The Soaring Costs for New Data Center Projects 164
miller60 writes "The cost of building a quality data center is rising fast. Equinix will spend $165 million to convert a Chicago warehouse into a data center, while Microsoft is said to be shopping Texas sites for a massive server farm that could cost as much as $600 million. Just three years ago, data centers were dirt cheap due to a glut of facilities built by failed dot-coms and telcos like Exodus, AboveNet and WorldCom. Those sites have been bought up amid surging demand for data storage, so companies needing data center space must either build from scratch or convert existing industrial sites. Microsoft and Yahoo are each building centers in central Washington, where cheap hydro electric power from nearby dams helps them save on energy costs, which can be enormous for high-density server installations."
Detroit? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Detroit? (Score:1)
I hear realestate in Katrina is also cheap, should
build a data center there. Like close to the water.
Re:Detroit? (Score:1)
Re:Detroit? (Score:1)
One both counts, Texas wins hands down. We have low taxes and our state power grid can be disconnected from all others. There was a problem a few years back where a power issue in the mid west took out huge parts of the North East.
Then you have to think about other things like being able to fill and staff the facility.
Again, Texas wins out. We're the nex
Re:Detroit? (Score:2)
Re:Detroit? (Score:2)
Re:Detroit? (Score:2)
I live in Minnesota now.
This is no coincidence.
I live in New Orleans (same latitude as Houston) and much prefer it to having to shovel snow 4 months a year and live thru blizzards every year.
Re:Detroit? (Score:1, Funny)
loose - the opposite of tight
lose - to not win
Example: I guess Texas lose in the spelling stakes eh Bubba?
Re:Detroit? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Detroit? (Score:2)
Actually, power grid reliability is a huge concern. Most data centers of this size will have connections to two different power grids, preferably from two different electric providers. I don't care how much generator capacity you have, it's most likely not enough to last longer than a couple of days without power. This definitely influences data center projects of this size, where architects need to conside
Re:Detroit? (Score:2)
No they won't. It dosen't make sense. You don't know what you are talking about. The North American power grid is all interconnected. There is no second grid to connect to. Even if there were a second grid, running power lines is insanely expensive. Generators are cheaper.
I don't care how much generator capacity you have, it's most likely not enough to last longer than a couple of days without power.
What does this mean? The gen
Re:Detroit? (Score:2)
But how do you get skilled high-tech people to work in a place where they risk their lives on their daily commute?
Re:Detroit? (Score:5, Funny)
Do bullet proof vests come included?
Re:Detroit? (Score:2)
Do bullet proof vests come included?
There is actually something worse than the rampant crime, corruption, drugs, traffic and exorbitant parking in Detroit - having to pay city income tax.
Re:Detroit? (Score:2)
Re:Detroit? (Score:2)
Re:Moving to Canada from Detroit (Score:2)
Re:Detroit? (Score:2)
WSU is very, very lucky to have Dr. Reid as their President. That's a guy with vision. And boy, does he love his technology!
We were sorry to see him leave in '97, but all of the good things that have happened at Montclair State [montclair.edu] in the last 10 years were from his vision.
Good luck Dr. Reid, glad to see you're still pushing the envelope!
Re:Detroit? (Score:2)
In fact, if you could figure out a way to sell the heat generated by the computers to nearby buildings, you might make a tidy side-sum to help defray the power costs
Seems to me they should target Rust Belt/non-metro (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems to me you can control your costs by buying existing space, like a mothballed factory, in an economically depressed area. Like, say, anywhere in the rust belt. You've got a bit of flexibility in siting as long as you can get Internet pipes, and you don't necessarily *have* to set up in an area known for a workforce with a high degree of tech skill (and absurd prevailing wages along with almost certainly having higher cost of everything because its metropolitan).
Our technology incubator in Japan is in a park with a few major data centers and is located 40 miles from the middle of nowhere. The US analog would be siting the datacenter in a cornfield in central Illinois. We have (comparitively) cheap power rates, a cost of living (and prevailing salaries) a fraction of that in Nagoya, and the rent (heavily subsidized by local government, which may not be an option for folks discussed in these articles) is a song.
Build it somewhere cold (Score:2)
Re:Build it somewhere cold (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Build it somewhere cold (Score:2)
Horse hocky. The operative measure is the speed of the dark. Dark fibre, fewer hops, acceptable response.
