AOL: Outdoor Server Huts Are the Future

1sockchuck writes "While Facebook and Apple are investing in huge data cathedrals, AOL has decided to go in a different direction: a distributed network of rack-sized server huts that live outdoors. AOL is taking the concept for its unmanned data center and shrinking it into a 'micro data center.' AOL envisions a distributed network of these units, allowing it to quickly roll out new IT capacity for hyperlocal news sites and create its own content distribution network."

Comments

CBG

[Anonymous Coward]

envisions a distributed network of these units, allowing it to quickly roll out new IT capacity for hyperlocal news sites and create its own content distribution network

Ahh someone's been visiting the Corporate Bullshit Generator LOL!

Re:CBG

[camperslo]

What content is it AOL has that people want to see?

Maybe they should find existing sites to put the servers.
How about Pizza Huts? Help heat the pizza ovens.

Re:CBG

[Pringless]

You can't heat pizza ovens with servers that never heat more than 80 degrees... Google is stupid, but they're not that stupid to actually try it.

Re:CBG

[Anonymous Coward]

heat pumps

Re:CBG

[icebike]

oops, AOL, not amazon, my bad.

Re:CBG

[Grishnakh]

Yes, you can. You obviously wouldn't use the servers as the sole heat source in a pizza oven, but you could use their waste heat to keep the oven warm, so that the mean heating element doesn't have to use as much energy to reach the operating temperature. Granted the savings would probably be minimal, but it can be done. But it probably would take a while to recoup the investment in actually putting it all together.

There's a lot of energy-saving things involving heating and cooling that can be done that people don't bother with because the return on investment would probably be too long. For instance, everyone has a refrigerator in their house, which produces a fair amount of heat in cooling its interior (there's coils on the backside, for cooling the compressor). In the winter, this is no problem, since you want your house warm anyway, but in the summer this is counteracting your house's A/C, making it work harder to keep it cool inside. What if there were some way of diverting that heat to the outside of the house in the summer, but in cooler months keeping it inside? It could be done with some custom ducting, a fan, and temperature-controlled louvers. But you never see this because that's a lot of work, and therefore expense, when the gains are probably minimal.

Similarly, clothes dryers produce a LOT of waste heat, but this is usually just ducted outside. My house actually has a diverter box in the ductwork so that in the wintertime, I can move the flap and let all the hot air blow into the house (through an additional screen to keep the lint down), which reduces my heating bills. Unfortunately most houses don't bother with this, though it'd probably have a much bigger effect than the refrigerator idea above.

As energy costs rise, I imagine we'll be seeing a lot more energy-saving strategies like these.

Re:CBG

[KhabaLox]

Corporate Bullshit Generator

Bookmarked. I'm going to try to use a line from there in my PP presentation to Sales on Monday. Ahh, here we go:

"Market-driven cost efficiencies influence our perspectives."

Re:CBG

[TheMiddleRoad]

You must like it humid in the house.

Re:CBG

[postbigbang]

On the surface, your thinking looks good-- find heat transducers and reservoirs to store it. Distributing servers causes massive redundancies of the fixed gear needed to store and reuse heat. Convenience memes that create dysfunctional residential electrical power states are a problem, but people don't like sharing, don't like living in dorms, don't like high, up-front costs of shelter, and so you're fighting many problems.

As to AOL's distributed "NOC", the rationale for it is almost ludicrous. The local/regional/area "news gathering" they're trying to do would be distributed in that way, thus cutting the enormous costs of their CDN bills. The systems will still be 3% efficient, as most servers and networking gear are. The other 97% will still needed to be used, and another 100% of power consumption will be needed to cool the mess. As the mess is now distributed, and can't have shared costs of infrastructure (the advantages of ISPs and MSPs and "cloud providers), the redundancy will be hugely expensive, if potentially more resilient and with slightly less latency. The rest of it is hyperbabble PR-People-on-Acid.

Re:CBG

[Anonymous Coward]

everyone has a refrigerator ... (there's coils on the backside, for cooling the compressor).

There are coils, not there is (there's) coils. But I digress.

More often than not, the coils are on the bottom. They might be on the back of smaller refrigerators, but I wouldn't know.

That not withstanding, they don't have anything to do with cooling the compressor.

I don't believe my fridge is a significant source of heat. It's not like the coils are hot, or even warm, to the touch.

My local big box home improvement store sells a dryer duct heat exchanger that extracts the heat and still vents the damp air to outside. I prefer that over pumping lots of moist air into my living space. All that moisture would just help mold and mildew grow.

But you get modded +4 interesting anyway?

Re:CBG

[drinkypoo]

Humidity traps for these systems are readily available. They don't work amazingly well, but they do remove a notable amount of the moisture from the air in question.

Re:CBG

[Anonymous Coward]

Humidity traps for these systems are readily available. They don't work amazingly well, but they do remove a notable amount of the moisture from the air in question.

Well which is it? Either they don't work well, or they do.

Even if moisture traps sorta work, I'd rather use a dryer duct heat exchanger, which is also readily available at my local big box home improvement store. I don't suppose they work amazingly well either, but at least I would not be pumping lots of moist air into my living space.

Re:CBG

[drinkypoo]

Humidity traps for these systems are readily available. They don't work amazingly well, but they do remove a notable amount of the moisture from the air in question.

Well which is it? Either they don't work well, or they do.

