Bangladesh Considers Building World's 5th-largest Data Center In Earthquake Zone

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Bangladesh Considers Building World's 5th-largest Data Center In Earthquake Zone

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday October 1, 2014 @04:34PM from the whole-lot-of-shaking-going-on dept.

An anonymous reader writes with news about a government plan to build a Tier IV data center in an earthquake prone district of Bangladesh. The Bangladesh Ministry of Information is considering the establishment of a Tier 4 data centre in Kaliakair, in the Gazipur region, an ambitious build which would constitute the fifth largest data centre in the world, if completed. And if it survives – the site planned for the project is prone to earthquakes. Earthquake activity in the environs is discouraging, with one nearby earthquake seven months ago in Ranir Bazar (3.8), and no less than ten within the same tectonic zone over the last three years, the largest of which measured 4.5 on the Richter scale.

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And the probability of serious quakes is? by Z00L00K · 2014-10-01 16:40 · Score: 3, Insightful

And what is the probability of serious earthquakes in the area?
In Bangladesh I would be more worried about flooding and power reliability.

--
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
1. Re:And the probability of serious quakes is? by TWX · 2014-10-02 07:51 · Score: 2
  
  Everyone said I was daft to build a datacenter on an earthquake-prone swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, Lad, the strongest datacenter in all of Bangladesh.
  
  --
  Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
It's possible to build for this by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-01 16:41 · Score: 0

The earthquakes mentioned in this post are very minor in size, and strike the West Coast of the US all the time with little effect. So long as they build using generally agreed upon best practices for an earthquake zone, they could mitigate a great deal (though not all) of the risk.
as opposed to SanFran and LA? by nadaou · 2014-10-01 16:43 · Score: 5, Insightful

Good thing there are no tech companies along the San Andreas!
And before anyone goes on to say that M3s and M4s are an order of magnitude or two smaller than a M5, the energy is more like 32 times more intense for each magnitude level, it's not log10.

--
~.~
I'm a peripheral visionary.
1. Re:as opposed to SanFran and LA? by Sique · 2014-10-01 19:04 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  A 4.5 is similar in intensity to an heavy truck driving along your home.
  
  --
  .sig: Sique *sigh*
2. Re:as opposed to SanFran and LA? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-02 00:10 · Score: 0
  
  Correction, driving along everyones home
Come on - a 4.5 is nothing by Harlequin80 · 2014-10-01 16:49 · Score: 4, Informative

The tabloid journalism is strong in this one. A 4.5 magnitude quake is utterly insignificant when it comes to structural design. If this project is as large as promised it will be designed by serious engineers to withstand significant quakes and not even notice something in the 4s.
From wikipedia
4.0–4.9 Light IV to VI
Noticeable shaking of indoor objects and rattling noises. Felt by most people in the affected area. Slightly felt outside. Generally causes none to minimal damage. Moderate to significant damage very unlikely. Some objects may fall off shelves or be knocked over.
Frequency of occurrance - 10,000 to 15,000 per year
1. Re:Come on - a 4.5 is nothing by EvanED · 2014-10-01 17:29 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Let's do some back-of-the-envelope calculations. Based on http://earthquaketrack.com/bd-... (linked from TFA), I count five quakes in the last 3 years that are moderately close. (I'm counting the red, blue, and pink markers to the left, and orange and brown a little to the east; the latter are a bit questionable.) All of them are in the 4s in magnitude.
  As a rough estimation (admittedly one that will probably diverge exponentially in any error), if you increase the magnitude 1 level, you decrease the frequency by a factor of ten. So five 4s in 3 years means you'd expect one in the 5s every 6 years or so, and in the 6s every 60.
  Now, a moderate 6 quake is at the point where you have to explicitly build to resist earthquakes. So from this (very, on a number of axes) rough guess, it seems like they definitely need to consider the possibility... but it's also not something that is likely to present a huge challenge or anything.
2. Re:Come on - a 4.5 is nothing by ShanghaiBill · 2014-10-01 17:50 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  A 4.5 magnitude quake is utterly insignificant when it comes to structural design.
  Indeed. I live in the SF Bay Area. A 4.5 is enough to wake you up if you are a light sleeper, but will not cause damage to anything.
3. Re:Come on - a 4.5 is nothing by Harlequin80 · 2014-10-01 19:14 · Score: 1
  
