Inside Ten of the World’s Largest Data Centers

Written by David Vellante

From: http://wikibon.org/

Data centers touch all our lives. Businesses rely on data centers to house mission critical information and run operational initiatives across the organization.Today’s largest data centers feature state-of-the-art technology, operation rooms spanning thousands of square meters, and are required to hold billions of pieces of customer and business information. As demand for cloud services increase these centers comprise tens or sometimes hundreds of thousands of servers, multi-petabyte storage systems and increasingly are situated in locations where cheap energy is plentiful.

In pictures, here is an inside look at ten of the world’s largest data centers.

Microsoft’s Quincy Washington Data Center

The recent NY Times data center technology slideshow illustrates in photographs just how impressive data centers are and how important they are to our day-to-day lives.

As servers become more powerful, more kilowatts are needed to run and cool them. Data centers worldwide now consume more energy annually than Sweden.

(Photo: Simon Norfolk for The New York Times)
Microsoft’s Quincy Washington data center can store up to 6.75 trillion photos.

NJ2 in Weehawken, N.J.

(Photo: Simon Norfolk for The New York Times)
Inside NJ2, in New Jersey. Attention is now shifting to making servers less energy intensive and to spurring innovation in the design and form of the data center itself. (Image Source)

IBM Green Data Center

IBM operates eight million square feet of data center space on six continents. Through the company’s green data center initiatives, they expect to save more than five billion kilowatt hours per year with energy efficient products and services. View the entire photo gallery on Flickr.

The Tokyo Data Center

Japan’s Internet backbone. This is the largest data center in the world (or so they claim). This photo shows the entrance to the facility. (Image Source)

HDS Yokohama Green Data Center

(Image Gallery on Flickr)
Launched in August 2009, the HDS data center in Yokohama operates with 10,000 square meters of total floor space. Via press release, this green facility incorporates power-efficient data center technology designed to achieve a benchmarking rating of 1.6 PUE.

Microsoft’s Chicago Data Center

Opened in late 2009, the first phase of development includes the ground floor designed to hold up to 56 containers, each filled with anywhere from 1,800 to 2,500 servers. (Source)

Inside Facebook’s Data Center

Facebook’s data centers store more than 40 billion photos, and users upload 40 million new photos each day – about 2,000 photos every second. Via Data Center Knowledge, “Not surprisingly, the racks are packed.”

1&1’s Data Center

Via InformationWeek, 1&1’s data center is in Lenexa, Kansas, just outside Kansas City, the second largest railroad hub in the U.S. Five server rooms hold 860 racks and can accommodate at least 40,000 servers.

Inside a Google Data Center

Awarded a patent on a portable data center modeling in October 2008, Google’s data center features a “container hanger” filled with 45 containers, holding up to 1,160 servers each, and uses 250 kilowatts of power. Referred to as Data Center A, it spans 75,000 square feet and has a power capacity of 10 megawatts. (Information courtesy of Data Center Knowledge)

San Diego Supercomputing Center

Via NetworkWorld, San Diego Supercomputing Center’s new building features cool concrete exteriors, special windows treatments and windows that actually open. This image illustrates how by using robotic virtual tape libraries, SDSC is able to reduce energy costs.

Building a Data Center in 26 Weeks

Digital Realty Trust builds data center facilities all over the world. This photo gallery on Flickr provides a look at its data center construction process for their site located at 1201 Comstock in Santa Clara, California.

Who are we missing? Surely companies like Amazon and eBay should be on this list, though we had trouble verifying the authenticity of data center images found online. We’d love to hear about data center images and links we missed via the comments below or send Wikibon a message on Twitter!

Sweden's Ultra-Modern Underground Data Center

by Matthew Shaw

Underneath Stockholm, deep in the bedrock exists a data center better than any high tech lair Hollywood could probably dream up. Bahnhof, one of Sweden's largest ISP's has created a bunker of high tech goodness that is surely to astound.

The facility is called Pionen and once you get past the 16 inch thick entrance doors into the once nuclear bunker now converted to a data center, the spectacular sights that await are simply breathtaking. Replete with waterfalls, greenhouses, German submarine backup engines, and simulated daylight this facility has the added benefit of being able to withstand an almost direct hit by a hydrogen bomb.

The space Pionen now occupies was originally built during the Cold War era as a nuclear shelter. Located below 30 meters of solid bedrock the space was completely redesigned during 2007-2008. Now Boasting 11,950 sq ft of space it houses the Network Operations Center (NOC) for all of Bahnhof's operations. One of five data centers, it is the largest and is manned by a 15 member team of senior technical staff.

Backup power is generated by two Maybach MTU diesel engines that produce 1.5 Megawatts of power and were originally designed for submarines. The cooling is handled by "Baltimore Aircoil fans producing a cooling effect of 1.5 megawatts" which is enough to cool several hundred rack-mounted servers.

Triple redundant internet backbone pipes are split across fiber and copper and delivered via multiple physical paths into the mountain.

Conference Room


Left: View of servers from moon surfaced conference room. Right: Submarine backup engines


Network Operations Center

Waterfalls

In an interview over at Pingdom, when asked about the motivation behind Pionen, Jon Karlung, CEO of Bahnhof said “Rather than just concentrating on technical hardware we decided to put humans in focus. Of course, the security, power, cooling, network, etc, are all top notch, but the people designing data centers often (always!) forget about the humans that are supposed to work with the stuff.”

Data Center Layout - Source: Pingdom

“Since we got hold of this unique nuclear bunker in central Stockholm deep below the rock, we just couldn't’t build it like a traditional – more boring – hosting center,” he said. “We wanted to make something different. The place itself needed something far out in design and science fiction was the natural source of inspiration in this case – plus of course some solid experience from having been a hosting provider for more than a decade.”

Regarding the design of the facility, he said “I’m personally a big fan of old science fiction movies. Especially ones from the 70s like Logan’s Run, Silent Running, Star Wars (especially The Empire Strikes Back) so these were an influence,“ said Karlung. “James Bond movies have also had an impact on the design. I was actually looking for the same outfit as the villain ‘Blofeld’ in Bond and even considered getting a white cat, but that might have been going a bit far!”

Before Construction

I only have two questions... What time does the DJ come on? Wheres the dance floor?