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Wikimedia Moving Main Data Center To Ashburn, Virginia

Posted by Soulskill on from the i-will-not-be-able-to-answer-any-questions-next-week dept.

hydrofix writes "The Wikimedia Foundation is preparing for the transition of its main technical operations to a new data center in Ashburn, Virginia. This is intended to improve the technical performance and reliability of all Wikimedia sites, including Wikipedia. The current target windows for the migration are January 22nd, 23rd and 24th, 2013, from 17:00 to 01:00 UTC. Since 2004, Wikimedia sites have been hosted in the main data center in Tampa, Florida, a location chosen for its proximity to Jimmy Wales at the time. In 2009, the Wikimedia Foundation's Technical Operations team started to look for other locations with better network connectivity and more clement weather. Located in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, Ashburn offers faster and more reliable connectivity than Tampa, and usually fewer hurricanes."

41 of 59 comments (clear)

  1. "and usually fewer hurricanes." by rueger · · Score: 5, Funny

    Wow. Talk about tempting fate....... some things you just shouldn't say out loud.

    --
    Three Squirrels
    1. Re:"and usually fewer hurricanes." by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Wow. Talk about tempting fate....... some things you just shouldn't say out loud.

      So if they're wrong, D.C. gets wiped off the map? A situation with no drawbacks.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    2. Re:"and usually fewer hurricanes." by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      If they had any brains they'd move it outside of the United States, and not because of weather...

  2. Virginia weather by b5bartender · · Score: 2

    Remember when electrical storms in Virginia knocked out Amazon's east coast data center multiple times?

    1. Re:Virginia weather by craigminah · · Score: 3, Informative

      I'm just down the road from Ashburn and we were fine...no major power outages from last summer's Derecho or the earthquake other than traffic getting even worse. It was Maryland that got FUBARed from storms. They lose their power a lot across the Potomac but Virginia is solid.

    2. Re:Virginia weather by Skapare · · Score: 1

      You mean this ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_2012_North_American_derecho ... ?

      --
      now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
    3. Re:Virginia weather by oodaloop · · Score: 2

      Uh, I'm also right down the road from Ashburn and we were without power in most of my city for about 5 days. As I remember, about 7 million people in Virginia were without power.

      --
      Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
    4. Re:Virginia weather by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      My employer's data center is in Ashburn and when the Derecho event happened, we didn't lose access to our resources. It's a modern data center; reliable backup power was part of the decision to house servers there. Not infallible, but proved itself this time. We have more issues with our ISP having failures and configuration errors.

    5. Re:Virginia weather by craigminah · · Score: 1

      Not sure what to tell ya...our power almost never goes out here while my coworkers who live in Maryland have to shower at the gym at work. Power's funny like that... I bet if you looked at the power grid across the USA it's look like a gnarly mess of spaghetti...

    6. Re:Virginia weather by petermgreen · · Score: 1

      I've got the distinct impression that most power cuts are a result of problems with the distribution wiring (especially if the local distribution wiring is overhead) on a fairly local level (in britan the 6.6KV, 11KV stuff and the 240/400V low voltage stuff, not sure what typical voltages are for similar systems in america). Afaict the 33KV and up stuff has much greater clearances and is on much strudier supports so it's rarely affected by bad weather even if it's routed overhead (which it usualy is because putting it underground is very expensive).

      Though frankly for a datacenter power reliability is probablly not top of the priority list since they can easilly put generators in place. Having reliable and independent communications links and a lot probability of weather that will close the roads (it's hard to fix stuff if you can't get trucks in and out) is probablly more important.

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
    7. Re:Virginia weather by petermgreen · · Score: 1

      lot probability

      That should have said low priority.

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
    8. Re:Virginia weather by petermgreen · · Score: 1

      No it should have said low probability.

      Note to self: posting in the early hours of the morning isn't the worlds best idea...

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
  3. Re:DC will get hit this year and there data center by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Actually, it'll be Congress's provoking the WRATH of the ALMIGHTY.

