Facebook May Make Tiny Town a Data Center Mecca

miller60 writes "Just weeks after the opening of a Facebook data center in Prineville, Oregon, local officials say two more companies may build server farms in the small town. Facebook has touted Prineville as an ideal environment for using fresh air to cool servers. The news positions Prineville (pop. 10,000, unemployment rate 17 percent) to emerge as a data center hub similar to Quincy, Washington, a small farm town that now hosts five huge server farms."

Comments

The natives probably won't be getting the jobs...

[Anonymous Coward]

This sort of thing has happened in many other industries in many other places many times over. It's rarely the natives who get the jobs. Rather, it's experts and technicians from other regions who are brought in to do the specialized work. The natives who support these new arrivals may benefit, but the unemployed often remain unemployed.

Tiny Town?

[Chris Mattern]

You mean this Tiny Town?

Re:Tiny Town?

[grumling]

How about this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiny_Town

Re:Tiny Town?

[magarity]

I was just at that one today and I didn't see any tiny data centers. What does one use for a Tiny Town data center, anyway? I suppose on an array of those usb stick computers.

Re:Tiny Town?

[jimmydevice]

I would give you a +5 funny, but I lost my humor in the Bush years and slashdot has been very stingy with mod points.

Michigan needs your server farm

[Anonymous Coward]

Michigan is cold, and we could use a server farm or two.

Re:Michigan needs your server farm

[c0lo]

Sorry, buddy, for Michigan's conditions only the relocation of the NYSE would help.

Re:Michigan needs your server farm

[LynnwoodRooster]

The people from Detroit would come and steal all the copper leading into the place...

I've been there

[benjamindees]

Interesting place. It's at the confluence of two rather steep rivers. I imagine there's a decent amount of hydroelectric available. Very much a small town. There was an attendant at the gas station. I remember seeing lots of well-maintained public infrastructure. The whole place had sort of a creepy Stepford Wives feel. 17% unemployment makes me wonder what the deal is.

Re:I've been there

[Anonymous Coward]

17% unemployment makes me wonder what the deal is.

Oxy

Re:I've been there

[sqrt(2)]

17% is probably just accurate reporting of the unemployment rate, unlike how the federal government under-reports by about half using tricks like not counting people who are no longer looking for work. When you hear unemployment numbers from the government, a good rule of thumb is to double it to get the actual percentage of the workforce that wants to work but can't find a job.

Re:I've been there

[doktor-hladnjak]

That's not just Prineville. All gas in Oregon must be pumped by an attendant. It's illegal to do it yourself.

Re:I've been there

[riverat1]

What two steep rivers? The Crooked River and Ochoco Creek? There's not enough water between the two of them to power the data center. Most of the hydro-power in the northwest comes from the dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers.

Prineville is a redneck place. I should know, I have cousins that grew up in the vicinity. The lumber mill shutting down and Les Schwab Tires moving their headquarters from Prineville to Bend doesn't help the unemployment situation. It's mainly a ranching and lumbering area that's off the main highway systems. Prineville is also the county seat of Crook County which helps make it larger than it would otherwise be.

Re:I've been there

[baomike]

Lumber industry is not too good right now.

Re:I've been there

[baomike]

No hydro locally. There is a hydro project down stream where the Crooked, Deschutes and Metolious river join. Water around Prineville is for irrigation.
Even the small dam upstream might have problems. It was built using a method that is now considered suspect.
Electric power in the region come from the Columbia via BPA (Bonneville Power Administration).
 

Re:I've been there

[benjamindees]

http://www.portlandgeneral.com/our_company/generation_transmission/crooked_river/default.aspx

http://www.centraloregonian.com/archives/story.aspx/12547/facebook-can-expand-with-approval-of-power-lines

Yeah I suppose it's not much, but it is undeveloped at the moment. And the hydro would just be used for peaking anyways.

Re:I've been there

[value_added]

You're basically correct, but to be fair, reporting (or "under-reporting") is often a complex topic. That said, the operative term is Discouraged Worker.

Re:I've been there

[Luckyo]

Just out of interest, why? The law sounds a bit strange, probably an old law based on some safety measure of the time?

Re:I've been there

[Wyatt Earp]

If you have a vintage car, motorcycle or an exotic you can pump the fuel yourself, you won't be fined nor will the gas station.

The law is that there can be no self service gas station, there always has to be an attendant.

Its the same in New Jersey.

Re:I've been there

[Osty]

Just out of interest, why? The law sounds a bit strange, probably an old law based on some safety measure of the time?

It's a political job-making law. Everybody needs gas. If you can't pump your own gas, jobs must be created to hire someone to pump it for you. If you want to run a 24/7 gas station, that means you have to hire several gas pumpers to cover all shifts, have multiple pumpers on hand during heavy usage hours. Each gas station could probably generate 5-6 extra jobs, which could mean thousands of jobs across the state.

Of course it's just make-work. No value is added by paying someone to pump your gas. It just costs the consumer more money and time than they would've spent otherwise.

Re:I've been there

[Vegeta99]

NJ does it too. When I was 17, I got a gas pump handle yanked out of my car and hand because I accidentally tried to pump it myself.

Whatever the reason, it must be grave. NJ/OR gasoline must be ten times as volatile or the pumps must run on static electricity. It seemed to be a capital offense.

In the end, I think it was a safety issue. Old gas pumps didn't stop at the top of the tank. Even modern ones don't. I was recently on vacation in Florida and dumped a good 5 gallons because the station had left its pump handles on for 3 years past the expiration date.

