we spend 10% of X, and the failure rate costs less than our original X cost, then that's a HUGE win.
Nobody expects that you can run an open air datacenter without increasing system failure rates, but the current datacenter paradigm just isn't scalable with modern high density systems, so something has to give. If "tradition" is the only thing it costs us, then tents it is!
As for Washington state being cheating...nothing is going to work everywhere. Hell, desert country is far better for datacenters than cooler climates. It's much cheaper to cool hot dry air, than it is to dehumidify wet air.