Well which is it? Either you own a dictionary or... well, I see you don't.

Re:CBG

[OrigamiMarie]

If you are running the dryer on natural gas, you need to think carefully about carbon monoxide before venting it indoors. Or set up a complicated heat exchange system.

Re:CBG

[codewarren]

Your refrigerator idea won't save energy in the summer. The efficiency of the fridge is related to the temperature difference between the coils and the air around them. If they are exposed to a hot outdoors, the fridge will simply work harder. If you expose them to the cool indoors, the fridge gets a break at the expense of the house's A/C which has to pump the extra heat away.

In other words, something has to overcome the temperature difference to push the heat outside. It's either the fridge or the fridge + A/C and in neither case are you going to see any savings.

Re:CBG

[Anonymous Coward]

Note that this is against code in most areas. Gas driers produce Carbon Monoxide (CO) which is of course deadly. If someone vents a gas dryer into their house, they will have health issues or experience death.

Re:CBG

[error_logic]

During the winter months (when the heating would be necessary), additional humidity is often beneficial. Air inside can get *dry* with the temperature difference's effect on relative humidity.

Re:CBG

[CanadianRealist]

I've thought about a number of different options for saving energy related to heating and cooling.

In a house you could use a diverter to run water from the bathtub drain through a radiator in the basement in winter instead of just sending all that heat into the sewer.

In the summer time you could make use of a radiator on the water supply to dump heat from the house into the water that's been cooled by the ground, then send that heat into the sewer.

When I see an indoor rink with a pile of ice from the zamboni sitting outside in the summer I wonder why they don't use the ice to dump heat from the cooling system that created it in the first place.

I have a dryer in my apartment and divert the hot air inside in the winter. I also use a dehumidifier to get rid of the excess humidity. The heat generated replaces heat that would otherwise come from electric baseboard heating.

Re:CBG

[pete6677]

Someone at AOL must know this entire idea is simply ludicrous but if it gets the financial backers of AOL (whoever the hell they are) to let the company live another day then its worth a long shot.

Re:CBG

[postbigbang]

No, it doesn't. The backers get strung out and lose the investment. The mgmt at AOL/HuffPo/etc. don't get changed. Civilians that invested in AOL get screwed. Living for another day isn't necessarily a good thing. When the entire economy is down, then the tendency for everyone to take their lumps at once is a well-known way to keep financial pain from having an effect on stock price. But that isn't the case here. AOL is portending that this is somehow visionary, and solves big problems, where it doesn't do that. At. All.

Re:CBG

[DarkOx]

The dryer thing sounds like a fabulous idea to me. The fridge I kinda have my doubts. If you went the fans and duct work route the compromise to weather envelop of an otherwise well insulated house would likely result on the loss of more energy then you spend having the AC move the waste heat out. Keep in mind most energy loss is around doors and windows, solid wall with insulation and house wrap over it has a pretty high R value.

The better approach to the fridge might be some valves to select of a secondary radiator loop outside the house rather than the one on the back of the unit. Those lines are tiny like 3/8" so they could be extended through the wall without much energy loss and calked around easily.

Trouble is though the fridge is a heat pump. Heat pumps become less efficient the more against the gradient you try to go. So your fridge is going to use more power trying to cool the inside if forced to dump the waste heat into the 90 degree out doors rather than the 74 degree indoors. Now unless your A/C unit is 100% efficient it will still take more energy to move the now greater heat generated by the fridge's imperfect efficiency; so it should be a net win but we are talking something vanishingly small.

Re:CBG

[TheMiddleRoad]

I keep hearing about that, but I have not experienced this, at least in California. The dry days, evidenced by bloody noses, happen in the summer with the AC running. We also had a humidity gauge awhile back. It varied by rainy days and such, but otherwise not much.

Re:CBG

[Anonymous Coward]

Me too.

Re:CBG

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention all of the potentially toxic fumes from blowing hot air over many different clothing materials, soap residues, and other wash byproducts... it sounds insane to do this without a heat exchanger to keep the real dryer exhaust going outside where it can dissipate.

Re:CBG

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh?

Put the crack pipe down, step away from the keyboard, and nobody gets hurt.

Re:CBG

[gottabeme]

"Brevity is the essence of wit."

Re:CBG

[laejoh]

Make sure to use Comic Sans, if it's good enough for the CERN then it's good enough for you!

Re:CBG

[zippthorne]

What should really happen is that the fridge and the AC shouldn't be separate units. The AC should offer a refrigerant tap and communication feedback line for the fridge so they can be combined into a single system so that the fridge's compressor is completely bypassed during the summer.

Re:CBG

[drinkypoo]

"Brevity is the essence of wit."

I see what you

Re:CBG

[gottabeme]

Now you're starting

Re:CBG

[DarkOx]

If you are in climate you use the AC all year round or in one where you turn it around and use it to pump heat in in the winter I can see that. There are lots places where the AC unit is simply not used though during 6+ months of the year and it would be way to large to use to efficiently keep a fridge cool.

Re:CBG

[zippthorne]

That's why I said, "bypass" and not "replace"

The problem could also be solved by having a pony compressor unit for use when the AC demand is limited to the refrigerator. It shouldn't matter that the refrigerant is delivered to other parts of the house as well if the refrigerant is actually a room temperature liquid that cools by endothermic phase transition.

