Data centers: who is in that much
Following the fashion trends to make collections of unusual and beautiful offices, we decided to see what was happening with the data centers and collected a selection of the most unusual solutions for the placement of data centers and the use of their resources.
On Habré already wrote about the HP data center in the city of Billingham (England), which is cooled with the help of wind energy from the North Sea, and about the data center, located in the " water tank ". And although each deserves separate attention, we have compiled a selection of the most, in our opinion, interesting stories.
The data center is located in the town of Kloetinge in a bunker built by the Dutch Ministry of Defense in 1955. The cyber bunker is surrounded by forest and is protected from the impact of a 20 megaton nuclear bomb, as well as chemical and biological weapons. According to the company, even if the data center is cut off from the outside world, its energy resources will be enough to function for another ten years. Placing one unit in a bunker will cost 100 euros a day and 125 euros a month, a rack for 40 units costs 1,000 euros for an installation and 625 euros a month.
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From 200 pounds per month without VAT, a dedicated server in the former NATO anti-nuclear bunker of the same name Smartbunker (United Kingdom) will cost
Another nuclear bunker was transformed into a data center by the Swedish Internet provider Bahnhof in 2008. At 30 meters near Stockholm, fountains were broken, a greenhouse and a huge aquarium with sea water were installed, and a glass meeting room was styled as a lunar surface. The Pionen data center was repeatedly compared to the abode of the villains from the James Bond movies. In 2010, the office and WikiLeaks servers moved to Pionen.
The chain of American military warehouses of the Second World War took over the Prairie Bunkers data center complex. Interestingly, the bunkers successfully formed the “digital corridor” between the data centers of IBM, PayPal, Yahoo, Microsoft and Google.
Former ammunition depot with an area of ​​21 thousand square meters. m. going to equip a data center in Norway. The Green Mountain project is located on the shore of the fjord - they will use it to cool the room.
An unused anti-radiation shelter in Kiev was adapted for a data center with 100 racks.
So it was accepted in 2010:
And so it became after repair:
Nothing less, but in the building of the former church Torre Girona (now Technical University of Catalonia) is located the Center of supercomputers in Barcelona . In addition to the unusual location, its main attraction - MareNostrum - one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world.
Church walls sheltered and data center Bostnosky College .
Servers HavenCo Inc , occupied the self-proclaimed unrecognized state of the Principality of Sealand. The Principality is a fortress in the North Sea, 6 miles from Suffolk, England, left over from World War II. Its area barely reaches 560 square meters. m. (6 thousand sq. ft.). In 2000, on the territory of the fort, HavenCo decided to open an independent data center in an attempt to escape from the British legal restrictions on the Internet. Only spam, drug distribution and child pornography were banned. The connection should be provided in three ways - via satellite, underwater optical communication lines, as well as 155-megabit radio-relay lines between the fortress and the coast. Users quoted prices around $ 500 / month. for the "budget piece of hardware and a modest 64 kbps."
In 2006, a strong fire broke out in the fortress that destroyed a significant part of the platform, and after its reconstruction the connection was restored only through the territory of England, which, moreover, started talking about the ownership of the fort again by its territorial waters.
In 2007, there was talk of buying the fort by Pirate Bay , but the transaction did not take place, and in 2008 the activity of the data center was suspended (internal causes of internal strife and lack of customers were cited as reasons).
IDS Company announced the opening of data centers on a ship moored in US coastal waters. The first conversations about the project were made back in 2008, and returned to them in 2010. According to the director of marketing and sales of IDS, the idea itself is not new - the military have equipped the ships with data centers for over 20 years. The former ship of the Californian Maritime Academy was chosen as the first vessel. The equipment is located below deck and must be cooled with seawater. The first ship data center IDS holds 1,500 racks, but for now it will be limited to five hundred.
The object is so secret that even on the company's website access to information about it is available only to authorized users. The customer will also remain anonymous until the IDS Dataship project is successful.
