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Microsoft Puts Datacenter In a Barn

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the ei-ei-o dept.

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."

32 of 147 comments (clear)

  1. Washington state is CHEATING! by pecosdave · · Score: 3, Funny

    I want them to replicate this experiment in Big Bend National Park in July.

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    1. Re:Washington state is CHEATING! by Beardo+the+Bearded · · Score: 2

      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".

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    2. Re:Washington state is CHEATING! by sconeu · · Score: 2

      I want them to do it in Death Valley National Monument in August.

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    3. Re:Washington state is CHEATING! by afidel · · Score: 3, Informative

      Yep, for them technology reduces the cost per compute unit fast enough that the fact that they wear out faster is inconsequential and losing any given node is meaningless so a slightly higher failure rate is completely acceptable. It's the same reason Google can run with SATA drives without RAID, they take care of those concerns at a higher level. For those of us using software without builtin failover we can't really do this. Though if VMWare FT comes a bit farther it might be possible soon (though I'd still want my storage in a conditioned space even if the hosts weren't).

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    4. Re:Washington state is CHEATING! by sumdumass · · Score: 2

      It probably wouldn't matter. If you have enough airflow, you can pull enough heat away from the systems to avoid failure. It's not like the chips and stuff run below 100 degrees F under load much anyways.

      It they were liquid cooled, they probably could get away will a bit hotter ambient temps. What matters is the ability to pull excess heat away from the machines faster then it's created. In this situation you would be both heating and cooling the systems to maintain an average temp. As long as the outside air is below 140 f (60 C), most systems will do fine as long as enough volume moves across it. Cooler air need less volume and works more efficiently (sans getting it cooled in the first place) but it's really no different.

    5. Re:Washington state is CHEATING! by Pharmboy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

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    6. Re:Washington state is CHEATING! by Mspangler · · Score: 2

      Since I live in Eastern WA, and visit Quincy now and again (the local Honda motorcycle dealer is there) I have to mention that the summer peak temperatures can reach 105 to 110 F. These usually only last a few hours. My criteria is that if it's 90 F by 9 AM it's going to be a hot day, probably over 100. By sundown it will be under 90, and an hour after that about 70. And it should be down to about 55 by morning.

      Humidity is about 15% at mid day, so a swamp cooler would work fine for cooling the hardware.

      Wintertime has freezing fogs, lows not usually below -10 F, usual highs around freezing. We are just finishing a cold snap where the days went from 5 to 20. It's 28 now, as it is warming up to snow.

      Local power is hydro, wind, the nuclear plant at Hanford, and some imported from the coal plant at Boardman, Oregon.

    7. Re:Washington state is CHEATING! by hairyfeet · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Which is why I don't understand why some entrepreneur with a brain isn't buying up those old Titan II missile silos in north AR. Talk about the perfect data centers! You have an ambient temp of 55 degrees F in the lower levels, plenty of wind up top to pull away heat, simply add racks to the silo tubes with side venting at the top, a big fan blowing up at the bottom, and the chimney effect will take care of the rest. they also have plenty of fiber backbone run through that area thanks to AT&T and the US Military, so hooking into the backbone wouldn't be anything, cost of living is cheap, and no unions to worry about.

      While I think TFA is a good experiment, it seems like it would be cheaper in the long run to use structures already built with inherent cooling properties. There are missile silos being closed all over the place and having been in one the ambient temp in those lower levels stays pretty damned chilly. All one would have to do is use a big fan to pull it through grates set into the silo itself to have racks of servers that would stay nicely chilled for the cost of a large fan. Just seems stupid to let them rot or worse end up filled in when nobody buys 'em.

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    8. Re:Washington state is CHEATING! by clang_jangle · · Score: 2

      That was the Danger/Sidekick fiasco. "RROD" refers to the tendency of the xbox to fry itself to death. And it costs a tad more than one hundred dollars...

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    9. Re:Washington state is CHEATING! by RapmasterT · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

    10. Re:Washington state is CHEATING! by bennomatic · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Well, it's QC, not AR, but apparently, someone did think what you're suggesting was a good idea. The way they've got the systems oriented and the venting, all the heat is pushed towards the middle, creating an updraft which vents out the top and sucks in outside air so that you've got a natural cold aisle on the outside of the ring of computer systems. Pretty sweet stuff.

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    11. Re:Washington state is CHEATING! by ldobehardcore · · Score: 3, Informative

      Completely True.

      I live in the Seattle area, and have a sump pump and dehumidifier in the basement. The dehumidifier has to run year round, and uses twice the energy in a day that the air conditioning uses in 5 days. Granted, the dehumidifier is about 25 years old, and the air conditioning is only 4 years old. But they have about the same volume of air to modify the composition of.

      Western Washington is a really beautiful part of the country. But I have to admit, it's the least friendly place to any size of businesses. High sales tax (up to 9.6% depending on county/city) high cost of living etc. But I gotta say I love it here.

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    12. Re:Washington state is CHEATING! by Cylix · · Score: 2

      The problem is the obvious portion of the equation is by far the smallest factor in the issues that face free air cooling. I'm not talking about tent data centers and good luck getting PCI compliance on that rig.

      In thinking outside the norms and in part the concept behind tent farms is also regarding ambient temperature. No longer chasing the perfect balance, but rather just pushing the limits.