Re:Build it somewhere cold (Score:2)
Re:Build it somewhere cold (Score:3, Interesting)
Our datacenter in just up the Hudson from NYC and was built back in the 1960s, When IBM Ruled The Datacenter, and disk farms generated a lot of heat and the ambient temperature needed to be roughly 70F.
So, the DC is in the 2nd basement, and (had) vents to the outside, so cold winter air could be shunted into the room.
Became obsolete, though, in the mid 1990s when the huge 3390 farm was replaced by a couple of EMC cabinets and the bipolar m
Re:Seems to me they should target Rust Belt/non-me (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Seems to me they should target Rust Belt/non-me (Score:2)
Re:Seems to me they should target Rust Belt/non-me (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Seems to me they should target Rust Belt/non-me (Score:3, Insightful)
They're naturally temperature-controlled: anything more than a few feet down is going to hover around 40-50F
Yeah, sure, until you saturate the heat capacity of the ground around you. Mind, the ground conducts slowly, and datacenters have a lot higher power density than your basement.
Re:Seems to me they should target Rust Belt/non-me (Score:2)
Re:Seems to me they should target Rust Belt/non-me (Score:2)
Re:Seems to me they should target Rust Belt/non-me (Score:1)
Re:Seems to me they should target Rust Belt/non-me (Score:2)
Re:Seems to me they should target Rust Belt/non-me (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Seems to me they should target Rust Belt/non-me (Score:2)
Re:Seems to me they should target Rust Belt/non-me (Score:5, Informative)
oh for crying out loud. It amazes me the lack of thought outside the box people have.
Options...
1 - spend very little and build seperate enclosures inside the wearhouse that hold the libert units for environment control and the servers in data-center pods.
2 - go uber cheap. Buy a bunch of camper trailers that are gutted and put the servers inside those parked in the wearhouse. works great and I have seen several startups that did exactly that. this also works very well for rental property as you can pull up stakes and move your datacenter within minutes of getting your data pipes into another cheap wearhouse.
the best option and the one usually does in these types of datacenters is the first. you can hire simple general contractors to build interior walls with roofs that are only 10 feet high and insulate the crap out of them to make the perfect datacenter within 5 - 30 days.
It's the mentially retarted CEO's and Venture Capilolists that think you need to spend 80 million dollars on a flashy facility with lots of glass and artwork and special "touches" that only impress clients that will never go there or see it.
Re:Seems to me they should target Rust Belt/non-me (Score:1)
Re:Seems to me they should target Rust Belt/non-me (Score:1)
Re:Seems to me they should target Rust Belt/non-me (Score:2)
Re:Seems to me they should target Rust Belt/non-me (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Seems to me they should target Rust Belt/non-me (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Seems to me they should target Rust Belt/non-me (Score:2)
Re:Seems to me they should target Rust Belt/non-me (Score:3, Informative)
1. Getting lots of cheap power. Being next to a power plant with tons of extra capacity doesn't hurt. The farther you are, the more loss, and that means more $$$ per MW.
2. Internet pipes. Having X thousand servers up and running with nowhere to push the bits is pretty useless. I'm not sure if most people understand how hard it is to say get 40-60 Gig of bandwidth to the middle of nowhere. It tak
Iowa (Score:2)
Re:Seems to me they should target Rust Belt/non-me (Score:2)
Right-of-way is more important than existing infrastructure.
Just to use a company that's familiar to you as an example, ask the Southern Pacific Railroad Integration.
Re:Seems to me they should target Rust Belt/non-me (Score:5, Informative)
1. Access to a large body of water cuts costs immensely when dumping the heat from the beast. Fresh is preferred but not required.
2. Access to high voltage lines, or a short distance to one that can be tied into. 34.5 and 105kV lines are expensive to build and maintain on a long-term basis.
3. Access to fuel. Ideally rail, ship, or pipeline, because power plants burn massive quantities of fuel. Trucks do not cut it unless the distance is extremely short.
I recently worked at a power station that was originally built with none of these things. The only people to ever make any money from this white elefant were the contracters that built it.
Build your datacenter near a large body of water (or maybe in Juneau?). Build it near a power station (or build your own steam plant?). Build near some big strands of fiber. Being in the middle of nowhere for the sake of being in the middle of nowhere only profits the contractors.