Re:I've been there

[riverat1]

Hmm, interesting. It wouldn't hurt to put in hydro-power at Bowman Dam. Every little bit helps. But it's only 6 megawatts. According the the Central Oregonian article Crook County currently uses about 40 megawatts not counting the Facebook center. The new power line they're planning to run from the Powell Butte Ponderosa substation would up the capacity going into Crook County to 120 megawatts.

I doubt the power from the Bowman Dam would be used for peaking. The water output has to be held pretty steady on that river so all they can do is turn the generators on or off, not the water. There are other dams around that can be used for peaking power. The one I'm most familiar with in that regard is Hells Canyon Dam on the Snake River. When I whitewater boat that river in the summer the water level often changes over 3 feet up and down over a 24 hour period. Crooked River is small enough you can wade across it in places in the summer both above and below the reservoir.

Re:I've been there

[riverat1]

Gas isn't any more expensive in Portland than it is across the Columbia River in Vancouver. I can't see that it costs us any more than pump your own, at least the difference isn't enough for me to worry about.

The issue was on a ballot measure a while back and the voters of the state soundly rejected allowing pump-your-own gas. (1982 - Measure 4 - the yes votes were only 42.5% of the ballots cast.)

Re:I've been there

[Compaqt]

They have expiration dates for pump handles?

Sure, I guess stuff has to be inspected, but that's to verify it's still working, not that it'll stop even working in exactly 365 days.

Re:I've been there

[drsquare]

How do they afford it? My local petrol station in a surburban area has eight pumps and one employee working at any time. There's no way they could afford eight workers to stand there all day.

Or imagine that a few cars turn up during a quiet period when there's only one attendent, you'd be waiting for ages.

As far as job-creation schemes go it's pretty dumb. May as well pay people to dig holes and fill them in again.

Re:I've been there

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not just Prineville. All gas in Oregon must be pumped by an attendant. It's illegal to do it yourself.

Actually, it is legal to pump your own gas, its just illegal for the attendants to let you. So if they're taking too long, just start to pump and they'll come running.

And you can pump your own gas on the Indian reservations, ie: warm springs.

Re:I've been there

[Anonymous Coward]

It started as a safety issue back in the beginning of time, but we've kept it on the books because it provides a job for so many people's 16 year old stoner drop-out sons so that they might just be able to get the hell out of your basement. All my looser friends from high school spent at least some time pumping gas.

Re:I've been there

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in Florida, sadly, and can vouch for that.It's happened to me at least 3 times where the shutoff didn't activate. My god, don't make a spark. It really freaks me out to see a small pond of fuel pooling up underneath the vehicle.

Re:The natives probably won't be getting the jobs.

[jmauro]

Actually it's sort of worse with datacenters in the fact they're large facilities but they produce very, very few local jobs. Most of the work is being done offsite over the internet or is completely automated.

Let's see here...

[Anonymous Coward]

A small town that hosts server farms for Facebook.

They should rename it "Farmville."

Re:The natives probably won't be getting the jobs.

[olsmeister]

Not directly, no. But people who do get teh jobz will move nearer their work. This will create additional jobs, as they must eat, drink, and shit nearby, particularly now due to the gas prices that we all enjoy.

I didn't see anything in TFA about tax breaks given, and am curious whether anyone knows whether that happened, and how much.

17% of 10'000?

[holophrastic]

You'd think that a town of 10'000 would have 10'000 things to do. What the hell? Did a town of 10'000 persons choose to outsource everything? It's not easy to grow food for 10'000. You'd think a movie theatre, a lemonade stand, a hotdog stand, and a community ball-park would be able to employ just about everyone.

Re:17% of 10'000?

[mikael_j]

Well, as it turns out, every year we are able to do a whole lot of things more efficiently with fewer workers which means more people are competing for the remaining jobs.

Of course, as a society we are also counteracting this in various ways but we're still unlikely to ever return to the "golden days" of the years between just after WW2 up to somewhere around the early to mid-70s when a single person could support an entire family's middle-class lifestyle and jobs were not just plentiful but as my dad put it "If we didn't like the job we'd just quit and get a job at the place down the street the next day" (When I was fresh out of college and looking for work he couldn't comprehend how it could be hard for someone with a college education to find a job, when he was that age there were plenty of jobs available, many of these with clear career paths).

Re:17% of 10'000?

[holophrastic]

have you guys thought about building a street? Growing, expanding, exporting something, specializing in something that outsiders would contract from you? It just kills me to think that a small town would have such a huge problem.

Re:17% of 10'000?

[baomike]

People don't stay. Those that can often leave. It may not be as pretty but you can find a job in Portland a
lot easier.

Re:17% of 10'000?

[jimmydevice]

Goldendale has an industrial park, It's occupied by the vacant France snowboard factory and a mint oil blending facility.
That is it, nothing else in over 10 years. Since the aluminum smelter shutdown, It's slowly turning into a ghost town.

Re:17% of 10'000?

[holophrastic]

sotp looking for a job! start a business. think of all of the employees available to you.

Re:17% of 10'000?

[Anonymous Coward]

sotp looking for a job! start a business. think of all of the employees available to you.

And sell to ... whom, exactly? The other unemployed? The businesses that are already in the area and quite satisfied with their current suppliers?

Or perhaps that was the point. Do I hear a whooshing sound overhead, indicative of a failure to catch intended irony? If not, you should rethinking that "ownership" line you're trying to sell.

Re:17% of 10'000?

[holophrastic]

the same thing every business does. Do you think that I sell to my neighbours? I'm in a city of over 7 million persons, and I sell to suburbs and surrounding cities more than I do to any of the 7 million.

