Microsoft Plans Data Center in Siberia

miller60 writes "Microsoft has announced plans to build a data center in Siberia. The facility near the city of Irkutsk will be able to hold 10,000 servers. Officials in Microsoft's Russian business unit said the region had a stable power supply, and will be able to support a 50 megawatt utility feed. The average winter temperature is below zero in Irkutsk (which is perhaps best known to gamers as a territory in Risk). Microsoft recently announced huge data center projects in Chicago and Dublin, Ireland, and is clearly ramping up its worldwide infrastructure platform as it competes with Google." No doubt this will save a fortune on cooling costs- they can just crack a window.

Interesting

[Panaqqa (927615)]

I guess Ballmer's not satisfied anymore with throwing chairs at people. He's decided to add Siberian exile to the mix.

Crack a window?

[pegr (46683)]

I thought Windows was already cracked.... /oblig. Sorry, somebody had to say it...

Data security?

[goombah99 (560566)]

While your comment was intended as a joke, off shoring data centers in other countires (i.e. US data in the FSU or chinese data in the US) has some interesting possibilities besides exiling employees. Do they have to abide by US laws for that data? Do they have to hand it over to the Siberian state police on demand or reveal the accounts of dissidents putin is trying to crush? Can they encrypt data or will that run afoul of ITAR laws in both host and owner companies?

Additionally, recall that last year Russia and Georgia withheld Gas to western europe in an after the fact, gun to the head, negotiation to raise prices. There are no so abundant gas resources that it is so fungible that one can switch suppliers. The same is true of data centers. Will some future event cause Siberia to turn off the Internet router and demand more money?

It's a big risk, but...

[monkeyboythom (796957)]

From Irkutsk you can strike Mongolia, Kamchatka, Siberia, or Yakutsk.

Personally, I found holding all of Australia was the key to taking Asia.

In Soviet Russia...

[OhHellWithIt (756826)]

... data center cools you.

This is where Google defectors will go...

[by Anonymous Coward]

"So Bob, we hear you're thinking about taking a job with Google. That's great. But, we'd like to make you an offer to stay. Just put this blindfold on, and we'll take you on a short plane ride to your new office. We believe you'll end up staying the rest of your life."

too cold

[javilon (99157)]

I am not sure computers work well below -10 degrees celsius :-)

Re:too cold

[moosesocks (264553)]

1) Siberia gets a lot colder than -10C. -10C is 14F. That's not cold at all -- a -10C winter day in Virginia wouldn't be considered all that odd.

2) As long as you don't get a frost buildup, solid-state electronics will generally work just fine in cold environments. Hard drives *might* have some mechanical difficulties if you take them really far below zero, and laptop batteries tend to have a tough time maintaining a charge in the cold. Apart from that, though, you could probably let it get that cold without worrying about the servers themselves. However, the admins running the servers might mutiny if you subject them those sorts of conditions ;-)

3) The servers aren't going to be outdoors. Duh.

Re:

[CastrTroy (595695)]

The biggest problem at that temperature wouldn't be the cold, but condensation. If you have any techs in the room, just breathing is going to make the air quite moist.

Meh

[JoeCommodore (567479)]

Anyone who knows would start building up their data centers in Australia as you can get the whole area and it's an easily defensible region which will increase your build stats. Then wait till after the other data centers fight it out in Asia and Europe you move in and take over.

Re:

[Elemenope (905108)]

You joke, but it kind of creeps me out just how "world domination'-y this Google/Microsoft data center rush is. I mean, people around here bitch about barriers to market entry in things like phone or ISP service; the information-collator business will make competition costs in those businesses look like setting up competing lemonade stands by comparison.

These guys are playing Risk for ten, perhaps twenty years from now (banking of course on the world not ending in fire by 2020; then again, what do you hav

Re:

[Elemenope (905108)]

Perhaps. I agree that it seems, re: Moore's Law et al., that a huge infrastructure investment in *boxes and racks* is foolhardy. However, what if the investment is just a placeholder for more valuable enduring capital? If, ten years from now, the limiter is not bandwidth but power consumption (energy crisis?), would it not be a huge advantage to have installations already well-established, and worry about what goes in them as computers become ever more powerful? The jokes about "how about a beowulf cluste

Clearly

[TheSpoom (715771)]

This is just so they can threaten to ship out unruly employees ;^)

An honest question.