Re:Seems to me they should target Rust Belt/non-me (Score:2)
Re:Seems to me they should target Rust Belt/non-me (Score:2)
He's talking about the primaries that come in. Not the stepped-down voltages that things actually run at. The transmission voltage on the primaries has a lot more to do with how far away from the substation/power generating plant your building is than how much power you need.
I don't know how much power a couple of elec
Re:Seems to me they should target Rust Belt/non-me (Score:2)
Re:Seems to me they should target Rust Belt/non-me (Score:2)
case it very much is.
esp banks... (Score:5, Informative)
We have a LOT of data...and not just account data.
Back in the 80's, the standard was two mainframes in the same room, back-up
tapes kept on and off site, and a contract with a company to supply a DR computer
if it was ever needed.
Cut to 2006...
We have dual fully redundant data centers, each with many mainframes, and pipes
big enough to drive a dump truck full of bits between the two.
A third one is about to open and a fourth is under construction.
Most of this is for SOX.
Re:esp banks... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:esp banks... (Score:5, Informative)
SOX is shorthand for Sarbanes-Oxley Act [wikipedia.org].
Re:esp banks... (Score:1)
Re:esp banks... (Score:1, Informative)
In QUINCY? (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't buy it (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I don't buy it (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I don't buy it (Score:1)
Re:I don't buy it (Score:1)
If you go just outside the Seattle area (Kent, Tukwilla), they'l
So what you're saying... (Score:1)
Re:So what you're saying... (Score:2)
I have this recurring vision of people tripping over this huge data cable and dislodging the little nub at the end that was the data centre.
Data storage densities may continue to improve for a bit. Until we're reading the RFC's for a new RS-nnnn spec for DTE communication via quantum entanglement and metal telepathy* though, we're going to be building data centres for bandwidth and reliable power as much as for cubic volume required to house binary digits.
Which brings u
Re:So what you're saying... (Score:2)
Those huge-density 7200RPM drives are best for near-line and "online archival" storage. Perfect for SOX data retention.
For speed, you still want 10K 147GB SCSI drives.
Re:So what you're saying... (Score:2)
Of course looking forward the high RPM SAS drives with physically smaller platters seem nice since I can get a large number of spindles into even a 2U enclosure.
Humble Suggestion. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Humble Suggestion. (Score:2)
Yeah, since they don't flood the world with quality LSD anymore, they might as well use them for data centers.
http://www.dea.gov/pubs/states/newsrel/sanfran112
So much for.. (Score:1)
Costs haven't changed that dramatically (Score:5, Informative)
The old metric was in $/sq. ft., and today it is better to talk in terms of $/kW given higher densities.
For a wide range of data centers, the building shell cost is around $100-250/sq. ft. An enterprise (EIA 692 "Tier 4") data center costs about $22k/kW, plus the high end of the building shell cost. A "Tier 3" data center is closer to $20k/kW and $200/sq. ft. When you drop to Tier 2, you cut the cost in about half, at $12k/kW.
The only costs that have risen dramatically recently are generators and copper, which have a one-year lead time for big engines typically used (1.5-2+ MW) for the generetor, and about triple the cost three years ago for copper-- maybe a 15% premium maximum for a large data center.
Costs get much more complicated when you talk about provisions for future expansion and site constraints.
As for energy costs, yes, cheaper electricity is good for a data center. A 2MW data center will save about $350k/year if they can drop their electricity cost by $0.01 per kWh!
Re:Costs haven't changed that dramatically (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Costs haven't changed that dramatically (Score:4, Insightful)
-Steve
http://www.cassatt.com/ [cassatt.com]
Time to Build Datacenters (Score:3, Insightful)
Anything over 50k sf of datacenter is more than enough, assuming you've got cheap and available power, and close to a couple fiber loops. The big reason that these new datacenters are so large (200k-400k sf, compared that to 1 floor of a high rise office at 30k sf) is because they aren't allowed to have the power density (elec co can only supply so much at reasonable price). With servers more power hungry, yet smaller, there's a need for more power/cooling, but less space.
Building new isn't all that different in cost of retrofitting an old warehouse. I'd just buy one of the small operators out there and be up and running for a % of the cost. The problem there is that there's a company called Digital Realty Trust buying all a lot of the datacenters in the market, and they've got a ton of cash.
So maybe the rust belt should be fighting for these developments, but they can't overcome 1 issue - companies want to be close to their datacenter. It goes against the security mission, the cost justification, and just about everything else; but these always get built right next to corporate HQ or in some metropolitan area. Doh!