You seem to think that there's just nothing that you can do on your own. That you need someone else to take the risks. More importantly, you seem to think that those risks don't translate right down the line to every employee. Only difference is that the employee doesn't have any control over that risk -- but they are still governed by it.

Yes, I think your other local businesses would prefer to have local suppliers within strangling range than not. Yes I think you can compete with others. Plain and simple. Yes I think there are services and products that you can offer to your community. Yes I think there are many of them.

Damn it, so many. You could start with an import business. It's not easy to import goods from foreign countries. If you're in a small town, odds are that you purchase such things from other companies who themselves do the importing, and, obviously, charge for their services. All those companies do is pay taxes and arrange transportation, and the occasional safety regulations. It's work, but it's no mystery. You can do it for ten cents less. The only reason for your neighbours not to use you is because they hate you. Otherwise, as long as you get the stuff to them, and you charge them less, they've nothing to lose.

But you don't need me to tell you what your community may or may not need. I'd presume that you can look at 10'000 persons and determine what would benefit them, or how you could improve their situation.

If you can't, then you deserve to have someone else telly ou what to do, every day of your life. And if you can't find someone who wants to boss you around, then you must not be worth the effort.

Re:17% of 10'000?

[riverat1]

The total population in Crook County is under 20,000. The adjacent Deschutes County is around 115,000. Prineville is kind of off the beaten path for transportation and I certainly wouldn't think about starting an import business there.

Re:17% of 10'000?

[holophrastic]

one of the challenges that every business industry goes through is figuring out how to serve a market that the established competitors can't seem to serve. One of Amazon's big problems was, and still is, where to place warehouses to ease shipping to anywhere. In my area of Canada, they actually use warehouses and shipping owned by other businesses -- as in a local cooking store can offer to store and ship amazon orders on their behalf. (I'm making up the cooking store part for this conversation).

one of the big challenges for large import companies is figuring out how to serve the so many small markets that aren't in large cities. If you were to take the time to build a model that would allow you to serve small communities, you'd be able to grow your business in a way that only a new and agile company can -- in a way that existing large import companies can't.

Re:17% of 10'000?

[riverat1]

I'm not really disagreeing with you but Prineville really is kind of off the beaten path. The closest town of any size to the east of it is John Day, Oregon with a population of around 1,800. It's 116 miles away over a winding mountain road that can be tough in the winter. There's not much but mountains and desert to the north and south of it. There's not that much distribution opportunity from Prineville that isn't better from Bend, Redmond or Madras along US 97 to the west. Of course distributing electronic bits doesn't suffer from the transportation issues that physical goods do so Facebook can take advantage of the cheap land and electricity.

Re:17% of 10'000?

[cluedweasel]

I have a business here. I need to employ a couple of decent network and server techs. Nothing fancy. Just need to know some basic networking stuff and how to maintain a mail server, read logs, do basic troubleshooting, etc. After a month of looking, forget about it. The few people in the area with those skills are snapped up. The reason you can't pump your own gas here is pretty obvious; most of the population here can't do anything more complicated. I have friends who operated stores that they had to close down because they couldn't get trustworthy staff.

Re:17% of 10'000?

[holophrastic]

I just spent four solid days driving around Vermont. I was appaled (or would have been, had I known how to spell it) at the lack of quality of the FM radio coverage. Within ten miles, a radio station would be good, be garbled, and be good again.

Obviously, there's a mountain in the way. But that's like calling interference in a school-yard football game when the ball hits a tree. The tree was there first. You knew the tree was there.

I'd have thought that by now, Stowe Vermont being older than FM radio, that there'd have been a network of repeaters to dodge the mountain.

I made up an import business as the first thing that came to mind for a small town. But between the people, the land, the weather, and the wildlife, you can't tell me that there's nothing that can survive in a given town. And even to that, I'll say that your business can be local to the next town, and you can still live in your town. Either way, unemployment is almost always the fault of the unemployed.

Re:17% of 10'000?

[holophrastic]

see, now that's what I wanted to hear. And more to your point, your comment was moderated down. The solution to the entire problem was moderated down. So I believe you when you say that they worth hiring.

Re:The natives probably won't be getting the jobs.

[XaXXon]

Data centers don't really provide many jobs at all - local or otherwise. After the location is built out it's basically a skeleton staff to keep the servers physically repaired.

Re:The natives probably won't be getting the jobs.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

On the plus side, datacenters are a touch water and power heavy; but aren't particularly noisy, noxious, or dangerous.

What you have to watch out for is situations where state or local governments end up offering ludicrously generous "incentive" packages that the locals will still be eating in taxes long after the industry in question has moved on(datacenters not exactly being a business where deep roots in the community help much, so they can and will pack up and move if you try to buy them in with 'incentives').

You can forget reviving the dreams of your blue collar workforce or such; but a datacenter should be a reasonably quiet, unassuming producer of modest taxes and a few support jobs. Just don't get sucked into a bidding war to host one...

So...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Do all packets have to be routed through it five times a day?

Re:The natives probably won't be getting the jobs.

[Ethanol-fueled]

Yup.

Here's a real-life example - despite the objection of many retired veterans and other anti-mercenary citizens living in the area, the county government crookedly rubber-stamped a new facility of a Blackwater shell corporation, Wind-Zero. Yeah, look at that again - You have a racetrack, hotel, and an artillery range...a noisy, dirty Disneyland for law enforcement(artillery and helicopter noise pollution affecting vets who chose to retire in what they thought were gonna be quiet neighborhoods, and lead pollution affecting the wilderness and water table) Another method to funnel tax dollars for law enforcement "training" into corrupt private hands.