[SlipperHat (1185737)]

Not to troll, but why is this news? What is newsworthy about a company expanding into another country? You could say "Oh it's Siberia!", but Siberia is a place like any other.

Re:An honest question.

[glop (181086)]

Well, I found the news interesting. I wouldn't want a report for every data center but I find that this kind of information is newsworthy because:
  - it involves a lot of computers
  - Microsoft comes from a shrinkwrap background not online business
  - Siberia summons images of cold, wild, hostile environments
  - This is a datacenter far from where most of the users live and is therefore an interesting consequence of the Internet

So I mod the article up any day and welcome our Siberian overlords.

Re:An honest question.

[greenguy (162630)]

and welcome our Siberian overlords.

In Soviet Russia, Siberian overlords welcome you!

Re:

[papasui (567265)]

We must stop the traitor dog Kasparov at any cost!

An honest answer

[smitty_one_each (243267)]

Because a corporation the size of Mr. Softy is going to have very interesting interactions with a country which casually tosses opposition political leaders in jail:
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=garry+kasparov+jail&btnG=Search+News [google.com]
A cage match featuring Ballmer and his chair of choice against Vladimir might be interesting, if brief:

Currently, Putin is a black belt (6th dan) and is best known for his Harai Goshi (sweeping hip throw). Vladimir Putin is Master of Sports (Soviet and

Silly SlipperHat!

[mattgreen (701203)]

How else can we be obsessed with Microsoft if we don't scrutinize every little thing they do? (You obviously have never had a restraining order issued against you.) With every move they make we can lean back in our cheap OfficeMax chairs and scoff at them. "Fools!" we'd say. "This is yet another sign of their impending failure! My year of experience reading articles on Slashdot qualifies me to make this seemingly absurd statement!" Meanwhile we can whisk away petty things like 'reality' and 'logic' so we ca

Re:An honest question.

[vertinox (846076)]

Not to troll, but why is this news? What is newsworthy about a company expanding into another country? You could say "Oh it's Siberia!", but Siberia is a place like any other.

I'm not sure about people who don't live in the US, but for Americans (strangley enough) the term "Siberia" holds a special place for us. As a kid who grew up during the Regan administration everyone would talk about how bad the Soviets were and that if you spoke out against the government you were sent to Siberia regardless and how much better we were for not doing that.

Eventually it got to be a cliche joke (which is why the "In Soviet Russia...") and Americans often joke among each other about being carted off to Siberia for minor offenses.

Now these days I'm sure if you asked the average Russian about what he thought of Siberia and he would most likley think of it as a place much like North Dakato in which it was boring and he wouldn't have any idea why anyone would live there, but if you asked an American, he'd conjure up images of Russian guards in great coats drunk on vodka forcing some poor Microsoft employee to work on the servers while a big picture of Stalin looked down on them in the camp.

Re:

[dirkdidit (550955)]

Perhaps the fact that Microsoft has a fairly major office [microsoft.com] in Fargo, North Dakota is testament to how similar North Dakota is to Siberia.

Both areas share a few commonalities: cheap labor, cheap electricity and rural enough to be isolated from any major events that tend bigger cities tend to be prone to. Microsoft sees this and is using it to their advantage, just like any other company would.

Re:

[Elektroschock (659467)]

There are many persons in Russia who don't like the software company. Just think of the scale of opposition to Open XML in Russia [noooxml.org]. It is a kind of base in Russia for Microsoft's interests. A minor investment.

Risk

[Dystopian Rebel (714995)]

This is just part of Microsoft's plan to gather a force to cross the Bering Strait and... attack North America!

Risk games are endless. Sometime in a distant post-ice-age future, the war-like Mikrosoftsi will attack the southern tribes with deadly chairs.