    The only question is which particular thing will be blamed.

    I'll put 50 bucks on violent video games and tolerating homosexuals, with a rider on Social Security Reform.

  4. Hurricanes? by Bodero · · Score: 3, Informative

    Tampa hasn't been directly hit by a hurricane since 1921. Not to say it couldn't happen, but I just don't get the 'weather' argument. I remember the reassurances from Amazon Web Services last year when the 'Frankenstorm' headed for Virginia.

    1. Re:Hurricanes? by oodaloop · · Score: 1

      Who cares if it's direct? When a hurricane hits Florida, as many do each season, it covers the whole state.

      --
      Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
    2. Re:Hurricanes? by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1

      No, but Pasco County in the Tampa area is considered one of the highest lightning capitals in the world. During monsoon season hail and dangerous lightning occurs practically every other day. THat can knock out data easily. I would not be surprised if lightning hits around the facility at least 30 or more times for the summer months.

      Virginia gets them too but not so much as it is surrounded by warm 80 degree water on one side in the summer, but not 88 degree water on all 3 sides spawning these thunderstorms.

      California obviously would be the best for inclement weather., but has an extremely expensive costs for land, rent, and labor with high taxes and earthquakes.

      --
      http://saveie6.com/
    3. Re:Hurricanes? by Y.A.A.P. · · Score: 1

      California obviously would be the best for inclement weather., but has an extremely expensive costs for land, rent, and labor with high taxes and earthquakes.

      It's not just earthquakes. Taking the state as a whole, California is subject to every natural disaster known to man save for volcanic eruptions. Anybody moving facilities there, when the intent is as close to 100% up-time as possible, is bloody freaking nuts.

    4. Re:Hurricanes? by k8to · · Score: 1

      No, we have volcanoes. See: http://www.nationalatlas.gov/dynamic/dyn_vol-ca.html

      Just because they haven't been active lately isn't any terribly good guarantee for volcano timescales.

      However we are completely lacking in hurricanes, also blizzards (unless you go pretty far up into the mountains), and tornados.

      The usual suspects like floods and fires we have, and more than the country's share of earthquakes. Also more than our share of infrastructure issues.

      --
      -josh
    5. Re:Hurricanes? by RabidReindeer · · Score: 1

      No, but Pasco County in the Tampa area is considered one of the highest lightning capitals in the world. During monsoon season hail and dangerous lightning occurs practically every other day. THat can knock out data easily. I would not be surprised if lightning hits around the facility at least 30 or more times for the summer months.

      Virginia gets them too but not so much as it is surrounded by warm 80 degree water on one side in the summer, but not 88 degree water on all 3 sides spawning these thunderstorms.

      California obviously would be the best for inclement weather., but has an extremely expensive costs for land, rent, and labor with high taxes and earthquakes.

      Most lightning maps draw a corridor right up I-4 from Tamps to Orlando. The second-highest probability zone is, well, just about the entire rest of the state. Lightning doesn't occur "every other day" in Summer, it occurs almost every day. People routinely get killed or injured.

      Still, we know how to handle lightning and storms that take down power. Data centers with smaller budgets than Google are routinely built with motor-generators, backup batteries, power conditioners, etc., not to mention buildings capable of taking Category-4 winds, which is sufficient for almost everything but a head-on hit straight from the ocean of a major storm.

      As natural disasters go, Florida actually isn't bad. Most of the really bad stuff can be predicted and planned for in advance. A lot of the scary stuff isn't as bad as it sounds - hail is rarely more than dime-sized, tornadoes are almost never Kansas-grade ferocity. Mildew, on the other hand...

    6. Re:Hurricanes? by dr2chase · · Score: 2

      Lightning (especially Florida lightning -- higher frequency AND higher currents) makes Florida special for two reasons. #1, though we can mitigate power failures, it's not a risk-free operation; increase the rate of power failures, and sooner or later there will be a mistake. #2, if the lightning actually hits your facility all bets are off, and lightning strikes buildings at a decent rate (my parents' house got struck every couple of years when I was a kid -- it was on high ground) and hit my in-laws in Tampa at least once. Once it hits, you get random electrical violence -- in one memorable strike, it got in the fuse box, and blew screw-in fuses straight out of their sockets hard enough to dent the door and knock it off its hinges. Also took out the compressor on a freezer with fish in it, discovered two weeks later.