But yeah, modern refrigerators use what.. 50W average? Unless there's a huge COP (and it can't be more than 15 for a 4C fridge in a 25C room), it's probably less than the lighting or a couple sleeping adults.

Re:CBG

[Grishnakh]

I live in Phoenix. A little extra humidity inside in the wintertime is a welcome thing.

Re:CBG

[Grishnakh]

Take a short drive to Phoenix. It's dry in the winter (it's dry all year, except during the "monsoon season" in the summer), and while not exactly "cold", it can be chilly enough to want a little bit of heat, and the small amount of humidity that dryer exhaust would add to the air isn't a problem, instead it's probably welcome.

Re:CBG

[Grishnakh]

How is living another day not a good thing? Yes, the investors and backers may be screwed, but who cares about them? The only important people are the executives, and as long as they get more bonuses, that's all they care about.

Re:CBG

[Grishnakh]

If you still have soap in your clothes when you dry them, you're either using way too much soap (quite likely; lots of people make this mistake, thinking they need 4x as much detergent as they really do), or you need a new washer. The rinses (multiple) are supposed to get rid of all that. "Wash byproducts"? Like what? There shouldn't be anything going into the dryer except wet, clean clothing. The clothing material thing I might buy, but even there you should be using heat appropriate for the fabrics; unless it's all cotton, don't use high heat, turn it down to low or medium (another common mistake people make is using high heat all the time).

Re:CBG

[Grishnakh]

All that moisture would just help mold and mildew grow.

Mold and mildew isn't a problem where I live; it's a desert here in Arizona, there's barely any humidity in the winter air at all. Humid air from the dryer is a good thing.

There are coils, not there is (there's) coils. But I digress.

Wrong. "There's [plural words]" is perfectly acceptable colloquial speech. I'm not writing a formal dissertation here, this is Slashdot.

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002447.html

Re:CBG

[Grishnakh]

But yeah, modern refrigerators use what.. 50W average? Unless there's a huge COP (and it can't be more than 15 for a 4C fridge in a 25C room), it's probably less than the lighting or a couple sleeping adults.

My point exactly. Even if we did come up with some elaborate way of improving the total system efficiency by piggy-backing onto the house's A/C or whatever, the actual energy savings would be quite minimal compared to the expense required to achieve that gain. At current energy prices, it just isn't worth it (and refrigerators have gotten more efficient by themselves in the last few decades too, don't forget). But who knows what'll happen in the future if energy gets more expensive.

Re:CBG

[Anonymous Coward]

I can smell our unscented, high-efficiency detergent in the air around the dryer vent even though we use less than the prescribed amount. Many people add dryer sheets and other fabric softeners too. The concentrations needed for biochemical influence are far lower than what we need to notice something like soap marks or stiffness in the cloth.

By wash byproducts I mean that the bleaches and detergents are chemically reacting with organic "dirt" and dyes in clothing to do their job, adding new organic and inorganic compounds into the rinse water. There is also lots of particulate matter, ranging from soils, pollen, bacteria, and molds you are cleaning out of your clothes, to skin cells and bits of cloth fibers broken up by the wash agitation. The big stuff you see in the lint trap of the dryer is only the largest of these contaminants.

The amount of volatile organic compounds in heated tap water is enough to be a concern in a shower, much less after it has been mixed with all the other stuff I mentioned above. It's not that it will make you ill after one load (unless you give yourself carbon monoxide poisoning as others have mentioned), but the effect of long-term exposure is unknown and certainly not a benefit to your respiratory tract nor general health.

Re:CBG

[evilviper]

In other words, something has to overcome the temperature difference to push the heat outside. It's either the fridge or the fridge + A/C and in neither case are you going to see any savings.

This is nonsense. Your home A/C isn't 100% efficient, and the refrigerator's compressor motor generates its own waste heat (in addition to the heat it's pumping out) which can be vented to outside with no additional energy required.

Re:CBG

[codewarren]

Neither is 100% efficient. Running one harder or the other harder will make no significant difference. The compressor was partially my point. If you expose the fridge coils to the outdoors, the motor has to run harder, so it may even be less efficient. In addition to this, A/C units tend to use less power per unit of heat exchanged (i.e. are more energy efficient) so having them do the work is better, meaning that the GP's idea won't work (as I said).

Re:CBG

[jbengt]

Your refrigerator idea won't save energy in the summer.

No, unless you have a perfect reversible refrigeration cycle, you will save a little energy.
You might be able to save a considerable amount of energy in the winter, though, by rejecting heat directly to the outdoors, or using "free" economizer cooling when (and if) the temperature outside is below the refrigerator temperature. Of course, if you're heating with electricity, anyway, it wouldn't really make a difference.
An better energy saving idea, though kind of expensive, would be to use water-cooled heat pump systems using ground-coupled water loops for heating and cooling of the house, fridge, and domestic hot water.

Re:CBG

[jbengt]

The dryer thing sounds like a fabulous idea to me.

It's a recipe for mold and moisture damage, unless you were to go to considerable trouble to get rid of excess humidity, especially in the space where the dryer is located. (I had an unvented dryer in my basement once for a year or so, I stuck the flex vent out the window in the summer, but tried to let it vent indoors in the winter - it wasn't a great idea) YMMV, though, as this depends partly on the climate.

Re:CBG

[TheMiddleRoad]

...