They say it will bring jobs. All of us know that's bullshit. They will bring in specialists from other counties, states, and countries. The expendables will be hired from nearby Mexicali(local businesses, especially agriculture, also choose to hire from Mexicali despite the county's ~30% unemployment rate), at minimum wage.

If you concerned citizens of America want to know where your country's headed, look no further than California's Imperial Valley. The most jobless county in the blingiest state.

The article:

Prineville (pop. 10,000, unemployment rate 17 percent)

See above, we have 167,000 population with ~30% unemployment.

Send heat to local buildings

[Midnight Thunder]

While the cool air may be better for cooling the data enters, surely it would make even better sense to pipe that excess heat to local buildings. On the one hand the datacenter would be saving on heating costs and on the other hand the local buildings would save on heating costs.

The problem we have today is all too often buildings are seen as individual entities, instead of something that needs to fit into the local environment.

Re:Send heat to local buildings

[Anonymous Coward]

The Facebook facility is up on the wall of a caldera. Prineville's downtown is down below at the base. The losses in moving the heat would make it uneconomic, as volcanic rock is no fun to dig through.

Re:Send heat to local buildings

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that the "local buildings" aren't local, they're miles of pipe away. Heat systems only work next to an industrial facility or in extremely dense cities like New York.

Re:Send heat to local buildings

[riverat1]

Well I wouldn't call it a caldera but AC is right. The datacenter is on top of the rimrock maybe 700 feet above the town and digging a pipeline through the basalt for the heat would be quite expensive and require dynamite.

Re:Send heat to local buildings

[Johnny Mnemonic]

The excess heat will be used to heat the office space, according to http://opencompute.org/.

The problem is that the heat generated by DCs is pretty low energy and pressure. You can't heat much up with it or travel it very far before you lose it all in transmission inefficiencies.

Re:Send heat to local buildings

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with that is when it is warm, and you need cooling the most in the data center, you have the least need for heating in the houses and vice verse.

Re:Send heat to local buildings

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds all nice, but the infrastructure necessary to do this is very costly. To give you an idea, until about last year, a natural gas & steam powered cogeneration facility I work at was selling off their excess steam to an aluminum processing plant next door, which was about 1/4 mile away, for a cost, of course. They stopped though because it ended up costing the aluminum plant more money, both in fees and to maintain that pipeline than it would have cost them to produce their own heat. Now, picture scaling this up to cover many buildings, many miles away, it's just not practical. Of course, the plant just ended up raising power costs, to cover the portion of profit that the steam was not pulling in now, so in the end no one really lost out, except the customers.

Old people

[queBurro]

why don't they build these things under old age peoples' homes in cold towns?

Re:Old people

[Anonymous Coward]

why don't they build these things under old age peoples' homes in cold towns?

Le'me guess: aged people don't know how to route the IP packets and have no experience in tending the FarmVille?

Re:The natives probably won't be getting the jobs.

[zill]

Every engineer and technician that moves into that town will need housing, food, retail, education, financial services, utilities, health services, and thousands of other necessities. That mean more business for the local businesses and thus more employment.

Re:The natives probably won't be getting the jobs.

[baomike]

good luck at finding most of those in Prineville.

River of the Gods...

[Anonymous Coward]

Finally read it...dated already...but the call center hives are exactly what I thought of when I saw the headline.

I wonder why they have all that fresh air?

[OhioJoe]

Town better start writing some zoning regulation laws. The very thing the fresh air is attracting will attract more things which will attract more things which will take the fresh air away. That's not even considering the potential of the then thriving server farm industry driven economy tanking if those server farms pull out to go to fresher air, causing a cascading effect of failing businesses and massive job losses..... But then again I'm one of those "worst case scenario" kind of persons.

Re:I wonder why they have all that fresh air?

[c0lo]

But then again I'm one of those "worst case scenario" kind of persons.

LOL... I can infer a case of not enough "stupid movies weekends"
What about "thermal plumes causing mesosphere to fall in chunks" and category 7 storms?

Re:I wonder why they have all that fresh air?

[riverat1]

I laughed at your comment. Oregon already has pretty strict zoning regulations but Prineville is far enough off the beaten path that they have difficulty attracting business. Facebook was attracted by the cheap land and electricity rates. Before they developed that industrial park up on the rimrock it was just sage brush and juniper scrub.

Re:I wonder why they have all that fresh air?

[jimmydevice]

Not to worry, The server farms supply little but tax revenues, The locals won't notice and the elected officials will move on to their next mark.

Re:I wonder why they have all that fresh air?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's right--the building is pretty much isolated from the town up near the airport, but your sentiment is correct--it's a good thing to share hot air with your cool neighbors. There are tire warehouses up there that could use some heat....

When I was running the tech facilities of a TV station in nearby Bend, we changed some of the heating and cooling ducts to take outside air to cool the equipment room and heat from the studio equipment room into the administrative offices during the winter, and mornings, evenings, and winter days. Saved 30% the first month.

Prosperity, here we come...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's good for a town to be dependent on a single, super-rich employer.

Re:Prosperity, here we come...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Just wait until they start paying in Zanga cash...

Re:Prosperity, here we come...

[baomike]

You mean like Beaverton? (Intel)
Lots of towns in Oregon like that (a dying breed).
Most were dependent on a sawmill (sometimes a very large sawmill). Timber goes, town goes.
Sometimes there is a small town left, and sometimes they remove everything (Valsetz for instance).
Some were even company towns (the lumber company owned everything) Gilchrist OR. for instance.
Even Bend was a mill town, but it had a little more going for it (skiing, county seat) and didn't die out.

Re:Prosperity, here we come...