  In addition to this the article (I know I know who reads articles!) says there has been an exodus of Japanese data centres post the major earth quakes they had. A quick bit of research found that is a load of crap and they only place that claims that is a press release from a company that sells data centre space.
  What I actually found was talk about how the Japanese DCs stayed live during the quake and that their systems handled it perfectly.
4. Re:Come on - a 4.5 is nothing by Harlequin80 · 2014-10-01 19:15 · Score: 1
  
  Great link by the way!
  I loved this
  There have been: (M1.5 or greater)
  97 earthquakes today
  909 earthquakes in the past 7 days
  3,131 earthquakes in the past month
  37,752 earthquakes in the past year
5. Re:Come on - a 4.5 is nothing by GigaplexNZ · 2014-10-01 19:30 · Score: 1
  
  It's a data centre, with spinning platter hard drives. I'd be more worried about the hard drives than the building with a sub-5 magnitude quake. In some circumstances, just yelling at an array of drives is enough to push the vibrations over the edge, causing massive performance degradation.
6. Re:Come on - a 4.5 is nothing by Harlequin80 · 2014-10-01 19:38 · Score: 1
  
  You will get more shock from someone slamming a door near them, or accidentally driving a trolley cart into their cabinet.
7. Re:Come on - a 4.5 is nothing by GigaplexNZ · 2014-10-01 19:43 · Score: 1
  
  Trolley cart - sure. Slamming a door? I'm not so sure. I've experienced quite a few 4-5 magnitude quakes and I definitely feel them more than someone slamming a door nearby.
8. Re:Come on - a 4.5 is nothing by rtb61 · 2014-10-01 20:38 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  It's a 'major' data centre, I would be worried about getting data in and getting data out. It really makes no sense to build one huge data centre and have it reliant on localised, power, staff, weather, tectonic stability and all those communications cables coming in and going out. Having to shift huge amounts of data very long distances. As the amount of data rises, so the idea of building data centres to service each and every capital city around the world makes a whole lot more sense. This enables full mirroring of international data services, distributed back up of any data centre across other data centres and full content distribution services and even the contracted provision of game servers. Building many distributed data centres enables you to do many more things and of course localise those data centres in terms of government regulations and avoid a range of judicially or law enforcement inspired issues. How small a population should be served with a data centre, that really depends on how much you get into those other data handling services, like mirroring, game serving and content distribution, localising that traffic saves a huge amount of money and, local sales staff always benefits sales and allows you to tweak services for that locale.
  
  --
  Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
9. Re:Come on - a 4.5 is nothing by Megol · 2014-10-01 22:44 · Score: 2
  
  That is true. But the technical know-how how to reduce even stronger earthquake strength inside a building is well know - the extreme example is of course those structures made to tolerate human-created earthquakes: "ground zero" type nuclear bunkers. Less extreme but still relevant is buildings for micro-fabrication (integrated circuits).
  Protecting HDDs from earthquakes is simple in comparison.
10. Re:Come on - a 4.5 is nothing by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-01 23:53 · Score: 0
  
  Thank you.
11. Re:Come on - a 4.5 is nothing by CaptainDork · 2014-10-02 01:02 · Score: 1
  
  This is why we can't have nice things like spinning drives in portable computers and stuff.
  
  --
  It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
12. Re:Come on - a 4.5 is nothing by Em+Adespoton · 2014-10-02 04:24 · Score: 1
  
  Not only that, but an area that's getting regular 3.5 quakes (although Richter went out of style a long time ago -- what kind of quakes are these?) is probably an area that's got nicely slipping plates and is unlikely to have "the big one". Unlike places like say, Seattle, which will eventually be devastated by a major quake. Regular quakes also mean that their infrastructure is likely set up to deal with quakes, which is also a plus. As long as they aren't putting the thing on oceanfront property or directly on the fault line on the subsiding side of the plate, seems like a pretty good place to put it.
13. Re:Come on - a 4.5 is nothing by tomhath · 2014-10-02 04:37 · Score: 2
  
  I'm pretty sure that is exactly why this data center is being built. Hype that it's going to be the "World's 5-Largest data center" doesn't mean much. Data centers are getting bigger all the time so of course it's bigger than older ones.
14. Re:Come on - a 4.5 is nothing by rtb61 · 2014-10-02 13:43 · Score: 1
  