      To make me certain of surviving a strike, I'd want a beefy Faraday cage with power supplied through a motor-generator with a non-conductive transfer shaft. Cooling water would need to traverse an air gap on entry and exit.

  5. Ashburn by Narrowband · · Score: 4, Informative

    Also most of Ashburn is fairly new construction compared to other locations nearby and most of its power lines are buried... that probably contributes to it keeping power on when older communities in Fairfax and Maryland don't. I suspect also the choice of location may have something to do with proximity to others. UUNET (or whatever they are these days), AOL, Verizon, etc., etc.

    1. Re:Ashburn by TubeSteak · · Score: 1

      Haven't most of the recent & large internet infrastructure failures been centered in Northern Virginia?
      Amazon in particular has been repeatedly bitten by outages in VA.

      --
      [Fuck Beta]
      o0t!
    2. Re:Ashburn by niftymitch · · Score: 1
      Not clear about new but old centers like Fort AOL are in N. VA.

      Given the data transfer mandates to the TLA centers it makes complying with the law and regulators less vexing if your location is In No. VA.

      --
      Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
  6. I'd rather heare they were going distributed by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 2

    No one location is safe from natural or human disasters. So, I'd rather hear that they were going to a more distributed architecture and that they'd be able to sustain a complete loss of one data center.

    --
    Bruce Perens.
    1. Re:I'd rather heare they were going distributed by Trepidity · · Score: 5, Informative

      They do maintain servers in other data centers, in Amsterdam and San Francisco, and use them for offsite backups and read-only Squid caches. They don't live-replicate DBs to them, though, I believe due to the decreased normal-case reliability and performance that you get when trying to replicate DB servers between data centers on different continents. The architecture of centralized DB with worldwide caches performs a lot better and more reliably. But if the VA servers were offline for an extended period of time, they could fail over to the Amsterdam cluster.

      --
      10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
    2. Re:I'd rather heare they were going distributed by rtb61 · · Score: 1

      It is never a measure of safe, it is a measure of safer. So not risk versus no risk but risk versus lesser risk. Of course major snow storms versus hurricanes, can be a tricky balance of risk. Governors would be above ground power and comms versus below ground power and comms. In this case of Wikipedia access to volunteers would also count, more possible volunteers versus fewer, especially could be tied to the number of Universities in relatively close proximity. Of course land values could also be a major driver and how much support the local community could provide.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
  7. Non-US back-up by aNonnyMouseCowered · · Score: 1

    I haven't done much Googling, but it appears that Wikimedia's data centers are all located in the US. Is this still correct? Shouldn't Wikimedia be thinking of expanding its essential operations to other relatively "free" countries like Sweden, as a safeguard against possible natural disasters or human-induced server shutdowns?

    1. Re:Non-US back-up by Trepidity · · Score: 1

      They have a major datacenter in Amsterdam, which backs up all the data, and runs Squid caches to reduce the read latency for European readers.

      --
      10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
  8. Re:Huh. That doesn't raise any flags at all. by evafan76 · · Score: 2

    Virginia, huh? Hmm... What else could be in Virginia, I wonder...?

    No one, really. Just the CIA, the Pentagon, a lot of the Federal Bureaucracy (although much of it is moving back into D.C.), The FBI Academy, lots of Military Bases, most of the Government Contractors, etc.

  9. As a Northern Virginia resident... by evafan76 · · Score: 2

    ...I have absolutely no idea why anybody outside of the Federal Sector would want their data center in this area. We get Severe Weather (Tropical Storms and Snow Storms) on a semi-regular basis, and traffic tends to jam with a slight dusting of snow or a moderate rain to the point where it can take 3 hours to drive 2 miles, and the Utility Companies are not always the greatest at keeping the power running during these times. Neither of these things can be good for maximizing uptime and minimizing downtime.