[riverat1]

Until Les Schwab died Prineville was the headquarters of Les Schwab tires. They still have a distribution warehouse there. That's the big employer in Prineville.

Re:Prosperity, here we come...

[jimmydevice]

Had to throw in Kinzua, another dead, bulldozed company town, I grew up their hunting deer with my family right up from the golf course, Yes A Golf Course. Watch out for the cow pies. Had a log cabin bar and a general store right out of a "fill in the blank" book. It's a shame it's gone.

Re:The natives probably won't be getting the jobs.

[hal2814]

The businesses are rarely concerned with giving jobs to the natives. They're far more concerned with talking employees into lower wages due to the lower cost of living and finding an area far enough away from peer-level jobs to make it hard for employees to leave once hired. (See Bentonville, Arkansas as an example).

Re:The natives probably won't be getting the jobs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you think bringing in 30 people to create what maybe 3-5 local 'support' jobs in a town of 10,000 has any meaning whatsoever? Is 3-5 better than nothing? Yes. Is getting the data center for whatever deal they made worth it? I don't know but I hope the town didn't have to offer much.

Re:The natives probably won't be getting the jobs.

[jimmydevice]

Being in the middle of this high desert boom, I can say that most, if not all of the economic development brought into these areas are high on tech
and low on jobs. Our area, Goldendale Wa., just up the river from the new google server farm, has bent over for a regional landfill,
a gas fired turbine juice plant and windmills (1000's), The jobs created were security and maintenance.
One shining success, The cattle ranchers that had crappy land got rich leasing to the windmill operators.
One stated, " I can afford to ranch again"

Will this actually help the town?

[Anonymous Coward]

But what's it actually going to do for the town? 17% un-employment is fairly high, but these datacentres don't require many staff to run and operate, and the staff require very specific skillsets.

I don't really think it's going to help the town that much in terms of their local economies.

Re:The natives probably won't be getting the jobs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Former Oregonian here. You can find pretty much the whole list in Prineville (or any other town of 10,000 for that matter). Sure your restaurants and retail will be a bit limited but you can make up for that with the intertoob's Amazon.com and the like, or if you want to do it in person you've got a one hour drive to Bend (small city of 76,000), or three hours to Portland. So not a big deal, plus you get to live in Oregon.

Prineville is like Mayberry but more so...

[marcle]

Back in the 70's, I lived in Bend, Oregon. I played in a country band (there wasn't hardly any other kind there), and we had a (very) funky gig in Prineville, highlighted by a scene I remember vividly still. An extremely large individual, dressed in flannel and overalls and looking and smelling thoroughly unwashed, came up to the stage and said, "Y'all know Home on the Range?" We tried to explain politely that it wasn't in our set list. After a little back and forth on the subject, he said, "Y'all play Home on the Range or I'm gonna come up there and mix it up a little." After a brief on-stage discussion we decided that the key of C was our best bet, and proceeded. That's gonna be some serious culture shock to a tiny rural bump on the map like that.

Re:Prineville is like Mayberry but more so...

[riverat1]

Sounds exactly like the Prineville I know. Back in the late 1960's a long haired hippie type came to town and was given a haircut (against his will) by the locals. My cousin was one of them.

Re:The natives probably won't be getting the jobs.

[luke923]

That's not an issue in Bentonville, since it's about three hours from Kansas City and about half that to Tulsa -- not to mention nearby Fayetteville, which is about fifteen minutes. Granted, there's not much that's not related to Wal-Mart in Bentonville, but it's not that hard to go outside it.

Am I right?

[CTU]

After the data center is built it might generate around 5-10 jobs or so. Not that much work to make any change in the areas unemployment rate, but still great for anybody who manages to land a job after who knows how long.

Re:The natives probably won't be getting the jobs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes bringing 100 people into an existing population of 10,000 will create at least 500 er 50 er 5 er a couple of jobs er shifts.

Data center Mecca?

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha, very funny, that would mean people would go endlessly around some big black box server all the day chanting prayers and hoping to get a deeper understanding of things... haha...

Hey! Waiddaminute... this is what the techies do all day around our M$ Win server!

Tiny?

[BurfCurse]

A town of 10,000 people is not tiny.

Re:The natives probably won't be getting the jobs.

[baomike]

AH Bend. What a mess they made out of that town. Good skiing , but population growth got a bit ahead of the city and county.
The town of 10,000 that was so neat is long gone. Californication at it's best.

A Eugene resident (native)

It's all about the Pipe Access

[tyrione]

Wherever a rural area houses the big pipes running through it, a Data Center will likely pop up. Especially when Hydroelectric power, Wind and Solar are prevalent.

Re:It's all about the Pipe Access

[cluedweasel]

60% of the energy for the FB data center is from coal fired sources. Very little of the electricity in central Oregon is from "green" sources. If anything, geo-thermal energy is what they should be looking at here. The area is still very active.

Re:It's all about the Pipe Access

[jimmydevice]

Where did you get that bullshit? Citations?
What? From all national datacenters?
BTW, I live here.

Re:It's all about the Pipe Access

[MachineShedFred]

Making up stats is fun, I guess, but Oregon has it's energy production made up in the following manner:

Coal: 39%
Hydro: 38%
Natural Gas: 15%
Biomass: 3%
Wind and Geo: 1%

(source: http://www.oregon.gov/ENERGY/CONS/docs/EnergyUseOR.pdf )

Also, you might try to make the point that the single coal-burning generation station is in Boardman, OR; which is ~100 miles from Prineville. However, you'll see from this map that Prineville is right next to a natural gas hub, and two hydro generating stations on the Deschutes River.

