1) This datacenter is only 12,000 sq ft. (submessage: who cares?)
For some things, it is OK. It is not the only one, only the best marketed
one.
2) The generators are underground. A leak in their exhaust system kills
everyone -- worse, a leak in their fuel tank or filler lines (when being
filled from above) could do the same. Yes, you could address this with
alarms (provided they work and are tested, etc).
The original design and purpose required internal gensets. Keeping them
inside is still important for a number of reasons. This is the Baltic, not
San Diego. Rain, fog, snow, etc. Both intake and exhaust are normally
coupled to the outside via boulder-blocked blasted tunnels, so the gas path
is not connected to the inside.
3) No one cares if the server farm is blast proof (it isn't), if the
connectivity in/out of it gets blasted (submessage: silos were meant to
deliver one thing, datacenters aren't in the same operational model once
they need connectivity to the outside world)
See what Mikael wrote.
4) With all of that fog and plant life, I wonder how they critically
manage humidity. [Or if they even do].
I have been told by people who have been working with the construction of
this very site that it is an unusually dry cave. It is pretty high up by
Stockholm standards, which helps.
Mikael Abrahamsson wrote:
3) No one cares if the server farm is blast proof (it isn't), if the connectivity in/out of it gets blasted (submessage: silos were meant to deliver one thing, datacenters aren't in the same operational model once they need connectivity to the outside world)
It's much easier to restore fiber connectivity in a time of crisis than it is to source hardware manufacturered at the other end of the world and have this set up properly. I do think there is value in keeping the hw safer than the connectivity to the outside.
I bet the military or emergency services can establish a 10km fiber stretch in a few hours. Replacing some telecom hw and set it up from scratch would probably take weeks (I'm not talking about a single router here).
Hi Mikael,
The speed with which fibre can be pulled will very much depend on the available paths and other resources. It may be that the previous path of the damaged fibre may now be blocked or otherwise unavailable such that construction work is required.
As you say it is likely to be more difficult to recover from a problem at a datacentre due to the greater potential for damage and diversity of resources required. The point has already been made that not all customers may be able to avail of site resilience due to the associated cost, and so may be reliant on the one datacentre. In addition one thing which I do not think has been mentioned is that damage to a building may make the site unsafe and possibly injure staff; perhaps causing planning, coordination and implementation of site recovery to be considerably more complicated than simply replacing equipment.
Most customers would not be willing to pay extra to get hardened datacentres, so despite the complexities of recovery Deepak is largely right when he said that no one cares about blast proof server farms, at least in the peaceful parts of the world.
Paul.
Actually this is pretty straightforward. Systems exist for getting rock steady film from moving helicopters and I'm sure that a system that can keep a camera aimed at a point can do the same for a
microwave dish.
Ian
Seems like dry-ice was used to make the "tropical fog" in the photos,
not water poured over hot rocks like a sauna/bath house.
It has become de rigeur in some parts of the colocation and wholesale datacenter space to have a media puff-piece done on your new datacenter. Typically, that puff-piece is full of hyperbole and contains lots of power and efficiency numbers that don't add up. The tech media is a willing participant and, while they don't know any better, they don't make the effort to pick up the phone and ask someone who might know a bit more than they do.
The classier datacenter providers generally don't do this stuff. For one thing, its an absolute waste of time - it generates a lot of worthless and time wasting leads for your sales force.
Daniel Golding
I've tried to avoid stating the obvious reading through all this funny
thread, but I can't help it now.
Am I the only one thinking that shady lights, tropical fog, creepy
tunnels, blue/colored lights, and *waterfalls* are *bad* things in a
datacenter?
I mean, it make a good movie set, but seriously... I wouldn't want to be
looking for that damn blue "locator" LED on that 10th switch with a blue
neon light...
A.
Maybe it isn't dry ice.... Maybe it is from liquid oxygen, in which case it
better be a smoke free workplace.
Maybe it isn't dry ice.... Maybe it is from liquid oxygen, in which case it
better be a smoke free workplace.
