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

Posted by timothy on 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?

6 of 63 comments (clear)

  1. Something about eggs and a basket by rmdingler · · 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.

    --
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    Ernest Hemingway

    1. Re:Something about eggs and a basket by Anonymous Coward · · 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.

    2. Re:Something about eggs and a basket by theycallmeB · · 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.

  2. Are they planning to buy an A/C company? by damn_registrars · · 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.

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    Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
  3. It's pretty simple really... by ndtechnologies · · 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.

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  4. Re:It's the population, duh! by jaredmauch · · 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.