      It turns out you really have to design this type of thing from the ground up in order for everything to really work just right. Of course attempting to remove the constraints from one portion means you have to model everything just like that. That means servers which were designed to operate in that type of environment. Otherwise, little things like fans now running in their highest mode of operation all the time. Still, that power savings being eaten up isn't really even one of the biggest challenges. There is lots more equipment in the data center which doesn't play nice when the thermal conditions leap outside of what the vendor expected to see.

      So sure people are working very diligently at making things different and trying to save a buck. However, it's a little more complex type of stew then it would appear.

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  2. Mike Rowe by __aatirs3925 · · Score: 2

    Another dirty job episode coming up?

    1. Re:Mike Rowe by Mitchell314 · · Score: 2

      Working in a barn or working with Windows? *bing badda bang*

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  3. Re:interns by flaming+error · · Score: 5, Funny

    At least it's a stable job.

  4. I suspect... by Palestrina · · Score: 2

    I suspect that walls are useful not only for controlling the ambient data center physical conditions, but also for keeping criminals out. Forget about MTTF. What is the Mean Time to being Stolen by High School Kids for a "data center in a tent"?

    1. Re:I suspect... by Bucky24 · · Score: 2

      That was last generation... This generation's teens are more likely to be reciting WoW stats.

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    2. Re:I suspect... by PPH · · Score: 2

      Forget cow tipping. Now its server racks.

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  5. no failures? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    In September 2008, it successfully ran a stack of HP servers in a tent for seven months, apparently with no failures.

    So they weren't actually running microsoft software on those servers?

  6. 7 months in sep 08? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    "In September 2008, it successfully ran a stack of HP servers in a tent for seven months, apparently with no failures."

    Truly, it was an impressive feat of time dilation.

  7. The Barn Door? by trashpickinman · · Score: 2

    So after a data breach occurs, will they be shutting the barn door after the data is out?

  8. The myth of cooling by Shoten · · Score: 3, Informative

    In our datacenters (I work for a major IT company) we've actually done some research on running data centers at higher temperatures overall. The funny thing that came out of this...in the attempt to figure out where the magical "65 degrees" requirement came from, we had to do a lot of digging. It turns out that the requirement came from old APC UPS systems, which mandated that environmental temperature. We're discovering that data centers can be run WAY warmer than that with no ill effect, provided you still have good airflow.

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    1. Re:The myth of cooling by BBTaeKwonDo · · Score: 2

      That sounds a little dodgy. APC introduced its first UPS in 1984 (from http://www.apc.com/corporate/history.cfm ). I think data centers were kept at lower temperatures well before 1984. I think it's more likely that APC specified a given volt-amp performance at 65 degrees because that's the temperature data centers were usually kept at anyway.

  9. Re:interns by rubycodez · · Score: 2

    Billie, git yo-self behind th' barn 'n' cut a switch, you bin a baaaad boy!

  10. worked on computers in a hangar once. by Ungrounded+Lightning · · Score: 2

    Cut my "hacker's teeth" on some computers that were located in a WW II era bomber-plant hangar. (Built mostly of wood because the steel was being used for war machines.)

    Place had issues with mice and rats getting under the raised floor and chewing on the cabling.

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  11. Exotic datacenter == CIO hobby? by sootman · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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? :-)

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    1. Re:Exotic datacenter == CIO hobby? by blair1q · · Score: 2

      Cash registers are computers.

      Look at where those live.

      If these things can survive in a bar on the beach in a popular port-of-call for the Navy, they never did need walls.

  12. Got yer problem... by Caerdwyn · · Score: 4, Funny

    Yer SQL server crashin'? Lemme have a look at 'er...

    Ah! Found it right here... possums! Ya gots possums livin' in yer SNA-box-thingie. Heh... SNA... that always did sound dirty. ANyways, lemme get my plinkin' rifle and my coon dog Skeeter, we'll git yer back up and runnin'!

    Seein' as I'll be in there anyways, y'all want a RAM upgrade?

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  13. How about at the Alaska pipeline? by ron_ivi · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I seem to recall a business plan back in the late 1990's to do something similar adjacent to the alaska pipeline; complete with a refinery.

    The argument was that it would have

    * Free airconditioning with the clean dry cold alaska air.
    * Unparalleled physical security - with miles of visibility in all directions.
    * A well-protected network (if they could run their lines along the well-defended pipeline)
    * Unlimited backup-generator fuel (tapped directly into the pipeline)

    I seem to recall they raised funds. Wonder what happened to them.

    1. Re:How about at the Alaska pipeline? by gnarfel · · Score: 2

      Well I would assume that would be an obvious constraint (if not completely documented in your contract) when signing with such a company.

      I hate it when people take an interesting idea and point out the few edge cases where it won't work. It's obviously not a conventional datacenter, and I would likely think that the bean counters would have figured in the cost of the premium salaries and determined if the ratio of what they're saving on cooling costs would work, well before the plan even got put into motion.

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  14. Photos - The "barn" and container assembly by 1sockchuck · · Score: 3, Informative

    Data Center Knowledge has a photo feature with a bunch of images of the facility in Quincy and the container modules being assembled. You can see all the servers they pack into them.