  With modern storage and compact device, data centres serving capital cities are shrinking, only adding in additional services keeps the of appreciable size. Companies are not building the cloud, they are building hurricanes, concentrated locations of inevitable failure (systems always end up catastrophically failing for one reason or another). Have smaller distributed system means one fails and the others pick up the load, one big system means one failure results in massive loss of business. Engineers always fantasize about how one great big system is more efficient and they can take precautions against accepted risks of failure but that is a delusion, they do not realise the true impact of failure on future business, the work required to recover lost business and the business that will never be recover, engineers endlessly save pennies to spend pounds and often spend thousands of pounds extra based upon completely false assumptions which they defend with to the end with arrogance and qualifications over experience.
  
  --
  Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
As long as they don't... by jcfandino · 2014-10-01 16:53 · Score: 1

construct a Nuclear power plant next to it, it can't be that bad.
1. Re:As long as they don't... by ls671 · 2014-10-01 17:57 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  No problems, they plan to construct it 500 yards downstream from the dam in order to avoid power loss during transmission.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
  
  --
  Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
2. Re:As long as they don't... by Panoptes · 2014-10-01 18:25 · Score: 1
  
  Indonesia is preparing to build a nuclear power plant. Those of us who live with its antiquated electricity supply network, third-world standard railway infrastructure, a national airline that was banned from landing at European airports until quite recently, more shipping disasters than possibly any other country, plus world-ranking corruption, look on in bemused wonderment.
No worries by cstec · 2014-10-01 16:54 · Score: 3, Funny

I was totally good with storing private customer data in Bangladesh before.
1. Re:No worries by sociocapitalist · 2014-10-01 21:22 · Score: 2
  
  I was totally good with storing private customer data in Bangladesh before.
  How good are you about your own private data being stored in Bangladesh?
  
  --
  blindly antisocialist = antisocial
2. Re:No worries by RabidReindeer · 2014-10-01 22:04 · Score: 1
  
  I was totally good with storing private customer data in Bangladesh before.
  How good are you about your own private data being stored in Bangladesh?
  Whoosh!
  Anyway with a username like "sociocapitalist", shouldn't you be advocating storing information wherever it's cheapest?
3. Re:No worries by GLMDesigns · 2014-10-02 04:46 · Score: 1
  
  Capitalist /= cheapest. Cheapest does not equal best value for the dollar and effort.
  
  --
  If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
  Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Earthquakes arent the issue - by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-01 16:55 · Score: 0

Its the lack of adherence to any building codes I'd be bothered by. Bangladesh isnt exactly known for strict compliance and given the elvel of graft and corruption, I could quite legitimatly see a substandard building.
Also fairly puzzled why they would build such a huge DC as well. Are they expecting "Cloud" business?
1. Re:Earthquakes arent the issue - by raymorris · 2014-10-01 17:02 · Score: 2
  
  Lack of adherence to codes? Whatever do you mean?
  https://peters365photos.files....
Wrong measurement by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-01 17:05 · Score: 0

The modern measure of an earthquake is the moment magnitude scale. Richter is NOT used anymore.
1. Re:Wrong measurement by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-01 17:12 · Score: 0
  
  for the purpose of discussing this story, there is no practical difference beyond pure pedancy.
  it's like saying I live 10 miles from the nearest McDonalds, and you arguing about if that's laiden or unlaiden US Survery Feet.
2. Re:Wrong measurement by Z00L00K · 2014-10-01 19:43 · Score: 2
  
  For anyone more interested in the subject of moment magnitude and Richter scale I suggest that you read Is the Richter Scale Obsolete?.
  For practical purposes it's the effects at ground level that are important anyway.
  
  --
  If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Factual inaccuracie by Tough+Love · 2014-10-01 17:05 · Score: 1

Japan’s recent history of catastrophic earthquakes has driven a great deal of its former data centre infrastructure to outsourcing to more stable locations
Hmmph. According to news reports, some Tokyo data centers established backup locations in Osaka, near the epicenter of Great Hanshin earthquake. Hardly a "more stable location".

--
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
1. Re:Factual inaccuracie by Required+Snark · 2014-10-01 17:39 · Score: 1
  
  The international sub-atomic physics community is discussing where to build the next really big project. One leading candidate is Japan, because they seem to be interested in picking up a sizable chunk of the bill. (There are other politically inspired reasons, like the lack of this kind of facility anywhere in the eastern hemisphere.)
  So how much ground displacement was there in 2011 during the Great East Japan Earthquake?
  