Re:CBG

[cusco]

Live anywhere that homes have to be heated to 50 or more degrees over the outdoor temperature and you'll experience dry air and static electricity like you've never known existed.

Re:CBG

[LeanSystems]

FTW

Re:CBG

[TheMiddleRoad]

Hence I dislike going to Tahoe.
On the coldest nights and mornings at our house, we'll hit around 30F. We keep the inside at something like 60, but the days heat makes the night heating not too bad. When the nights are in the 30s, the days are usually in the 50s.

Re:CBG

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in Winnipeg. Because it's well below freezing, the outside air holds very little humidity, and it gets exceedingly dry indoors (gross levels of dryness; skin cracking, eyes dry, noses bleeding, and that for at least a quarter of the year). This is a common issue in cold climates.

Re:CBG

[rev0lt]

As to AOL's distributed "NOC", the rationale for it is almost ludicrous.

And it's not even clever. Some "datacenter on a container" providers already exist, that go way beyond a couple of racks, have neatier insulation and are completely mobile if you need it. And if you want small, there are half-container solutions.

Re:CBG

[Anonymous Coward]

Carnot may disagree with your "100% efficient" thermal machine. Maybe, given that Carnot was a frog-eating, surrendering French I missed some changes to Carnot-cycle (should we rename it to Freedom cycle?) or maybe thermodynamics discovered by French do not apply in your country.

Re:CBG

[mattack2]

What content is it AOL has that people want to see?

AOL owns the Huffington Post, amongst a lot of other sites, that get a lot of hits.

Re:CBG

[evilviper]

Until you can be bothered to run the numbers on your scheme, you are just an ignorant loud-mouth that likes to argue.

Re:CBG

[swalve]

Just because something is common doesn't mean it is acceptable. "There is coils" is wrong.

Re:CBG

[Grishnakh]

Actually, yes it does, when you're talking about language, especially the English language. Language is defined by how people use it. The "proper" usage is defined by how it's used by the people who speak it. So if it is common, by definition, it IS acceptable.

If most people start saying "There is coils", then by definition, it is correct.

Google abuses forests

[Pringless]

Why is only AOL and Microsoft doing this? As much as I like Google, I can clearly see that they don't care about the environment.

Re:Google abuses forests

[couchslug]

"I can clearly see that they don't care about the environment."

Citation fucking needed NOW.

The tiny servers-in-a-can model is cute, (the stupid black paint job has to go, try that in AZ in August and you couldn't even open the door without burning your hand), but centralization makes for much easier operation and maintenance for large server farms.

Re:Google abuses forests

[camperslo]

Citations please? The have been articles describing things Google has done that lowered the cost and power consumption of servers. They did things like using higher efficiency power supplies, and avoiding some extra DC-DC conversion.

Although large businesses can often be criticized for choosing higher profits over environmental responsibility, servers farms are clearly an area where better environmental impact generally means lowered costs. More efficient servers cost less to power, maybe be more reliable when producing less heat, and have lower cooling costs when producing less heat.

Maybe some can find ways when the heat is always put to use? That doesn't seem easy to do all year around, but perhaps some oil refining, chemical processing, recycling, or other manufacturing process could use the heat as part of some process where heat is always needed. Some might be able to shift loads to servers in cooler locations where they could help heat buildings. They might get a break on space rental in exchange for lowering the energy costs to a complex. Not everyone will have the flexibility to pick locations where such things are possible, but hopefully it can still be done increasingly.

I find it hard to believe that Google wouldn't go for efficiency whenever possible, even if motivated only by the bottom line.

Re:Google abuses forests

[couchslug]

Centralization puts similar objects where a small group of techs can have immediate hands-on access, store spare parts and spare machines, have backup power with economies of scale (large diesel or Capstone turbine gensets), and directly guard and monitor equipment.

That's simple physical, observable reality not requiring citation.

Isolated units which are small involve sacrificing advantages of immediate service. If no workee, dispatching a tech by car or truck with tools and parts is required. If it gets severely damaged by (for example) lightning strike, fire, vandalism or theft that means delivering and connecting a replacement.

"HOLY FUCK I BET THEY NEVER CONSIDERED THAT THEY COULD ALSO PAINT THE CABINET WHITE!"

If so, they would have done that and used an appropriate constrasting Aologo.

See these for commercial examples "light color" use:

http://www.capstoneturbine.com/

Citation needed for the assertion re: Google being environmentally irresponsible because their processes are not simple and easily observed.

Also, post with your nick, bitch. ACs eat shit. :-)

Re:Google abuses forests

[Anonymous Coward]

Centralization puts similar objects where a small group of techs can have immediate hands-on access, store spare parts and spare machines, have backup power with economies of scale (large diesel or Capstone turbine gensets), and directly guard and monitor equipment.

Oh, I guess you missed the part about "unmanned", huh? What a surprise. You seem sadly unaware of virtualization, mesh networking, and fault tolerance. You should probably go understand those things before you critique the paint job of a system designed with these things in mind.

If so, they would have done that and used an appropriate constrasting Aologo.

Citation from the motherfucking linked article, bitch:

“Wide-scale deployed units won’t have the fancy paint jobs and logos, so they will very much look at home in those equipment yards. Given the nature of our technology set, should a catastrophic event or malicious damage occur, we have the abilities to swing the IT load around to other nearby instantiations.”

