For Data Centers, Google Likes the Southeast (datacenterfrontier.com)

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For Data Centers, Google Likes the Southeast (datacenterfrontier.com)

Posted by timothy on Saturday January 23, 2016 @03:20AM from the pleasant-rolling-hills dept.

1sockchuck writes: With new construction projects underway in Alabama and Tennessee, Google will soon have 5 of its 8 company-built U.S. data center campuses located in the Southeast. The strategy is unique among major cloud players, who typically have server farms on each coast, plus one in the heartland. Is Google's focus on the Southeast a leading indicator of future data center development in the region? Or is it simply a case of a savvy player unearthing unique retrofit opportunities that may not work for other cloud builders?

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oxcam's razor by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-23 03:29 · Score: 1

The dude at google managing these data centers comes from that area and wants to see his family.
Something about eggs and a basket by rmdingler · 2016-01-23 03:33 · Score: 3, Interesting

FTA: It appears to be an affront to the spread 'em out theory of risk management initially adopted by Google and then copied by FB, Apple, MS,etc.
I get what they're thinking: friendly economic packages from the locals, close proximity to population centers, lots of convertible existing infrastructure... but the risks of a cataclysmic natural or anthropogenic disaster seem very real over a long enough timeline in a given region.
At this point, nothing short of their own mismanagement seems likely to upset the Google juggernaut.

--
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
1. Re: Something about eggs and a basket by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-23 03:37 · Score: 1, Informative
  
  They get what they want: cheap land, cheap electricity (coal), low or no taxes (incentives), cheap labor. The states get employment. Oh wait, you're data center is only going to employ 100 people?? Aw, shucks!
2. Re: Something about eggs and a basket by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-23 03:51 · Score: 0, Insightful
  
  The TVA is the largest hydro-electric generator in the US. OF course, those 100 jobs, you know, those people go to restaurants and stores and spend money and tip and create income for other people in the community. But, that doesn't fit your steal from the rich progressive brainwashing.
3. Re: Something about eggs and a basket by Nutria · 2016-01-23 03:52 · Score: 1
  
  Blame God for putting so much of an efficient fuel source where it's easy to get to.
  
  --
  "I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
4. Re:Something about eggs and a basket by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-23 04:07 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Anything taking out 2 or more of those data centers out at the same time, for a prolonged time, is either:
  1) a global cataclysmic event, in which case it really does not matter where your data centers are.
  2) a massive US Infrastructure failure, power of network, in which case it also really does not matter where your data center is. A prolonged failure of this magnitude is unlikely to be, and stay, geographically limited. Also your users are likely of the grid as well
  There is a limit to the effectiveness of spreading. When you have as many data centers as Google has, the picture is changes. A few clusters of data centers here and there is not a big issue.
5. Re: Something about eggs and a basket by turbidostato · 2016-01-23 04:14 · Score: 1
  
  "They get what they want: cheap land, cheap electricity (coal), low or no taxes (incentives), cheap labor."
  And hurricanes?
6. Re:Something about eggs and a basket by alvinrod · 2016-01-23 04:18 · Score: 1
  
  Given the rapid pace of advancements in the computer industry, over a relatively short timeline this center and everything currently in it will be outdated long before we start to worry about a large scale disaster. Even though Moore's law is falling off in terms of how quickly those advancements are occurring, within 30 years we're fairly likely to have seen about two orders of magnitude increase in performance. The data center as a concept may be completely obsolete or have morphed into something that no longer requires large facilities.
7. Re:Something about eggs and a basket by rmdingler · 2016-01-23 04:59 · Score: 1
  
  That's a great point.
  Still, it only makes it a little less likely your huevos en una canasta strategy fails epically.
  
  --
  Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
  Ernest Hemingway
8. Re: Something about eggs and a basket by i.r.id10t · 2016-01-23 05:09 · Score: 1
  
  Hurricanes aren't really much of an issue unless you are along the coast. Stay 60+ miles away from the coast and the most likely damage is downed trees and powerlines
  
  --
  Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
9. Re: Something about eggs and a basket by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-23 05:38 · Score: 0
  
  Google is carbon-neutral. This changes the price of electricity further in advantage of the Tennessee Valley Authority.
  https://www.google.com/green/
10. Re:Something about eggs and a basket by flopsquad · 2016-01-23 05:38 · Score: 1
  
  This, plus sibling AC's post about what is actually happening if something is seriously boning the entire southeast (or $region, generally).
  