So, please cite where your 60% figure comes from? Thanks.

Prineville

[Anonymous Coward]

Prineville likes this.

Re:The natives probably won't be getting the jobs.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's OK, they are too busy changing tires.

Use thermal energy for something useful, Helsinki

[Sami Lehtinen]

That's what is done in Helsinki. Actually data processing can be very economical and green. If the waste heat generated from process will be used for something useful.
As it's being done here: http://www.greendiary.com/entry/helsinki-data-centre-installed-in-cathedral-bomb-shelter-to-heat-500-homes/
It's just logical to use waste heat from any other sources (like industry processes) is being re-used in similar way.

Let's position that a bit differently.

[PotatoHead]

Yes, it is a job making law. No question.

As for no value added, do you live in Oregon? It rains A LOT. And when it's like 45 and soupy rain, getting colder, it's absolutely great to pull up, stuff a 20 out the window, and get your gas pumped, easy cheezy.

I know my regular gas guy. We have a running conversation over the years, kids, family, politics, you name it. There is a lot of value there too.

As for prices? It's a few pennies most of the time, and sometimes it's less here than it is in Washington.

There, it's all pre-pay, barren stations, often dirty, crime laden, with some dude in what I can only characterize as the smallest possible workspace, barking at you through some shitty PA.

Of course, one can go to the nicer stations, where they figure out new and interesting ways to get you inside to buy stuff...

So the value is debatable, clearly. No question. But, let's be clear. It's not a significant price difference. I've lived here a long time, and the cost of gas relative to the "do it yourself" states has never been significant enough to warrant giving up the option of just staying in the car on a shitty day.

Re:Let's position that a bit differently.

[cluedweasel]

"As for no value added, do you live in Oregon? It rains A LOT." I live in Oregon. I actually live about 15 miles from Prineville. There's a reason it's called the "high desert". I think you're confusing us with the valley.

Re:Let's position that a bit differently.

[nature_geek]

Yeah, I live in Oregon, too and I find the law very obnoxious. The gas stations (particularly in the Willamette Valley and along the Interstates) don't adequately staff their stations. So when you're in a hurry, rather than pulling up, pumping your gas, and leaving, you have to wait around for some 16 year-old to run around to the 10 other cars that he has to service before getting to you. It's a waste of time for customers, and a waste of money for the business.

Re:Let's position that a bit differently.

[SomePgmr]

it's absolutely great to pull up, stuff a 20 out the window, and get your gas pumped, easy cheezy.

$20?! You must be driving one o' them newfangled, half battery cars. Or is that what you tip the attendant? :)

I always thought it would be cool to have the option when it's awful out. I guess it's not practical to make it optional though because I haven't seen a full service station since I was about 10 years old, in another state.

Re:Let's position that a bit differently.

[Anonymous Coward]

As an OR resident who used to live in Cali, I can agree. It is kind of nice not to have to screw around with the pump yourself, and the cost of gas here is cheaper than where I used to live, and many other states.

Re:Let's position that a bit differently.

[PotatoHead]

Nope! Just a old 89 corolla that gets about 40 MPG. Won't ever get rid of the thing. It's too cheap, and too easy to repair.

Re:Let's position that a bit differently.

[PotatoHead]

Totally. It does apply in the north west far more than it does your area. I have family there, and must say the very cold winter isn't a bad time to just stay in the car...

Re:Let's position that a bit differently.

[PotatoHead]

Is it that hard to plan your fill ups?

I never, ever have that problem. I fill up when it makes sense, and I'm not under any pressure.

Deffo not a waste of time or money. The business just marks it all up, making the money they would always make. Then again, who gives a shit about the business?

Mine is staffed with nice people. I know them well, and I get good service consistently. Happy to pay for that, as I'm sure the business owner is happy to have my patronage, appreciating the quality service they do.

Business owners make money on people too, or did you miss that day in school somewhere?

There are some stations like you describe. Understaffed, kind of shitty really. I don't buy gas there. Why bother, when I can get it somewhere that wants to run it proper?

Seems to me, you are fixated on your own self, not really thinking the whole matter through, but that could just be me...

Cheers, and I sure hope you find a better gas station, and reconsider your fill up strategy, LOL!!

What is this "Facebook" you speak of?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am intrigued by this book of faces. Is it some new fangled phone directory?

Re:What is this "Facebook" you speak of?

[Dogtanian]

I am intrigued by this book of faces. Is it some new fangled phone directory?

Actually, it's a book full of worthless "faeces" ("feces" if you're a Yank), not "faces". The people who founded it knew it would end up full of shit, but just couldn't spell.

It only makes sense.

[JeremyMorgan]

These types of places make a lot of sense. Google also has a datacenter in The Dalles, Oregon. This is because of great access to electricity, bandwidth and local labor. Not to mention these towns often welcome these companies with open arms by giving them tax breaks and allowing them to build with minimal interference. Not to mention cheap land prices. If they tried to build this same facility in Hillsboro, Oregon (where the majority of Intel campuses are located as well as other tech companies) they would be paying a much higher price for land, fighting for electricity and bandwidth, and battling the local government every step of the way. This move should surprise nobody.

Re:It only makes sense.

[pinkushun]

You know there's a problem when the big names in the business target minor towns to take advantage of their resources.

Of course these small places make sense to a crowded market

This move doesn't surprise anybody.

Re:It only makes sense.

[QuantumRiff]

The Columbia River Gorge used to be home to several very large aluminum Smelters because of the cheap, abundant power. However, over the last 20 years, most of them have closed down and moved overseas. So there is a ton of power going to some of those small towns that used to have smelters. Thats part of what made the Dalles so Ideal.. Massive amounts of power, a large river right next door (hello heat sink) and lots of fiber. (most fiber to asia actualy goes out through Oregon, because of the slope of the shelf.