So yeah, the fancy paint job? Not required. Not even remotely likely. Probably a dull avocado or tan or off-white paint job, just like other big outdoor equipment cabinets.

Have fun with yourself, chum.

Re:Google abuses forests

[Belial6]

Centralization for the benefit of maintenance is not inherently better. It is better if you have high failure rate hardware. Whether there are physically reliable enough servers at this point in time is a different question. Certainly at this point, a project like this would only be connecting a replacement on site. It shouldn't take any more local skill or time than inserting a Super Nintendo cartridge.

Re:Google abuses forests

[zippthorne]

Avoiding DC-DC conversion? I thought they made more use of it to simplify the power supplies themselves, the connectors, and the motherboards.

Re:Google abuses forests

[camperslo]

IIRC the consolidation I'd read about was partly a matter of skipping going from DC to 120 VAC 60 Hz and back to DC again following individual UPS batteries. I believe the motherboards had an efficient high-frequency switcher for the bulk of the load, but not a full DC-DC converter. There was no isolation transformer and no rectifier beyond commutating diodes.
The DC distribution voltage wasn't really low, which helps avoid excessive conductor losses and those in the preceding rectifier. I might not be recalling all of the details correctly. But it came across as a simple low cost optimization that most others just don't bother with. That wasn't surprising to me since many developers and digital designers have little background in analog / power supply design, or r.f. considerations for that matter. I don't recall if anything special was needed to constrain battery charging.

Re:Google abuses forests

[dbIII]

It gets expensive when a lot of power is being consumed. Those big fat copper busbars you need to carry a lot of DC cost a big fat copper price at the moment.
Per rack is a different story and a lot less watts, but still, moving things to DC means moving everything to DC including test setups. There's far too much mucking about until you can dump a faulty server on a table and plug it into a DC socket.

Makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Their clients still live in huts, so it makes sense to move their servers there too..

If only

[GeneralTurgidson]

If only we could shrink a data center into a small enough form factor that we could mail It to unsuspecting Americans...

Re:If only

[Pringless]

Didn't they try to? Google was building some data centers on boats. I bet they were capable of carrying terrorists and weapons too.

Re:If only

[Brucelet]

Is that "mail IT to unsuspecting americans"? Interesting use for a mobile data center...

Have they thought this through?

[UnknowingFool]

According to AOL, the servers can operate in warmer temperatures. But is warmer mean 80 F or say 100+ F in Texas in the middle of summer. These servers are remotely managed which is great until they stop responding because a small rodent chewed through a cable. If you are outside, the chances of things like this happening are greater.

Re:Have they thought this through?

[Joe_Dragon]

also what about being hit by cars / trucks?

Hit by wind blown debris??

Stuff getting jammed / blocking air vents?

Flooding?

Re:Have they thought this through?

[pem]

Being picked up and carried off? (Kind of like an ATM, but for the data inside instead of the cash.)

Re:Have they thought this through?

[Nidi62]

Sounds like a pretty good target to see how accurate that new hunting rifle is

Re:Have they thought this through?

[Idbar]

Actually, I have been thinking about that. Just make them pretty, like water fountains, and cool them down while they look pretty in a park.

Re:Have they thought this through?

[Anonymous Coward]

These servers are remotely managed which is great until they stop responding because a small rodent chewed through a cable. If you are outside, the chances of things like this happening are greater.

You realize that data center buildings are also "located outside," right? There's nothing intrinsically special about a traditional massive data center that makes it repel rodents. I guarantee you that it's much easier to seal every half-inch crack a rodent could squeeze through in a rack-sized enclosure than it is to seal every half inch crack in a fucking 500,000 square foot data center.

Plus, there's people (and food, water, and comfortable temperatures, and a marked lack of natural predators) inside a data center building, as well as tons of little nooks and crannies in the ceilings and walls that are attractive nesting sites for rodents. Inside a sealed metal enclosure the size of a refrigerator? Not so much. This is why buildings often have rodent problems that exterminators have to deal with.

Re:Have they thought this through?

[Hognoxious]

I guarantee you that it's much easier to seal every half-inch crack a rodent could squeeze through in a rack-sized enclosure than it is to seal every half inch crack in a fucking 500,000 square foot data center.

It's a lot easier to seal the perimeter of one 500,000 square foot data center than of 500,000 one square foot centers.

Re:Have they thought this through?

[Pieroxy]

I guarantee you that it's much easier to seal every half-inch crack a rodent could squeeze through in a rack-sized enclosure than it is to seal every half inch crack in a fucking 500,000 square foot data center.

It's a lot easier to seal the perimeter of one 500,000 square foot data center than of 500,000 one square foot centers.

True but the impact isn't the same. If you miss 100 of your 500k one square foot centers, only 0.02% of your servers are compromised.

If you miss 100 spots in your 500k sq ft data center, 100% of your servers are at risk.

Re:Have they thought this through?

[M. Baranczak]

"The data inside"? This is AOL. They can't give their data away.

Lol

[masternerdguy]

As if AOL can tell us about the future.

Counting the minutes...

[Bieeanda]

...until some scumbag with a sawzall realizes that there's expensive computer hardware inside those black boxes.

Re:Counting the minutes...

[Grishnakh]

It definitely wouldn't work where I live, in Phoenix Arizona. Half the area's inhabitants are meth-heads who'll steal anything that isn't bolted down.