  If Google was building permanent nuclear waste storage facilities, or grand coliseums it wanted to last a hundred generations, they'd need to consider climate/disasters/Civil War 2.0/etc. over a much longer horizon.
  
  I'm certain that their capital planning includes detailed lifecycle assessments for any new facility like a datacenter. While I'm not privy to such, I have to believe it's measured in decades not centuries.
  
  If sea levels have risen to cover the American Southeast within that useful lifetime (or anything even close to that level of catastrophic), we have way bigger issues than longer ping time to the nearest Google servers.
  
  --
  Nothing posted to /. has ever been legal advice, including this.
11. Re:Something about eggs and a basket by theycallmeB · 2016-01-23 05:58 · Score: 2
  
  I am willing to bet that Google has more than 8 data centers. And as many as they have, placing clusters of data centers in different regions has the same effect as a smaller company putting each of their few data centers in different areas.
  
  Also by clustering it reduces the costs of laying some seriously high capacity private fiber between them and the five centers can function more like one mammoth center.
12. Re:Something about eggs and a basket by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-23 06:33 · Score: 0
  
  If sea levels have risen to cover the American Southeast within that useful lifetime (or anything even close to that level of catastrophic), we have way bigger issues than longer ping time to the nearest Google servers.
  Sea levels are unlikely to rise enough to cover either of those locations any time soon. Both are 500+ ft above (current) sea levels.
13. Re:Something about eggs and a basket by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-23 06:42 · Score: 0
  
  5 of its 8 company-built U.S. data center
  Maybe there is just a shortage of datacenters built by others in this region.
14. Re: Something about eggs and a basket by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-23 06:59 · Score: 0
  
  The TVA is the largest hydro-electric generator in the US.
  No, it isn't. TVA has about 35,000 MW of capacity. Tennessee, where most of the TVA's hydro plants are located, isn't even the number one Hydropower producer of states that are east of the Mississippi, and only about 10% of TVA's power is from Hydro. The largest share of their power comes from coal, then nuclear, then gas turbines.
  Even Ronald Reagan was railing about it.
  
  OF course, those 100 jobs, you know, those people go to restaurants and stores and spend money and tip and create income for other people in the community. But, that doesn't fit your steal from the rich progressive brainwashing.
  That's the argument. Now compare it to the subsidies paid to companies to come in.
  Of course, it doesn't help when companies like VW are the standard-bearers. That can't look good.
  It also doesn't help when you can't get your facts right about the TVA.
15. Re: Something about eggs and a basket by ememisya · 2016-01-23 07:35 · Score: 1
  
  Down here in the South we got chicken farms, corn farms, data farms. It's all agriculture over here.
16. Re: Something about eggs and a basket by TWX · 2016-01-23 09:11 · Score: 1
  
  They get what they want: cheap land, cheap electricity (coal), low or no taxes (incentives), cheap labor. The states get employment. Oh wait, you're data center is only going to employ 100 people?? Aw, shucks!
  I'd bet labor and land/rent costs are the principal reasons. If it's $100,000 a year per datacenter worker in California and $60,000 per year for that same worker in Georgia, if there are a hundred workers, that's four million dollars a year. There may not be as many workers in Georgia or other Southeastern states to source from compared to California and other places known for tech, but there's not as much demand for them either, so the wages aren't being inflated through worker scarcity and competition among employers for a limited pool.
  
  Besides, operating a datacenter does not require a whole lot of creativity. There are existing standards and practices to implement, one literally can do it without coming up with anything original at all if one wants. As such it makes sense to put what effectively is a reimplementation of an existing thing in a place that costs less to do so.
  
  --
  Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
17. Re: Something about eggs and a basket by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-23 11:13 · Score: 0
  
  how about 10 people ...
18. Re: Something about eggs and a basket by slashdot_commentator · 2016-01-23 12:01 · Score: 1
  
  1) Floodplains aren't unique to the coast, and the Mississippi River network goes far from the oceans.
  2) Tornadoes.
  
