How Iceland becomes a data center paradise

Behind there was a bulletproof and explosion-proof glass inspection point, a few more doors with combination locks, and along the corridors where two people can barely pass, I got into the very heart of the Verne Global plant. It was here that I encountered the first of two things that make Iceland an attractive place for building data centers: holes in the wall.



Simply put, air vents were made in the walls, thanks to which air from the street got into the data center full of server racks, of course, passing along several filters and a laser monitoring system along the way. Data centers need huge cooling capacity, and Iceland's cold air can help save a lot of resources.

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Despite the fact that the country is not at all the edge of the permafrost, as it may seem to someone, the temperature during the year fluctuates in a relatively narrow range, and is always quite cool. Heads of data centers located in places where temperature extremes are more significant will never enter the head to let air in from the street inside the building, on the contrary, they spend enormous resources on fighting the heat generated by the equipment - and this flies them a pretty penny.



The second of two important factors that make Iceland a good place to put data centers is the sources of capacity that are required to maintain the work of both the servers themselves and the cooling systems. The country depends entirely on two sources of energy - geothermal power plants and hydroelectric power plants (the latter, of course, have certain environmental problems). Only about 5% of the energy produced in Iceland is used by households (in the USA, by comparison, this indicator is at the level of 36%) - basically everything goes to the needs of industry (for example, the aluminum smelting industry). Energy companies and the government do not mind to send part of the energy to the needs of data centers.







During a trip to Iceland, I asked everyone about the possible disadvantages of placing data centers on a cold island in the North Atlantic. Apart from the fact that servers in such a distant place cannot be organized by companies operating in the field of HFT trading (it is very important to physically locate the equipment closer to the exchange), it was not easy to come up with some other drawback. It is possible that someone will not want to transport their best employees to work in a new data center, although Iceland is consistently high in various ratings of quality of life, so employees may not be against such a move. In addition, the country is connected to Europe and the United States by fiber optic cables , which significantly reduces the problem of distances.



A spokesman for Verne Global said that every potential client of the company who plans to move its servers to Iceland also asks for the risks of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions - not so long ago it was the Icelandic volcano that paralyzed flight connections in Europe. However, the eruptions that occur in Iceland do not cause any damage to the data centers (provided that they are properly designed and built).



I once saw a data center where four diesel generators and special batteries were installed to calm down customers in case of large-scale problems with electricity, which could support the operation of all systems before the generators began to work. Even in the event of a volcanic eruption and an unfortunate wind direction, which will carry ash to the data center, the ventilation holes in the walls described above can be quickly closed and air recirculation activated.



“The Icelandic government got so excited about the idea of ​​turning the country into a paradise for data centers, that the parliament is already considering reducing corporate taxes to record lows,” says Einar Hansen Tomasson, who is engaged in attracting investment to the country. “It is possible that taxes will be reduced to 15%, but this is only an assumption.” Of course, the financial system of the country after the 2008 crisis is not the best reputation, but unlike the United States, in Iceland, the banks that committed violations did not prevent bankruptcy and the guilty went to jail.



At the moment, the Verne Global data center is the only large data center in the country, but the efforts of the authorities and the presence of extremely suitable conditions for the deployment of such facilities does not allow this situation to last for a long time.