Re:Counting the minutes...

[KhabaLox]

It definitely wouldn't work where I live, in Phoenix Arizona. Half the area's inhabitants are meth-heads who'll steal anything that is or isn't bolted down.

FTFY

Re:Counting the minutes...

[pem]

Is it the hardware?

Or the data?

Maybe they have some good encryption and intrusion detection, maybe not. Maybe you have to toast the first few boxes before you figure out how to suck the data out of one without it suspecting.

Re:Counting the minutes...

[Anonymous Coward]

And I'm sure these things wouldn't be secured in any way. Probably just a paper wrapper over them saying "please don't steal our expensive shit," right?

While it's possible that AOL hasn't specifically considered YOUR crackhead neighbors in Phoenix in their design, I'm fairly certain they've considered the idea that "hey this stuff is expensive, we need a secure physical enclosure that won't allow people to just take whatever they want out of it."

Re:Counting the minutes...

[Anonymous Coward]

Pfft, I live in Phx as well and the meth heads in my neighborhood have bolt cutters for the stuff that IS bolted down!

Re:Counting the minutes...

[Anonymous Coward]

There's expensive computer hardware inside those cell tower street cabinets as well, and those have faired O.K.

Re:Counting the minutes...

[Dahamma]

You must not have read the article!

“Security is always a concern, but in general these devices have more in common with equipment you would see in an equipment yard for most buildings than standard data center environments,” he said. “Wide-scale deployed units won’t have the fancy paint jobs and logos, so they will very much look at home in those equipment yards.

See? It's even better than security through obscurity, it's security through paint jobs! I hear covering it in dog shit also helps.

Re:Counting the minutes...

[Grishnakh]

Maybe, maybe not. Remember, in many places in the country (including meth-head infested areas like Phoenix), we have copper thieves getting themselves electrocuted so they can steal electrical cables, plus people stealing catalytic converters from underneath parked vehicles. I'm not sure how large this "server hut" is, but I sure hope it isn't on wheels like a trailer or else it'll be easily stolen.

Re:Counting the minutes...

[Grishnakh]

Yep, and they also have portable sawzalls so they can steal catalytic converters!

Hmmm.

[Frosty Piss]

New account, 100% MS AstroTurf... One wonders...

Re:Hmmm.

[Pringless]

How is that MS AstroTurf? There is no turf.

Re:Hmmm.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dumb comment yes, but not quite astroturf.

Why?

[hawguy]

I don't see the use case for these. Any sizeable office that wants server capacity is going to have a room indoors where they can put it - pouring a concrete slab outside and running power + network + water to it doesn't seem much better than dedicating a small server closet inside the building. I can see some niche market in remote sites (mining sites, research sites, etc) that need more servers than they can stack in the corner of their office trailer, but if they have that many servers, this single rack is probably not what they are looking for. They are probably more interested in a datacenter in a shipping container.

How does this tie in to AOL? If they want to get their content closer to users, colocating the servers at the telco or ISP makes more sense since the only way I'm going to get data from the server pod across the street is via my ISP connection. I don't think I'm going to want AOL content badly enough to set up a point to point wireless link or trench a data line under the street.

Re:Why?

[couchslug]

"They are probably more interested in a datacenter in a shipping container."

Indeed. ISO containers are cheap and you can send one to your site with everything you need AND have storage or workspace INSIDE the container protected from the weather.

If your "AOL in a can" breaks in foul weather, then you need to COVER it to OPEN it.

You don't need to pour a slab for ISOs as they are supported by the corner fittings. A railroad tie under each end is usually just fine.

I use ISOs for personal shop buildings and storage, and have worked in and with them while deployed.

ISO containers are available in small 10-foot configurations too.
Generic example:

http://www.shippingcontainertrader.com/johnads/6/Tmp0002F.jpg

If you are going to pour a slab, USE all of the square footage. Pot four twist-locks in the slab, install ISO, and lock it down. Even a hurricane isn't likely to shift it. Alternately, bolt it down with common expansion anchors through welded-on tabs of your choice then tack weld the bolt heads to the tabs. It ain't leaving on its own.

ISO containers don't have a proprietary form-factor container to deter upgrades either.

I don't sell ISOs, but do have morbid nasty love for them.

Sea Box website with MANY examples of container mods. Your local welding and fab shop can roll your own easily:

http://www.seabox.com/

Re:Why?

[bill_mcgonigle]

I don't sell ISOs, but do have morbid nasty love for them.

Where should somebody aspiring to this level of sickness start?

Re:Why?

[Johann Lau]

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/08/09/22/1448226/microsoft-innovates-tent-data-centers

^^

Too bad the network isn't hyperlocal...

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless they're going to be on Fiber, DSL, Cable, and Cellular at the same time it might not work so good here... the cross-connects between services are out of town.

Re:Too bad the network isn't hyperlocal...

[Anonymous Coward]

My network is hyperlocal whenever I see the cable model network search led blinking.

Bad Idea if it came from AOL

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason we go with mega data centers is because they are more cost effective.
Google figured this out a long time ago.
AOL, please go die in a fire.
Thanks.

A solution in search of some problems

[Cute Fuzzy Bunny]

Right off the bat, you're going to combat environmental issues, but the biggest problem I see is how you secure these systems, their code and data in an adequate manner.