  --
  There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
19. Re: Something about eggs and a basket by mysidia · 2016-01-23 14:52 · Score: 1
  
  2) Tornadoes.
  The #1 weather risk for a Datacenter is lightning., none of the ones you listed.
  If you're building a datacenter, then you can design it to withstand, and selection of elevation for flood risk avoidances. Tornados are a risk, even when there's no hurricane, and the risk is lower most of the time than in flatland areas in the more northerly regions... ask some Kansas residents.
20. Re:Something about eggs and a basket by pupsocket · 2016-01-24 15:02 · Score: 1
  
  Much of the infrastructure in that area was built during the massive cold-war build-up of post-nuclear-attack communications infrastructure, in bands around the District of Columbia. The mandate remains for such an infrastructure within reach of a government in flight from a first nuclear attack.
  Military mandates move mountains, so I would guess that a few mountains were moved at Google headquarters, a few at the local and state levels, and possibly one or two at the cash level.
21. Re: Something about eggs and a basket by Cramer · 2016-01-25 09:41 · Score: 1
  
  Actually nuclear (and hydro), but the rest is true. In NC/SC, there are vast tracts of former textile mills where there's plenty of cheap land and power.
Are they planning to buy an A/C company? by damn_registrars · 2016-01-23 03:40 · Score: 2

I would think that concentrating their datacenters in a part of the country where you need air conditioning 8+ months of the year would make it a wise investment. Even the most efficient data centers produce a fair bit of waste heat.

--
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
1. Re:Are they planning to buy an A/C company? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-23 04:24 · Score: 0
  
  You should research the temperatures some of the modern data centers run their equipment racks at.
2. Re:Are they planning to buy an A/C company? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-23 04:26 · Score: 1
  
  They're probably using warm water cooling. The winnings on the rest of the costs like the electricity is analyzed in the article, and are likely compensating the additional cooling costs. I suspect the latency balance is the most important consideration, considering the locations.
3. Re:Are they planning to buy an A/C company? by BarbaraHudson · 2016-01-23 04:57 · Score: 1, Troll
  
  Lots of sun means lots of solar power potential. Chill the place down real good during the day ...
  The west coast is getting more and more risky. The "big one" is like a hard drive failure - not if, but when. Lots of fires. Not enough water.
  The east coast - you certainly don't want to build in what will be the Gulf of Florida. Then there's hurricanes and storm surges.
  The deep south - hurricanes and storm surges. A crazy religious environment. Too many red republican states with policies that discourage education, increase and make permanent the cycle of poverty, overt racism ...
  The flyover states - cheaper land, lower costs, fewer natural disasters
  
  --
  "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
4. Re:Are they planning to buy an A/C company? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-23 06:32 · Score: 0
  
  The flyover states - cheaper land, lower costs, fewer natural disasters
  Not to mention great pings to everywhere and easy access to backbones for even smaller shops.
5. Re:Are they planning to buy an A/C company? by ShanghaiBill · 2016-01-23 06:36 · Score: 1
  
  Lots of sun means lots of solar power potential.
  The SouthEast is actually fairly cloudy. The region also has solar panel ripping hurricanes and some of the world's most severe thunderstorms. If you want solar, you go to Arizona, not Alabama.
6. Re:Are they planning to buy an A/C company? by irrational_design · 2016-01-23 07:11 · Score: 1
  
  What about the NorthWest? Plenty of water, cheap electricity from all the dams, there is some risk from earthquakes and volcanoes, but the risk goes down if they build east of the cascades where there is lots of sunshine (for solar power) and lots of cheap land.
  I would think it would be much less risky than dealing with tornadoes in the flyover states.
7. Re: Are they planning to buy an A/C company? by Type44Q · 2016-01-23 08:07 · Score: 1
  
  Flyover states safe fron disasters? Take Oklahoma; you've got tornadoes, earthquakes, icestorms and Okies...
8. Re:Are they planning to buy an A/C company? by unixisc · 2016-01-23 09:29 · Score: 1
  
  I would think that concentrating their datacenters in a part of the country where you need air conditioning 8+ months of the year would make it a wise investment. Even the most efficient data centers produce a fair bit of waste heat.
  In that case, wouldn't Fairbanks, Alaska or Maine be a good place to build their data centers? So that those computers can be partly cooled by ambient cooling?
9. Re:Are they planning to buy an A/C company? by BarbaraHudson · 2016-01-23 10:06 · Score: 1
  
  The flyover states - cheaper land, lower costs, fewer natural disasters
  Not to mention great pings to everywhere and easy access to backbones for even smaller shops.
  When you're in the middle of nowhere, you're in the middle of everywhere. :-)
  
  --
  "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
10. Re: Are they planning to buy an A/C company? by BarbaraHudson · 2016-01-23 10:14 · Score: 1
  
  Take Florida - you had Jeb Bush, who gave us King George the 2nd , or California, who gave us Ronald Ray-Guns and bs trickle-down economics that people still insist must work, even though studies show it just makes the richer richer and the poor poorer.
  Get rid of fracking, you'll get rid of almost all the earthquakes.
  
