Facebook expands its “arctic” data center in Lulea

It turns out that there is almost no information on Habré about Facebook’s most interesting data center, built in the middle of last year not far from the Polar Circle (only 60 kilometers away), in Lulea, Sweden. This data center is one of the most "green", thanks to the use of appropriate technologies.

Now the company is working to expand this data center, planning to add two new buildings. As for the already rebuilt building, here is some information on this data center.
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Energy saving

This data center was not just built in Lulea, a region that, as mentioned above, is only 60 kilometers from the Polar Circle. They decided to build a data center at the confluence of the Lule River into the Gulf of Bothnia.

The matter is, firstly, in the water, which is abundant here, and secondly, in the cool air, which is even greater.

The company uses in this data center only the energy received from the hydroelectric station. Due to this fact, the company managed to reduce the number of spare generators by 70%.

In addition, since the air is always cool here, external air is used to cool the equipment, which is not cooled additionally. In addition, the excess heat generated during the operation of the equipment is used to heat the office part of the building.

The average annual temperature here is only 1 degree Celsius.

By the way, the energy efficiency ratio (PUE) for this data center is only 1.07, while the average for other data centers is 1.6-1.99.

Open compute

In addition to energy efficiency, this data center stands out from a number of similar ones and fully complies with the specifications of the OpenCompute project. In general, this should not be surprising, since the project itself was initiated by the company itself. As part of OpenCompute, a set of open specifications is being developed to equip data centers aimed at ensuring the maximum efficiency of the infrastructure at the lowest possible cost.

Manufacturers such as Dell, Intel and HP, who have recently begun to manufacture the corresponding equipment, have already joined the initiative.

So almost all the equipment in the new data center, including servers and racks, is a new type of "open" hardware.

The future of the data center

As mentioned above, the company is now working on expanding this data center, it is planned to build two more buildings, with an area of ​​28 thousand square meters each.

And here is a photo + video for acquaintance with the data center itself.