In short: stupid!

If There's Ever A Company To Trust

[l0ungeb0y]

If there's ever a company to trust when it comes to predicting the future, it's AOL. Why just three years ago they predicted they'd have to move away from dial-up since broadband would be the wave of the future and look at how right they were.

Re:If There's Ever A Company To Trust

[garyoa1]

Not to mention they can charge double since broadband was their idea. Along with Al's.

Here's a citation about google and the environment

[pem]

http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/2011/1220/Google-invests-94-million-in-California-solar-farms Oh, wait...

Interesting choice of color

[Dzimas]

The utility box shown in the photo is painted black. I sincerely hope that's just for worst-case testing, because there's nowhere in the continental US that you'd want to leave a server baking in the summer sun in a black box. Of course, a light grey utility box also gets extremely hot, so one would hope that they have some sort of simple sun shades that keep these units out of direct sunlight. On the off chance that they don't, I should patent it -- "Passive shade cooling system for outdoor data center systems," here I come.

Re:Interesting choice of color

[girlintraining]

You're about two years too late. Look up patent 20100003911, "Passive Cooling Systems for Network Cabinet", issued to Panduit corporation. -_-

Security?

[KhabaLox]

Isn't one of the tenets of network security physically securing access to the servers? How would they prevent someone from tapping into the boxes and either sniffing traffic or directly stealing content?

Re:Security?

[Anonymous Coward]

The better question is where are these located, I have a job for my truck and some chains.

Re:Security?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't argue with AOL. They are the technology leaders.

Re:Security?

[Anonymous Coward]

What makes you think any thinking was involved in this project?

Bonanza!

[RKBA]

This is a bonanza for scrap metal dealers and the scroungers who steal things like lamp posts, wiring and plumbing from abandoned houses, etc., because the contents of one of these unmanned micro data centers must be worth lot more than a lamp post to scrap dealers.

Re:Bonanza!

[Anonymous Coward]

It'd go great on the roof of many office buildings, though.

But why is something you want to keep cool and plan on leaving out in the sun black?

Re:Bonanza!

[Anonymous Coward]

That box looks a lot more sturdy than your average office building door, and I don't see why you couldn't trivially alarm it. With a bit of thought, I don't see why an outdoor "micro datacenter" would be any more of a theft risk than the indoor variety businesses have. Both are a far cry from the professional security available at a dedicated co-location facility, of course.

No Bad movie references yet?

[Rabidcat]

Come on guys, this is Slashdot, no one has yet made the comparison of this idea to one of the worst movies of all time, that being Manos: The Hands of Fate given the name of the CTO at AOL that is announcing this "breakthrough" in computing?

And here's an idea to help with the cooling on this outside enclosure - don't paint it BLACK!

Cool

[benjamindees]

This has seemed like an obvious idea to me for a while. I figured Google would be the first. But I'm glad somebody is finally doing it. I wonder how many of these AOL could possibly roll-out? Hundreds, at least. Thousands?

Bargaining chip

[Animats]

Sounds like a bargaining chip as they negotiate for colo space in switching centers. It might be useful in some special situations where you can terminate dark fiber into your own box and save on backbone costs, then have a short distance link into some other facility.

I would have expected this from Comcast or Verizon. If a local box held a few thousand hours of video cache, including recent TV and movies, most requests might be satisfied locally, unloading the upstream network.

Humidity?

[crow]

How will they handle humidity? They've been designing servers to handle higher temperatures to save on air conditioning, but they won't deal well if the humidity gets too high. I expect these outdoor servers will get lost in the fog.

They'll also have issues with air pollution, insects, and animals.

There are plenty of data centers that use outdoor air for cooling, but they filter it and monitor the humidity.

Re:Humidity?

[benjamindees]

It sounds like the units have air conditioning as well as direct air cooling.

Re:Humidity?

[petermgreen]

What matters to electronics is relative humidity not absolute humidity (and the tolerable range is pretty wide 5% to 95% according to wikipedia) snd the absense of condensation. Condensation is generally caused by rapid changes in air temperature that leave solid objects colder than the surrounding air.

So as long as the following conditions hold I don't think humidity will be too much of a problem.

1:internal temperature is higher than outside temperature (it will be unless you are employing refridgeration techniques)
2:incoming air is mixed with recirculating air
3:no significant moisture is released inside the datacenter (e.g. humans are kept out as much as possible)
4:rapid changes in internal air temperature are avioded (this can be acheived by altering the mix ratios in response to outside air temperature)

In this way the absoloute humidity of air circulating in the datacenter will be about the same as the absoloute humidity outside and the relative humidity inside will be lower than the relative humidity outside.

'Live' outdoors

[Frankie70]

I for one welcome our new Living Server Overlords.

20xx

[Anonymous Coward]

the future!!!

http://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/293760-mega-man-x-dos-screenshot-forest-levels.png

And for the broader view...

[Zemran]

I could not think about this without wondering what Compuserve are up to ... so I looked at their site http://webcenters.netscape.compuserve.com/menu/about.jsp and cracked up when I saw the Netscape logo at the bottom... These people still think that they are important :-)

Re:And for the broader view...

[pete6677]

They have actually updated their "dialer" software for Windows 7, as if there is anyone who upgraded to Windows 7 but connects to the internets via dialup. There must be a group of computer programmers from the 90s that have been kept in a cave somewhere that still maintain the CompuServe network and are mostly unaware of what has changed in the last 15 years. Maybe 5 years from now they'll find out about that Facebook thing everyone has been talking about.