  --
  "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
11. Re:Are they planning to buy an A/C company? by mysidia · 2016-01-23 14:58 · Score: 1
  
  The solar panel companies in Alabama have been mentioning, that as an advantage, the panels will help protect your roof in the event of a hurricane, because they are rated for exposure to higher wind speeds than the roofing shingles.
Location Location Location by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-23 03:43 · Score: 1

Let's dispense with all the conspiracy theories. This is a business. A business is going to do whatever is financially (read: taxes) is in its best interest.
1. Re: Location Location Location by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-23 04:04 · Score: 0
  
  If that were true they wouldn't be building in America.
2. Re: Location Location Location by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-23 04:19 · Score: 0
  
  Plenty of things you need to be in America for, and many things you SHOULD be in America for. Hosting data for Americans pretty much requires you be in America.
3. Re: Location Location Location by minkowski76 · 2016-01-23 04:33 · Score: 1
  
  You really don't understand how this Internet thing works, do you?
4. Re: Location Location Location by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-23 05:14 · Score: 0
  
  It works with latency.
5. Re: Location Location Location by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-23 05:32 · Score: 0
  
  Apparently you don't. If you want low latency, you host close to the connected users.
6. Re: Location Location Location by Etherwalk · 2016-01-23 05:36 · Score: 1
  
  Apparently you don't. If you want low latency, you host close to the connected users.
  It turns out there's a massive amount of stuff that ultra-low latency isn't that important for.
7. Re: Location Location Location by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-23 05:36 · Score: 0
  
  You really don't understand how this Internet thing works, do you?
  You really don't understand how this latency thing works, do you?
8. Re: Location Location Location by Phronesis · 2016-01-23 06:33 · Score: 1
  
  It turns out there's a massive amount of stuff that ultra-low latency isn't that important for.
  I have no expertise here, but it strikes me that it's not just about latency due to path length and signal-propagation speed. It's also about traffic congestion.
  If you shift a huge amount of traffic from inside the continent to overseas sites, you are moving form a highly connected network to one in which all the traffic has to move through a much smaller number of edges. If lots of companies moved lots of high-traffic data centers overseas, how would this traffic impact congestion on the international connections?
9. Re: Location Location Location by ShanghaiBill · 2016-01-23 06:47 · Score: 1
  
  If that were true they wouldn't be building in America.
  Yes they would. A data center is an expense, not a profit generator. You put your expenses in America, and take the write off at America's 39% corporate tax rate. Then you place your IP licensing profit center in Ireland, where you pay the corporate tax at 12.5%.
  This sort of tax arbitrage is basic finance 101. Even small companies do it. My company employs less than a dozen people, but it is still worth it for us to rent a P.O. box in Dublin, where our trademarks, copyrights, and patents are legally domiciled. Another advantage of this, is that you can take a European vacation, and write it off as a business expense, as long as you spend a day or two on the Emerald Isle.
10. Re: Location Location Location by mysidia · 2016-01-23 15:13 · Score: 1
  
  Then you place your IP licensing profit center in Ireland, where you pay the corporate tax at 12.5%.
  We in the US should adjust the tax law to say that any revenue from licensing the right to use a patent or copyright registration with the US copyright office, or IP right use by a company for any operations in the US, is always US-based income, taxable against the registrant, regardless of the domicile of the registrant, and any failure to pay income tax on those changes the ownership of those IP rights and royalties payable to the US treasury.
11. Re: Location Location Location by ShanghaiBill · 2016-01-23 17:25 · Score: 1
  
  We in the US should adjust the tax law to say that ...
  ... and then other countries retaliate with tit-for-tat trade restrictions of their own. In the end, everyone would lose. The solution to stupid tax policy, is not to make it even stupider. We should reform our tax laws so they don't encourage companies to move jobs overseas. America is the only country in the world that taxes companies when they repatriate capital to create domestic jobs.
It's pretty simple really... by ndtechnologies · 2016-01-23 04:06 · Score: 3, Interesting

The southeastern US has all of this abandoned textile infrastructure, which is much easier to retrofit into a datacenter, than it is to build a new one from scratch. That's exactly what Facebook did with their data center in my hometown of Forest City.