  By analyzing over 500 GPS stations, the GFZ scientists Rongjiang Wang and Thomas Walter have found that horizontal displacements of up to five meters in an eastern direction occurred at the east coast of Japan. The cause lies in the earthquake zone, i.e. at the contact interface of the Pacific plate with Japan. Computer simulations of this surface show that an offset of up to 25 meters occurred during the earthquake. Calculations of the GFZ modeling group headed by Stephan Sobolev even yielded a displacement of up to 27 meters and a vertical movement of seven meters.
  
  And then there is the permanent subsidence which was up to 1.2 m (3.93 ft) in the Oshika Peninsula, Miyagi Prefecture.
  So building new expensive technological infrastructure in earthquake country and ignoring known problems seems to be a common occurrence. And I'm sure it's a world wide blind spot with respect to a lot of other potential natural disasters as well.
  
  --
  Why is Snark Required?
2. Re:Factual inaccuracie by Harlequin80 · 2014-10-01 19:21 · Score: 3
  
  You seem to have forgotten that all risks have a probability factor as well. That quake was huge, and very rare. Yeah they happen, but what is the life expectancy of the facility? 50 years? There will be a probability associated with earthquake risk during that period, does the risk out weigh the other benefits? Whether that probability is accurate is an entirely different question but it still exists.
  Otherwise every seismic sensitive structure would be built in the centre of Australia.
Oh my goodness! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-01 17:11 · Score: 2, Funny

I am being so sorry mister American Looking For A Cheap IT Fix!
Our entire data center was at the epicenter of last weeks earthquake and has disappeared into a sinkhole!
Backup facility? What American bullshit you are speaking to me! Were you not paying bottom dollar?
Oh yes. And we are being sued by the families of all of the underpaid technician workers who we had leg-shacked to their desks, which were bolted into the floors. They too went down with the building!
What? Responding to your emails? No no no! We are in the process of dissolving the company, setting up new false identities and reincorporating elsewhere! Would you like a quote when we are set up for business?
It's perfectly fine by pokoteng · 2014-10-01 17:14 · Score: 2

As long as the risk is identified, mitigated with good engineering, and costs from extra engineering are acceptable, there's no issue here.

--
the game
1. Re: It's perfectly fine by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-01 18:04 · Score: 0
  
  Sooooo naive, bro. It would be the first such building in the whole of Bangladesh. I'm sure you have the best intentions when thinking that. It's just not going to happen. But, God, do I wish I were wrong.
Oh the dilemma by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-01 17:33 · Score: 0

Should I upload my naked pictures to more than one cloud storage to be safe?
Hope they use SSD by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-01 17:41 · Score: 0

Those are pretty earthquake proof...
1. Re:Hope they use SSD by ls671 · 2014-10-01 18:09 · Score: 1
  
  Still more expensive than military grade HDDs. Building should be earthquake proof anyway. It should be cheaper to protect the whole building and go with standard hardware.
  http://www.amazon.com/Transcen...
  http://gearpatrol.com/2013/03/...
  
  --
  Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
What could go wrong? by garry_g · 2014-10-01 17:46 · Score: 0

Seriously ... ?!
1. Re:What could go wrong? by Megol · 2014-10-01 22:49 · Score: 1
  
  Nothing?
keeping the poor poorer by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-01 18:02 · Score: 0

One way of keeping the poor poorer is by taking the few resources of an undeveloped country and using them in a sure-to-fail megaproject. Foreign companies leading the project well sponge money out of the economy, politicians will get their cut, and the average citizens will have a chance to raise their chickens in the runs of the billion dollar development (or however much it costs). That shit is done ALL the time in third world countries, and it's actually the modus operandi of the world bank and the international monetary fund.
God dammed fucking bastards.
as opposed to SanFran and LA? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-01 18:03 · Score: 1

Can you even feel a 4.5? Its not like its gonna red shift all my data below the noise threshold.
I've got bigger news: people live in Japan. Not just considering living there, but live there now. People harder to protect from earthquakes than servers, and their earthquakes are way bigger. Building a datacenter from scratch to resist earthquakes sounds trivial compared to bullet trains and skyscrapers.
Really...? by darkain · 2014-10-01 18:15 · Score: 1