  10. Policies based on U.S. law by tepples · · Score: 2

    A lot of Wikimedia wikis' policies are based on United States law. The applicable laws differ from country to country. Case in point: Copyright terms for some works are longer in Sweden than in the United States. For example, copyright in any work published before 1978 and more than 25 years before the author's death expires in the United States before Sweden or other EU countries. Putting a datacenter in Sweden would affect which images could be declared public domain on Commons based on its practice of using the later of copyright expiry in the datacenter's country and in the country of the work's first publication.

  11. Re:DC will get hit this year and there data center by dhall · · Score: 1

    Since I moved down to NoVA over 2 years ago, I've seen a hurricane larger than Floyd and an earthquake and just missed a massive snow storm. The trees decided to have a massive orgy leading to one of the worse allergy seasons ever and now we've got a pretty bad flu season. Nothing surprises me anymore.

  12. Re:DC will get hit this year and there data center by chill · · Score: 2

    You forgot the plague of stink bugs.

    --
    Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
  13. Re:Redundancy and geodiversity by Chuq · · Score: 1

    I was trying to work out what on earth you were talking about.. then I realised you don't know the difference between Wikileaks and Wikimedia.

    BTW, as mentioned earlier in these comments, WMF does have additional datacentres in San Francisco and Amsterdam.

    --
    - Chuq
  14. Quincy by codecore · · Score: 1

    I recommend Quincy Washington. There are a few data centers here already. The power is cheap. The thermal management is good. http://www.coloandcloud.com/editorial/quincy-wa-big-data-centers-leverage-abundant-inexpensive-renewable-energy/

  15. If you want to avoid hurricanes by Osgeld · · Score: 1

    Move it more inland

    just sayin, as it stands they are about the same distance from the cost that gets hit the most

    Indiana on the other hand ... but I dont know about connectivity

  16. Re:Huh. That doesn't raise any flags at all. by smellotron · · Score: 1

    Virginia, huh? Hmm... What else could be in Virginia, I wonder...?

    NASDAQ's backup data center. Huh, maybe that means that Ashburn, VA is a reasonably good location for data centers. Spooks can install taps for local snooping in any data center, but getting connectivity to the rest of the world is expensive.

  17. Re:Redundancy and geodiversity by smellotron · · Score: 1

    then I realised you don't know the difference between Wikileaks and Wikimedia.

    They are one in the same. Ward Cunningham is a mastermind dispatched from Planet X.

  18. Conveniently located near CIA headquarters by Animats · · Score: 2

    A surprisingly large number of key data centers and control points have been relocated to locations in Northern Virginia near CIA HQ. AOL is there. The Iridium satellite control center is there. (It used to be in Schaumburg, IL, near Motorola HQ) Ashburn alone has four Equnix colo facilities, two AT&T data centers, two Net2EZ facilities, and a few other major centers.

    A few miles away in Vienna, VA, even closer to CIA HQ in McLean and less than a mile from "Liberty Crossing" (Homeland Security HQ) there are six more big data centers.

  19. They do have a hot failover by saibot834 · · Score: 1

    I think they do replicate DBs to Florida (the former main data center), because they wrote it's a hot failover. The other data centers are just caches, because that's most of the requests.

    Virginia has had 90% of all requests anyway already, they are serving bits.wikimedia.org (JS, CSS, ...), upload.wikimedia.org (images and media) and I guess also Squid+Varnish. The "only" thing missing is the actual mediawiki software, databases and things like memcached. Here's the checklist

  20. Tampa by Nethead · · Score: 1

    For those familiar with downtown Tampa, it's the building with the gecko on the side, 10th floor, second cage on the left as you come in. I spent 3 weeks working a few cages down and got to chat with the Wikipedia tech.

    So yes, I have gone to Wikipedia.

    --
    -- I have a private email server in my basement.