Google also spoke (and even filed an application with the patent bureau ) about creating data centers on floating platforms. It is supposed to use the energy of the waves for the fire support.
An unusual experiment conducted by Microsoft employees , placing 5 servers in a regular tent. Their task was to create such a system that would spend all its power only on targeted calculations and would not require additional conditioning or power.
They claim that the equipment has worked properly (“zero failures or 100% uptime”) for more than six months (from November 2007 to June 2008). At the same time, water dripped on racks, a fence fell, an autumn leaf was sucked into one of the servers - the equipment continued to work.
A similar experiment, in order to create a budget cooling system that would replace the traditional air conditioning in server rooms and small data centers, was conducted in Finland . The equipment worked successfully from February to October, housed in a tent on the roof of one of the buildings of the University of Helsinki.
Also in the list of the most unexpected places for data centers can be safely attributed:
Ways of rational use of heat generated by data centers - a reason for some admiration.
In 2008, IBM built a data center in Switzerland , the energy of which is allowed to heat the urban pool.
And in France in the data center Condorcet is located an arboretum, in which with the help of plants climatic changes are studied.
How many tourists know that in Helsinki there is something to see, not only in the city, but also under it. A church in the rock, an underground pool, a hockey box, a shopping center ... And at a distance of 30 m under the Assumption Cathedral, in a former bomb shelter, the data center Academica Katajanokka /
Instead of electricity, sea water is used to cool the servers, and the excess heat they generate will be used to heat residential buildings. The project became one of the winners of the Green Enterprise IT Award 2010 award.
On Habré already wrote about the HP data center in the city of Billingham (England), which is cooled with the help of wind energy from the North Sea, and about the data center, located in the " water tank ". And although each deserves separate attention, we have compiled a selection of the most, in our opinion, interesting stories.
Military facilities
The data center is located in the town of Kloetinge in a bunker built by the Dutch Ministry of Defense in 1955. The cyber bunker is surrounded by forest and is protected from the impact of a 20 megaton nuclear bomb, as well as chemical and biological weapons. According to the company, even if the data center is cut off from the outside world, its energy resources will be enough to function for another ten years. Placing one unit in a bunker will cost 100 euros a day and 125 euros a month, a rack for 40 units costs 1,000 euros for an installation and 625 euros a month.
')
From 200 pounds per month without VAT, a dedicated server in the former NATO anti-nuclear bunker of the same name Smartbunker (United Kingdom) will cost
Another nuclear bunker was transformed into a data center by the Swedish Internet provider Bahnhof in 2008. At 30 meters near Stockholm, fountains were broken, a greenhouse and a huge aquarium with sea water were installed, and a glass meeting room was styled as a lunar surface. The Pionen data center was repeatedly compared to the abode of the villains from the James Bond movies. In 2010, the office and WikiLeaks servers moved to Pionen.
The chain of American military warehouses of the Second World War took over the Prairie Bunkers data center complex. Interestingly, the bunkers successfully formed the “digital corridor” between the data centers of IBM, PayPal, Yahoo, Microsoft and Google.
Former ammunition depot with an area of ​​21 thousand square meters. m. going to equip a data center in Norway. The Green Mountain project is located on the shore of the fjord - they will use it to cool the room.
An unused anti-radiation shelter in Kiev was adapted for a data center with 100 racks.
So it was accepted in 2010:
And so it became after repair:
Churches
Nothing less, but in the building of the former church Torre Girona (now Technical University of Catalonia) is located the Center of supercomputers in Barcelona . In addition to the unusual location, its main attraction - MareNostrum - one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world.
Church walls sheltered and data center Bostnosky College .