Re:The natives probably won't be getting the jobs.

[riverat1]

You got that right.

(Native Oregonian who has lived in Bend before it got crazy.)

Re:The natives probably won't be getting the jobs.

[cluedweasel]

As someone living in the area, I can report that you're pretty much on the ball. The Prineville FB data center employs 35 people, but the tech jobs were all filled out of area. The lower grade jobs were filled locally. The days of tech staff on site seem to be gone. When I was operations manager at one of the largest DC's in Europe, most had a large staff of Networking, Unix, Windows, database and operations experts on site 24x7x365. Nowadays, most of the work is done remotely. The impact on local employment tends to come more from the building and ongoing maintenance of the facilities, rather than the hiring of locals as techs. Prineville (and the whole central Oregon area) really doesn't have any sort of tech base anyway.

Not going to help jobs much

[Bruha]

First any engineer they try to hire may just balk at having to live in such a small town. There are far bigger metro areas with good rates for electricity in the intermountain west that can provide 80% air cooling a year. Colorado Springs comes to mind where Walmart is considering building a Datacenter, and Verizon Wireless, Fedex, HP, and a few others already have facilities there as well, the cost of living is much cheaper compared to silicon valley or New York. I sure hope for their sake this small town is not far from Portland. Takes a special person to want to work in a town that small.

FWIW, data centers employ less than 100 people in most cases once it's built out, with small increases per 10000 sqft think 1-2 more people to cover the added workload. Considering the company involved, they will probably have a skeleton crew of facilities folks and a few engineers to handle the "Hands On" work. The rest will be taken care of remotely.

And in most cases these people just got sold out to facebook in the form of massive Tax breaks for facebook, that will not reduce the tax burden of the people who lived there. I think Colorado Springs is throwing millions in tax incentives to Walmart just to attract the business, not sure how a town of 10,000 could afford such large tax breaks, so hopefully it works out for them.

Re:Not going to help jobs much

[cluedweasel]

Prineville is about 3.5 hours from Portland in the summer. In the winter, it can be a lot longer. You need to cross the Cascade range. Central Oregon can be very, very isolated. We have one small airport in Redmond. Add at least $100 onto what you would pay for an airfare anywhere else. The largest town is Bend which has a population of around 80,000. Bend falls into the "nice place to visit but you wouldn't want to live there" category.

Re:Not going to help jobs much

[Anonymous Coward]

Prineville is 20 minutes from Bend, OR, the Aspen, CO of Oregon. People have been taking massive paycuts to live in the area for decades, I don't think they're going to have any problems whatsoever getting people to move in. I grew up in the area, there's outdoor stuff you can do year round which is frankly amazing. Les Schwab is actuall HQed there so they have some experience in Prineville having big corps around. This is going to drive their cheap property up even more, though.

Re:Not going to help jobs much

[Wolvey]

Bend falls into the "nice place to visit but you wouldn't want to live there" category.

Some people prefer the cool mountain air and plentiful outdoor activities over a crowded city. If you've lived there all your life you may yearn for a change but for me coming from a big city to Bend has been a breath of fresh air. Maybe you're just doing your part in keeping it a smaller city... if that's the case then I agree, you don't want to live there.

Re:Not going to help jobs much

[Johnny Mnemonic]

Les Schwab is actuall HQed there

Not any more. When the old man died, the kids, who were commuting from Bend already, almost immediately moved the corporate HQ to Bend. Les Schwab manufacturing remains in Prineville, probably because the facilities would be too expensive to move.

Re:Not going to help jobs much

[Johnny Mnemonic]

Bend falls into the "nice place to visit but you wouldn't want to live there" category.

I don't think that's really fair. Having just moved to Bend from The Dalles, the size of the town has been a real improvement in service/shops: Target, Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, etc. Lots more stuff to do, and better for the kids. It's no Portland, but it's a pretty decent place to raise a family. And I'm happy to have more than 3 places to eat at.

I'm surprised you say that, actually, since you apparently live in the area yourself. If you've been here awhile, you've watched the phenomenal growth Bend has gone through in the last 20 years, and are probably horrified by it; but if Bend was still 10K I wouldn't have moved here at all. So for me the growth is a bonus, not a negative.

Re:Not going to help jobs much

[Johnny Mnemonic]

First any engineer they try to hire may just balk at having to live in such a small town.

Data Center techs that want to work for companies with 100K+ sq foot footprints are getting used to living in remote areas. Especially in Oregon, which combines low power cost, large inexpensive acreage, temperate-to-cool dry climate (on the E side of the mountains), no sales tax(!), good network pipes, and low latency to California. Also Trans-Pacific network connections in Portland. cf Quincy, The Dalles. Those places don't hire folks that bang code and are used to living in the Valley.

And in most cases these people just got sold out to facebook in the form of massive Tax breaks for facebook

There are significant franchise fees paid by the power company to the local operator, even if there aren't a lot of wage tax income. That's basically free money to the community.

Re:The natives probably won't be getting the jobs.

[cluedweasel]

Oh yes, there were lots of tax breaks given and those were a source of a lot of local angst. They have a 15 year exemption from property taxes and were looking for a 10 year exemption from state income and excise taxes.

Re:The natives probably won't be getting the jobs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not likely to happen. The 50 or so engineers and techs (yes, that's a random guess, but I can't picture there being much more in an automated, modern datacenter) are not enough people to have people willing to open up costly businesses. Not to mention, being an electrical engineer myself, our mindset works differently than your average person. I know personally, it makes more sense to live somewhere 30-45 minutes away with all of these things already in place. 10 30-45 minute drives a week is much better than having to do it to get to any store, dining establishment, bank, or hospital, which I go to about 15-20 a week, at different times.