Re:And for the broader view...

[Anonymous Coward]

1. If you live out in the sticks, up in the mountains, or in the desert (we have all these in the US), dialup is the only reasonably-affordable connectivity you're gonna get. Satellite? Sure, talk to Hughes. They don't even list their prices, which should tell you something.
2. Some people like the option of back-up connectivity. Don't plan on fast, GB-range file transfers, but you can email (Mutt), surf (Links), remotely administrate (SSH, RDP, VNC), and do small file transfers.

Seems to me

[fustakrakich]

They could go a little smaller

The next headline...

[Anonymous Coward]

AOL servers will soon require debugging from being outdoors. Literary. Tons of flies and stuff...

Re:The next headline...

[couchslug]

True as anyone who's done HVAC maintenance knows.

Similar to electricity distribution AC vs DC

[j-stroy]

This is reminiscent of the original standards battle between AC vs DC distribution systems.. monolithic centralized infrastructure vs distributed regional systems. You remember the one where Edison electrocuted an elephant.

Anyways the pendulum goes back and forth on these things, and if period doubling is occurring that means that fine grained rapid deployment is required to keep pace with that. Won't be long before data centres are riding electric trains, semi-trucks (a la Walmart's warehouse on wheels model) or even public transit busses with high speed datalinks to physically shorten that last mile.

Why is Google so interested in autonomous vehicles anyways? Could it be something do with an inevitable trajectory towards automated containerized data centre deployment? After all, there is a similarity with a third world concept where poverty drives innovation. So really shouldn't the discussion be about graphing costs of data delivery vs cost of caching & updating?

Co-locate them inside beehives

[Anonymous Coward]

That should keep out the less-determined thieves and hackers. You're going to have insects invading the huts anyway, might as well take advantage of them.

Re:Co-locate them inside beehives

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm. Is honey a di-electric? Could you use it as coolant?

Does this mean...

[Bill_the_Engineer]

Does this mean their service is so crappy you have to keep it outside?

And if History Repeats Itself...

[NickRCody]

Their end goal is that these huts will eventually become so small AOL will include one in each issue of PC World.

Re:And if History Repeats Itself...

[almaden]

Is AOL anything more than the Huffington Post and Tech-Crunch these days?

will it have?

[dutchwhizzman]

Will it have a door with a heart shaped hole cut into it? How about a horizontal board about 2 feet from the ground with a 1 foot hole in it?

...and

[Konster]

Jabba the server Hutt.

If, and ONLY if...

[Shag]

...they make each "hut" look like a Tardis.

Then, we can talk.

That's sweet.

[aix tom]

... "Out on a lonely slab of concrete in the back of one of the buildings" ...

I bet there will be a big opportunity for "second hand" datacenter trade in shady pawn shops sooner or later.

But.. When it is very cold it is dry.

[bdwoolman]

The colder the dryer. In Moscow we ran a humidifier in winter to improve indoor air quality. So if you are in a continental deep freeze this rather sweet clothes dryer hack would give a double benefit.

Re:But.. When it is very cold it is dry.

[TheMiddleRoad]

So you're saying that in Soviet Russia, dryers un-dry you?

AOL: We hate our IT workers....

[Lumpy]

Server huts... so you get to work outside when you work on these things. Rain, snow, 120 degree heat. No thanks.

I worked long enough in the Cellular industry to be abused by working on these god-for-saken "huts" they think they invented... The Cellphone industry has had them cince the late 90's.. it's not new, they are not innovative. And they SUCK to work on.

Re:AOL: We hate our IT workers....

[cusco]

We have a couple of customers who have network video recorders in NEMA-4 enclosures. What a pain in the rear, especially in Seattle in the rain.

Sure, why not?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, apparently AOL still exists. So I guess anything's possible.

sounds like AOL to me

[slashmydots]

An unmanaged, unguarded, basically zero security server rack in the middle of nowhere with suicidally high downtime potential due to environment conditions...sounds like AOL to me.

Doable...

[Anonymous Coward]

Basically distributed micro-datacenter ... like Ackami has done to locally cache content at small and large datacenters almost everywhere.

The easy implementation is to make a cabinet, pre-loaded, and ship it to a datacenter where they plug in power and network connections. The box 'phones home' for personal configuration info, then builds itself into a 'AOL Micro-Center' where-ever it is.

From the pix, it is still one rack, add a rack of batteries and network equipment, and a rack of 'environmental' equipment. Toss some networking and power on it, and it could be good to go.

My only suggestion is to put some mesh-wireless networking, and a few square meters of solar cells to power it, then it could be put almost anywhere.

Around here, it needs better armament and a camo-cover (see www.thecamoshop.com ) during deer season, or someone might 'shoot holes' 'in their network! :)

Exactly!

[bdwoolman]

Nobody is dry in Russia...

**Hic**

Using Customer Basements

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this mean they can put these server huts into the basements of all their customers? 10-15 racks should be enough to cover all their subscribers, and have room to spare. I bet they will still make their customers dial-in to the equipment located in their basement. That should limit their bandwidth costs.

Easy solution...

[Anonymous Coward]

Should be easy, considering they are only supporting the 12 users who are still on AOL.