Microstate
Servers HavenCo Inc , occupied the self-proclaimed unrecognized state of the Principality of Sealand. The Principality is a fortress in the North Sea, 6 miles from Suffolk, England, left over from World War II. Its area barely reaches 560 square meters. m. (6 thousand sq. ft.). In 2000, on the territory of the fort, HavenCo decided to open an independent data center in an attempt to escape from the British legal restrictions on the Internet. Only spam, drug distribution and child pornography were banned. The connection should be provided in three ways - via satellite, underwater optical communication lines, as well as 155-megabit radio-relay lines between the fortress and the coast. Users quoted prices around $ 500 / month. for the "budget piece of hardware and a modest 64 kbps."
In 2006, a strong fire broke out in the fortress that destroyed a significant part of the platform, and after its reconstruction the connection was restored only through the territory of England, which, moreover, started talking about the ownership of the fort again by its territorial waters.
In 2007, there was talk of buying the fort by Pirate Bay , but the transaction did not take place, and in 2008 the activity of the data center was suspended (internal causes of internal strife and lack of customers were cited as reasons).
Ships and barges
IDS Company announced the opening of data centers on a ship moored in US coastal waters. The first conversations about the project were made back in 2008, and returned to them in 2010. According to the director of marketing and sales of IDS, the idea itself is not new - the military have equipped the ships with data centers for over 20 years. The former ship of the Californian Maritime Academy was chosen as the first vessel. The equipment is located below deck and must be cooled with seawater. The first ship data center IDS holds 1,500 racks, but for now it will be limited to five hundred.
The object is so secret that even on the company's website access to information about it is available only to authorized users. The customer will also remain anonymous until the IDS Dataship project is successful.
Google also spoke (and even filed an application with the patent bureau ) about creating data centers on floating platforms. It is supposed to use the energy of the waves for the fire support.
Tents and tourist tents
An unusual experiment conducted by Microsoft employees , placing 5 servers in a regular tent. Their task was to create such a system that would spend all its power only on targeted calculations and would not require additional conditioning or power.
They claim that the equipment has worked properly (“zero failures or 100% uptime”) for more than six months (from November 2007 to June 2008). At the same time, water dripped on racks, a fence fell, an autumn leaf was sucked into one of the servers - the equipment continued to work.
A similar experiment, in order to create a budget cooling system that would replace the traditional air conditioning in server rooms and small data centers, was conducted in Finland . The equipment worked successfully from February to October, housed in a tent on the roof of one of the buildings of the University of Helsinki.
Also in the list of the most unexpected places for data centers can be safely attributed:
- McMurdo American Polar Station: air temperature does not exceed zero degrees, and the minimum temperature reaches -32. The station’s own data center has 64 servers and 100 gigabytes of scientific data are transmitted from it via a satellite channel every day.
- A data center in a coal mine, opened in 2007 by Japanese Sun Microsystems . Servers are lowered to the hundred-meter depth in containers, 250 pieces each. Containers are able to withstand a quake to 6.7 on the Richter scale. Cooling is provided by underground sources and eliminates the need for additional air conditioning.
- Limestone mines and caves. Among them is the Iron Mountain data center Room 48 in Pennsylvania, the data centers of Subtropolis , The Mountain Complex and SpringNet Underground
- Superconducting Super Collider. In 2006, in Dallas, USA, it was proposed to use the object of the 3rd and 4th levels for the data center of the object, where, until 1993, scientific works on particle acceleration were carried out. The project received the appropriate name - Collider Data Center . Today the premises belong to a chemical company.
Ways of rational use of heat generated by data centers - a reason for some admiration.
In 2008, IBM built a data center in Switzerland , the energy of which is allowed to heat the urban pool.
And in France in the data center Condorcet is located an arboretum, in which with the help of plants climatic changes are studied.
How many tourists know that in Helsinki there is something to see, not only in the city, but also under it. A church in the rock, an underground pool, a hockey box, a shopping center ... And at a distance of 30 m under the Assumption Cathedral, in a former bomb shelter, the data center Academica Katajanokka /
Instead of electricity, sea water is used to cool the servers, and the excess heat they generate will be used to heat residential buildings. The project became one of the winners of the Green Enterprise IT Award 2010 award.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/137701/
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