Re:The natives probably won't be getting the jobs.

[Anonymous Coward]

good luck at finding most of those in Prineville.

Yeah dude, thaaaaaaat's the point. Jobs created. Get it?

Re:The natives probably won't be getting the jobs.

[mjwalshe]

well a lights out DC which is what these are don't have that many employees - I did the sums and reckoned a Google one could probably have only 20 or so Full time employees plus some local minimum wage security guards.

One word.

[vegiVamp]

Serverfarmville.

Great news for little towns...

[hesaigo999ca]

Replace the car industry with the IT industry with these data centers and we are talking awesomeness!
It is amazing for these people to now be able to draw some more economic help from the big companies!

The REAL reason Facebook intends to use them

[Anonymous Coward]

Low cost labor. I've seen this before. These companies flock to whereever there is high unemployment (in an economically depressed area like the one noted in this article submission) because they won't have to pay high wages, and yet they'll get the best talent in computing that area has to offer for 1/2 of what it's worth.

"Data Center Mecca"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does "Data Center Mecca" mean that non-Muslims will be prohibited from entering? Otherwise, I suspect that using the name of the holiest place in Islam in vain for some cheap casual use will incite an anti-infidel jihad across the world.

Er, then again, maybe not...

Greenwashing? Fresh air vs. coal-fired...

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

So, we get this story about servers being cooled by "fresh air" at the same time the same data center is being derided for pulling most of its energy from coal-fired plants. (http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/17/youre-so-coal-trying-to-shame-facebook/)

I'm not saying Facebook is evil here, but this story looks like a PR plant do downplay the environmental concerns here.

Ironic title

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems like Mecca would be a terrible place for a fresh-air-cooled data center!

Re:The natives probably won't be getting the jobs.

[Bug-Y2K]

You are wrong. They will, and they do.

Datacenter work is the "blue collar" end of the IT spectrum. With the right toolset in place, anyone can be trained to do it.

Re:The natives probably won't be getting the jobs.

[Bug-Y2K]

"The Prineville FB data center employs 35 people, but the tech jobs were all filled out of area"

Wrong, and wrong again. Just because you live nearby doesn't mean you have a clue what is going on inside. More than half the full-time tech jobs have been filled locally.

Additionally the site has been under construction for over a year and a half employing hundreds of people, both locally and from all over the Pacific Northwest. All those folks have been spending their money in Crook County, hotels, restaurants, bars, etc. Every day for the past 18 months. I've seen Central Oregon before this project began, and since - the economic benefits have been palpable and positive.

Re:The natives probably won't be getting the jobs.

[MostAwesomeDude]

Disclosure: I work for the Oregon State University Open Source Lab, which recently received donations from Facebook.

I've been out to this datacenter. They employed quite a number of locals to build the place, and although the skeleton crew is only 35, they plan to keep a bigger crew of hundreds out there most of the time. In the medium term, they plan to build *two* more buildings the size of their current one, extending their current need for construction for another two years or so, and requiring a reasonably-sized group of engineers to live in the Prineville area for a while. So Facebook's put money, jobs, and consumers into Prineville, and apparently, according to the locals, this was a real lifesaver for many of the construction workers who were otherwise broke and unemployed.

I'm not a fan of Facebook, but this doesn't really seem like a horrible corporate exploitation.

Re:The natives probably won't be getting the jobs.

[TheLink]

We're talking about data centers. So it's not even about giving/creating jobs at all. It's about reducing jobs.

That's the whole idea of automation - cut costs. The computers do most of the work, and you only need a very few to do what the computers can't.

There will be some initial jobs when setting stuff up, even then if there's no airconditioning there won't be "installing and maintaining air conditioning" related jobs either.

The workers making the servers are in places like China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Brazil etc. And if robots ever become cheaper than those workers, those workers will start losing jobs too.

1700 unemployed

[Geminii]

So putting data centers there will create hundreds of no-experience-required jobs for local people? Or will the DCs simply be large buildings with a skeleton staff which neither employ locals nor create much additional local demand for human-attended resources?

Perhaps they're talking about additional employment during construction, rather than long-term?

Cheap

[matthew_t_west]

Google's smart.

Middle of nowhere, but close to Bend, OR which underwent a real estate boom and bust. So I'm imagining real estate is dirt cheap. Lot's of outdoor sports, breweries, and boutique shops in Bend, so Googlers or Googlites or Googlies will have a place to romp. Not to mention the weed is fantastic from Eugene...

As well, this the east side of the Cascades, so there are many microclimates ranging from high desert to rain forest to lush valleys. Night time is always frigid. Lots of wind power access.

Smart.

Re:Cheap

[matthew_t_west]

Ugh... I meant Facebook...

Google already moved out to the gorge.

Re:The natives probably won't be getting the jobs.

[SomePgmr]

You're right of course, when comparing it to, say, a proper tech company campus. Though at "Facebook scale", their centers might have quite a bit of HVAC and electrical work... beyond the build-outs. At least a lot for a town of only 10,000.

Plus with other places coming in too, it'll be something of a tax revenue generator. Play their cards right with those dollars and they might be able to turn it into a place worth living. Then the sky is the limit. I seem to remember a similar story about some depressed former mining town or something in the midwest that ended up reinventing itself as a mini tech mecca.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Does calling them "server farms" make you feel more like you're living in the Matrix or some other fictional society controlled by machines?