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

Tiny Town?

[Chris Mattern]

You mean this Tiny Town?

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

[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

[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.

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.

[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.

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: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"

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)

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.

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: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.