--
I have nothing clever to put here...
1. Re:It's pretty simple really... by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-23 07:47 · Score: 0
  
  Yup. Let's see in Phoenix area one's in an old watter bottling plant, in NYC I saw one in an old NY Times printing press building, etc. In many cases, you go where you don't have to build a new building -- up and running faster, for cheaper.
It's the population, duh! by _Sharp'r_ · 2016-01-23 04:12 · Score: 1

They're a general user focused company, so they want their data centers to be close to where most of the people in the U.S. are.
Beyond that, then they look for places with existing power and Internet infrastructure they can tap into. This isn't a big mystery.

--
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
1. Re:It's the population, duh! by jaredmauch · 2016-01-23 05:48 · Score: 2
  
  I have to say it's this. 50% of the US population lives in the Eastern time zone. That means if you only have things on the east coast, you are most likely to cover everyone. Ask someone in a central state what their latency and network paths are, you end up going to Seattle, Chicago, Dallas, LA and sometimes the bay area to change networks. Not a lot of interconnection happens in the mountain states, and even markets like Phoenix while large don't quite have enough density to make sense.
"each coast" by rossdee · 2016-01-23 04:19 · Score: 1

major cloud players, who typically have server farms on each coast,
Did you know there are more than just 2 coasts
In addition to East and West, there's a;so the South (Gulf of Mrxico)
and theres also the North Shore (its Northeast of Duluth)
That would be a good place for a datacenter , less cost in cooling and no worries about hurricanes even with global warming.
1. Re:"each coast" by BarbaraHudson · 2016-01-23 04:59 · Score: 1
  
  You forgot all the shoreline around Alaska and Hawaii and Puerto Rico ...
  
  --
  "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
2. Re:"each coast" by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-23 08:39 · Score: 0
  
  Which is still less than the shoreline in Minnesota. Land of 10,000 lakes ain't just a slogan. It's an under-representation. Oh yeah, to be a lake, it's gotta be over 10 acres to boot. 100,000 miles of river shoreline too.
3. Re:"each coast" by BarbaraHudson · 2016-01-23 10:17 · Score: 1
  
  The shoreline around Minnesota isn't a coastal area. At least, not yet. But at the rate we're screwing up, just give it a while :-) It's not like North America never had a huge inland sea.
  
  --
  "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Re: mega zang by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-23 08:44 · Score: 0

DISTRICT it flavono sampo sampo with snacky

Systemd?
No, it was way too clear and concise.
What did Canada do to blow this opportunity? by slashdot_commentator · 2016-01-23 12:05 · Score: 1

If I'm thinking about putting down a data center, I'm not thinking of the place that needs the most A/C due to climate. Canada is supposed to have cheap hydro-electric, and if its located a northern latitude, it doesn't need much A/C to keep cool.

--
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
1. Re:What did Canada do to blow this opportunity? by mysidia · 2016-01-23 15:18 · Score: 1
  
  The latency to places in Canada where they have datacenters is atrocious, for much of the US. The more northerly you go, the bigger an issue it is.
2. Re:What did Canada do to blow this opportunity? by ebvwfbw · 2016-01-24 13:15 · Score: 1
  
  Well it's Canada. Isn't 'nuff said?
  Don't get me wrong, I love the Canadian people. They certainly could do it. However who wants to freeze their balls off in the winter? Then there's the holier than thou attitude of the Canadians. They don't seem to appreciate the US. At least that's how it sure feels whenever I've been up there or worked with IT workers from Canada. One guy had a head so big I'm not sure how his head fit through the door. I'd say he was about an average IT guy.
Elvin Bishop Settin' on a Bail of Hay by blogagog · 2016-01-25 03:40 · Score: 1

"For Data Centers, Google Likes the Southeast"

That's also just called 'The South'.