Stable power??

[pixelated77 (472348)]

From TFA : "The region was attractive to Microsoft due to its stable power supply..."

Am I the only one that can think of a few other places with stable power supply? Seriously, what's the upside to a datacenter in Irkutsk?

Re:

[ilovegeorgebush (923173)]

It's outside the Ludicrous rule of the United States Government.

Oh wait...out of the frying pan into the fire?

Re:Stable power??

[faloi (738831)]

Seriously, what's the upside to a datacenter in Irkutsk?

The upside is you throw a lot of money at a country that's recently stepped up anti-piracy efforts (albeit biased against dissidents [slashdot.org]), thus getting a "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" arrangement. Microsoft helps boost the Russian economy, possibly even throwing extra money to help offset "improvement costs" in the area, and Russia continues to make sure those nasty pirates stay away (at least the pirates engaging in double-plus ungood speech).

But then again, I am pretty cynical when it comes to money and politics.

Exile?

[kimvette (919543)]

Is that where Microsoft is sending employees who run Linux at home now?

Crack? Window?

[RandoX (828285)]

Some days it's just too easy.

It's All About Cooling

[pyite (140350)]

Even in climates where it's only cool part of the year, efficient data centers have cooling towers so that they can save crazy amounts of money on HVAC. I would bet that more and more data centers will spring up in cooler climates, especially as KW/square foot footprints increase more and more. It's getting very difficult to cool cabinets efficiently.

Re:

[Panaqqa (927615)]

I'm actually surprised that we are not seeing more data centres in Canada precisely because of this. Where I am right now in central Ontario, we have 5 inches of snow on the ground and the temperature is at -3 Celsius (27 Fahrenheit). If I had to set up a server farm somewhere, I would seriously look at my own location. Power from two separate reliable sources on the grid and less than 5 months of shorts and T-shirt weather (compared to 6 in Toronto and higher in most parts of the US). Significant savings o

New say to handle deadlines

[MECC (8478)]

Get those changes in on time, or its off to the eastern front for you.

Some kidding aside, one chief reason (among others) to have facilities on the other side of the planet is just that - overnight labor capable of delivering a PM customer change request that can be delivered the next morning AM.

But, it's just for Microsoft.

[drspliff (652992)]

Nobody would in their right mind build a shared-use data center in the middle of nowhere because neither the population or the tranist are there.

I presume that by Microsoft doing this it will house only their servers (so shipping them in bulk for a 5000km trip won't really be a significant cost) and they'll be making their own arrangements for uplinks to Russia, Europe and China; probably by laying their own fiber.

Out of curiosity - how will they persuade sysadmins & rack monkeys to emmigrate to Siberia? I can't imagine the long winters and complete lack of night life would be of any interest, unless their thinking of staffing the whole thing with native Russians?

Re:

[Entropius (188861)]

complete lack of night life

We're talking Microsoft employees here. They don't care.

Re:

[flyingfsck (986395)]

The night life is great. Once it started, the midnight party carry on for 6 months...

Re:But, it's just for Microsoft.

[rsmeds (539318)]

It's not exactly in the middle of nowhere, though. The city of Irkutsk has a population of approx. 600.000, and the Irkutsk oblast (region) is 2,5 million. So the population (and therefore available workforce) is most certainly there.

Besides, Microsoft already has departments in Russia, so the employees for this data center will probably come mainly from those. Also, comp.sci education in Russian universities has a fairly good reputation, so recruiting new people shouldn't be a problem.

A more obvious site would perhaps have been Novosibirsk (1,4 million), home to Novosibirsk State University -- the science captial of the Soviet Union.

However, I suspect Irkutsk was chosen partly because it is located (more or less) in the middle of Russia -- about halfway from St. Petersburg in the west to Vladivostok in the East -- and because labor is cheaper in Siberia than in Moscow or St.Petersburg.

Granted, the night life is far from what we've come to expect in most of Europe or the US, but there are bars, clubs and even a couple of decent restaurants. I had the best sushi of my life in Irkusk a couple of years ago.