How many datacenters are there up and down the west coast of the united states? We have 4.x quakes several times a year. What's the big deal? Hell, there was a 7.0ish here in Tacoma about 10 years ago.
1. Re:Really...? by RabidReindeer · 2014-10-01 22:06 · Score: 1
  
  How many datacenters are there up and down the west coast of the united states? We have 4.x quakes several times a year. What's the big deal? Hell, there was a 7.0ish here in Tacoma about 10 years ago.
  This is Bangladesh. Remember how buildings in Bangladesh are? In a country noted for corruption?
2. Re:Really...? by Megol · 2014-10-01 22:53 · Score: 1
  
  Most of us don't remember because we have never known. And your cute try to link corruption to building quality have to be substantiated by some kind of facts.
  There are a lot of countries with high levels of corruption that also have generally good building standards.
3. Re:Really...? by RabidReindeer · 2014-10-02 00:19 · Score: 2
  
  I take it you missed this "minor" incindent, then:: http://www.theguardian.com/wor...
  Anyway, good building standards don't count if you can easily bribe the inspectors.
Re:Factual inaccuracy by Tough+Love · 2014-10-01 18:38 · Score: 1

Not a great comparison Big physics requires precise alignment, computer equipment not so much.

--
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
They must really like segfaults by kruach+aum · 2014-10-01 18:41 · Score: 4, Funny

Thanks folks, I'll be here all week.
"Simple" solution by Dutchmaan · 2014-10-01 18:57 · Score: 3, Interesting

Create an artificial lake and build the structure floating on it. Use the water for cooling and for shock protection from earthquakes.
1. Re:"Simple" solution by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-01 20:14 · Score: 0
  
  Water shakes just as much when it comes to earthquakes so this won't do either.
  But just take a look at Japan.We have huge datacenters in the middle of Tokyo where there are frequent earthquakes.
  just placing enough dampers in a building does reduce the most violent shakes to something that most hardware can deal with.
Largest is probably in an earthquate zone by dbIII · 2014-10-01 18:58 · Score: 1

The largest is probably in an earthquate zone - San Francisco or Tokyo.
Also, in a way that initially seems counter-intuitive, tall buildings cope better in earthquakes than shorter ones. They flex. Of course that doesn't save you from a street full of rubble and all the cables severed.
1. Re:Largest is probably in an earthquate zone by aaarrrgggh · 2014-10-02 08:14 · Score: 1
  
  I think largest would be The SuperNAP in Vegas in terms of power-- I think they are close to 80MW of UPS. No one facility in California compares to that. I would doubt Tokyo would have anything at that scale; it would be well outside the city.
The facebook preview for this story was... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-01 20:02 · Score: 1

503 Service Unavailable.
Did slashdot migrate so soon?
Next time have more cash by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-01 20:53 · Score: 0

Then the Anon. who posted this can win the tender and build the data center where he wants it instead of trying to get cheap public technical outcry for contesting it.
Magnitude of lag from earthquake by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-01 20:55 · Score: 0

I wonder, since yelling at harddrive rack causes measurable lag, how bad lag can you get when magnitude 5 earthquake hits... :P
great idea by Cardoor · 2014-10-02 00:34 · Score: 1

they won't need a separate cover story for a plane hitting next door when they decide to take it down.
Good for business by AqD · 2014-10-02 03:13 · Score: 1

Build something ($$$) => destroy by earthquake => Build it again with insurance ($$$) => destroy by earthquake => Build it again with more insurance ($$$) => ...
It's like an infinite loop of money-making scheme. Now before you say anything bad about it, it can actually produce a lot of jobs and raise GDP drastically: constructors, engineers, rescuers, doctors, insurers, teachers for new engineers to replace the dead, and priests and carpenters too for coffins.
50% literacy rate? by gelfling · 2014-10-02 06:20 · Score: 2

Half the population lives below even THEIR poverty line? Every year about a million of them die from drowing, malaria etc. And of course PsychoIslam Headchopping is making significant inroads. I really can't think of a more pointless idea than this.
Not to be outdone US construction projects include by Anonymous Coward · 2014-10-02 14:09 · Score: 0

California set to build facility for crippled orphans in wild fire zone, Oklahoma building injured animal preservation in tornado alley, and detroit building (insert anything here) in desolate wasteland that is detroit :)