This is of course off-off-topic, but I would suspect the room temperature ultrasonic
misters, not dry ice or wood smoke.
Regards
Marshall
Marshall wrote:
This is of course off-off-topic, but I would suspect the room
temperature ultrasonic
misters, not dry ice or wood smoke.
Regards
Marshall
Concur.
As anyone who works with air conditioning knows, ultrasonic are
the low maintenance option for your humidifier units anyways.
A lot of your datacenters have those 
There are also doors between the plants and NOC and the server
rooms ...
Having them external to the AC and pumping visible fog out into
the room instead of invisible into the air feeds is unusual, but
if the resulting humidity (in the NOC, not the server rooms)
is normal it's no big deal. You can have the floor covered in
an inch of water and the air be perfectly safe humidity for
systems (just don't drop a live power cable in the water...).
I wouldn't do this personally, but if done right it should be safe.
-george william herbert
gherbert@retro.com
Marshall Eubanks wrote:
Maybe it isn't dry ice.... Maybe it is from liquid oxygen, in which case it
better be a smoke free workplace.
This is of course off-off-topic, but I would suspect the room temperature ultrasonic
misters, not dry ice or wood smoke.
I'd be more worried about the artificial waterfalls... the sound of flowing water has an established physiological effect.....
Um... where's the bathroom?
I would agree with the psychological effects. That would be a downside to working in a place that aside from that is so unbelievably kickass.
From: Marshall Eubanks [mailto:tme@multicasttech.com]
Sent: Tuesday, December 02, 2008 15:15
This is of course off-off-topic, but I would suspect the room
temperature ultrasonic
misters, not dry ice or wood smoke.
Still off-topic, but I hope they used distilled water. If the water has a medium to high mineral content ("hard" water), the miniscule droplets produced by ultrasonic misters evaporate quickly into microscopic dust motes, small enough to evade most filtering systems.
(This data center actually reminds me of the old Kon-Tiki movie theater in Dayton, OH.)
Speaking as a Datacenter Manager who (believe it or not) at one time was an
Art Director, I have to say that the "ambience" in those photographs, in
the form of fog, odd/colored lighting, etc. was certainly created at the
time of the photo shoot by an Art Director ... with delusions (illusions)
of grandeur in mind. I imagine that were any of us to visit the site in
question on a normal working day we'd find no such special effects and it
would look, other than the granite walls, not too different from any other
datacenter, or NOC.
chuck goolsbee wrote:
would look, other than the granite walls
On the subject of suitability problems, unless there is good air
circulation in these bunkers from the outside, radon seepage from the
surrounding granite has the potential to cause a lot of health problems for
any unlucky punter who happens to work in there, although it's unlikely
that it would have any effect on any equipment housed in the facility.
Having said that, radon seems to be a well known problem in Stockholm and
I've no doubt that they took measures to deal with it.
Nick
I bet the military or emergency services can establish a 10km fiber
stretch in a few hours. Replacing some telecom hw and set it up from
scratch would probably take weeks (I'm not talking about a single
router
here).
But we aren't talking about the military here, are we? We are talking about an ISP on an ISP forum.
Deepak
> But we aren't talking about the military here, are we? We are talking
about an ISP on an ISP forum.
>
Yes.... but in a disaster scenario where critical communication links
are down the military would respond and reestablish the links, if for
nothing else to re establish situational awareness for themselves.
This is getting off-topic in a big way, but I can pretty much assure you that the US military isn't going to be re-establishing ISP circuits for the military's situational awareness. I can't speak of the Swedish military. In
most countries with a big-bad-military, the most the military will do is allow the commercial entities to expedite their own repairs and perhaps bypass certain permit requirements -- which is as it should be.
If this is the reason to build a bomb proof datacenter, I encourage all my competitors to do so.
Someone said it earlier, its far cheaper, and far more reliable to be massively redundant than super hardened in one (or a few) locations. If you think you can't afford the former, but can get the latter, you don't understand what you are solving for.
Deepak
So control systems in nuclear power plants don't need any extra
shielding to prevent "glitches"?