Honestly

[TheSpoom (715771)]

I know you guys are hopeful but I really doubt Microsoft will open Windows.

Relative humidity?

[The Second Horseman (121958)]

Wonder what they're going to do to humidify the air. I'd bet it would easily get below 10% RH if they don't do something. A lot of equipment is rated for 10% to 90% these days, but I'd want it over 20%.

Maybe they can use the exhaled breath of a herd of yaks to raise the humidity level. Oh, wait, no, you wouldn't actually get any LEED points for that.

Stable power?

[six11 (579)]

Officials in Microsoft's Russian business unit said the region had a stable power supply

Too bad it can't be said that Russia has a stable political environment.

Re:Save money

[arivanov (12034)]

When people think of Siberia, they think only of the winter. Well, it actually has a summer as well with up to +30C. It is the so called extreme continental climate which only Russia has - down to -40C winter, +36 in the middle of summer.

I would not want to design the cooling/heating system for a datacenter to cope with that.

Also, where are they going to get the fiber to hook the thing up? It is not like there is plenty of abundant network infrastructure there.

Re:Save money

[Nos. (179609)]

The Canadian prairies can hit those extremes as well. We have lots of server rooms in this area of the world. Considering we've been dealing with these temperature fluxuations for a long time, we've learned how to deal with them. We're warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Its not really that tough. Insulation works both ways.

Re:

[Entropius (188861)]

You, however, are Canadians, and fairly smart.

It's only a short step from Vancouver to Washington, but -- trust me -- the monkeys in Redmond aren't as bright.

Re:Save money

[Baddas (243852)]

It's somewhat offset by the fact that Vancouver has better weed.

Re:Save money

[CastrTroy (595695)]

Seems to me that operating in those conditions would be better than operating in California. Where it's 30 degrees in the summer, and 15 degrees in the winter. They would need cooling pretty much year round. Whereas in Edmonton or Siberia, they would only need cooling for half of the year.

Re:

[thegnu (557446)]

We're warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Its not really that tough. Insulation works both ways.

Yeah, but I think the stuff's way too creepy to use. For example, how it know what to keep out? How? Tell me.
O KTHXB YE TEHNGU

Re:

[LWATCDR (28044)]

My guess is that they will look for a site near a river. The water in the river well tend to always be on the cold side. The key is that there is probably a lot of cheap power from "stranded" natural gas near the site and the land is really cheap.
I have heard that Siberia has a lot of tech. My guess is that Siberia was the USSRs New Mexico. A remote place full of high tech.

Re:

[Calinous (985536)]

Yes, just that there is less technology overall, and much much more space.
      Nobody went to Syberia by his/her own accord/desire. That place was far away (until Aeroflot introduced flights to those places), and winter is freezing

You have to be specific ... try Oymyakon

[pbhj (607776)]

Excerpt from: http://grumen.karelia.ru/?uid=-1&land=eng&page=4_0&lap=0&res=10 [karelia.ru]

"The Northern part of Russia

The northern part of Russia from the Kola Peninsula to the island of Sakhalin is in the sub arctic climatic zone, which features are a long and cold winter and a short but warm summer. Within this zone, in Jakutiya, is the town of Oymyakon, where the absolute minimum of temperature (-71 C) for the northern hemisphere of the Earth has been observed. There the average temperature of January

Re:

[Calinous (985536)]

Plenty of places have that extreme continental climate - just that the winters are not so cold (the summers can be hotter than that).
      Designing cooling/heating systems for Syberia are not so different than for other places - especially when the temperature change is slow (seasonal)

Re:

[hackstraw (262471)]

I was really expecting to see some sort of design whereby the waste heat from the datacenter was used to heat homes or apartment buildings.

I can't seem to find it now, but one supercomputing or data center in Minnesota or some other cold place used to dump the heat from the computers into the parking garage.

Nearly everybody likes them

[AHumbleOpinion (546848)]

The word 'kut' means vagina in dutch. Somehow this seems very appropriate for MS...

As in nearly everyone likes and uses them? :-)