Equinix is expensive (Score:2)
Re:Equinix is expensive (Score:2)
building out datacentres cost soaring (Score:5, Interesting)
The price of AJAX (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The price of AJAX (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The price of AJAX (Score:3, Insightful)
Depends on what you mean by "capacity". If you're talking about bandwidth capacity, then yes, AJAX can potentially reduce bandwidth. If you're talking about server processing capacity, then the answer is no, AJAX will not reduce server processing loads. AJAX requires more server software, processing, memory and time than simply having the server rejurgitate a static, or quasi static webpage over and over.
Re:The price of AJAX (Score:2)
Re:The price of AJAX (Score:2)
The point of AJAX is to either send info to the server without refreshing the client page, or to update only a portion of the
Re:The price of AJAX (Score:2)
ultra-low consumption dedicaced servers (Score:2, Interesting)
The point of interest is that servers are fanless, built on low-consumption VIA processors, and consume about 20W/server.
That should make the cost of operation much lower than traditional hosting...
See details on http://www.dedibox.fr/index.php?rub=offre [dedibox.fr] (in french)
Pictures of the datacenter: http://www.dedibox.fr/index.php?rub=datacenter [dedibox.fr]
Like everything else, do it in India (Score:2)
How could that be (Score:2)
computers use 3%? 10%? of US electrical energy (Score:3, Interesting)
One source decries widescreen TVs as the "SUV" of the 21st century . The average plasma TV consumes more power per hour than the average refrigerator, the previous household energy hog.
Costs (Score:3, Insightful)
Costs alone are not enough. What is needed is a unit cost. For example, is unit cost per user rising or falling? If it is falling but the user base is growing rapidly, you are getting a good deal even though costs may be increasing.
Also, things such as redudent server, backups, power backups etc. should probably be counted as an insurance cost and measured against cost of down time. If the cost of downtime increases much faster than the cost of this 'insurance' then you are probably getting a good deal.
To say 'costs are rising' without a benefit analysis is meaningless.
Also, I wonder how much of this is due to bloated apps and poor design (XML anyone?). Is this explosion in servers due to crappy code and bad data models. I suspect some of it is though it has to be looked at on an application-by-application basis.
And while I am on the topic, multi-tier does *not* mean multi server. I have no idea how this myth got started (hardware vendors maybe?). You can, if you like, run all tiers on one server if your code is not leaky. For security reasons you probably should put your web server on its own box, but then if you have 5 tiers and a DB engine there is no reason why a good server can't run all of them in most cases. Unless, of course, the code is crap.
My semi-informed opinion....
Perhaps Microsoft (Score:3, Interesting)
My company is building a new DC in Texas too. We are doing it on our existing campus by gutting and renovating an older building but the costs are still going to be huge.
In the meantime, I've been building one of the first VMware ESX environments our company has ever used. It started out as a simple 6 host server environment but has grown to over 20 DL 580s and 585s hosting hundreds of Virtual Machines. The initial investment is high but the operating costs are lower, the cabling costs are lower, the HVAC costs are lower, and of course, a VMware host server takes up less real estate.
If my company had focused on VMware, or virtualization in general, early on, they wouldn't need three datacenters and they wouldn't be building a fourth.
Re:Microsoft in Texas? (Score:1)
Re:Microsoft in Texas? (Score:2)
Re:Microsoft in Texas? (Score:1)
Re:Microsoft in Texas? (Score:2)
No, you are being a conspiracy twit. And it's not like Texas is just some run-down oil and cattle bubba hub. Ever heard of Texas Instruments? Or maybe Dell? Or big hosting operations like Data Return? The tax situation there is favorable, they don't have the incredibly high cost of living that you find in the Seattle, or Boston, or San Fransisco, or Northern Virginia areas... there's plenty of reasons to run a business u
Re:Microsoft in Texas? (Score:2)
The question isn't "why not in WA?" - the question is, "why would they choose to put new operations in an unexpandable, crazy-cost-of-living area like the Pacific NW?"
Cheap power and land. Clearly you haven't been to central WA. It's empty.
Re:Microsoft in Texas? (Score:2)
The growth seems to be happening in
Re:Microsoft in Texas? (Score:2)
Why would they want it? If they start running it, everyone there will just want to sneak into Arkansas, Omaha, or Arizona to get away from the same BS that keeps Mexico the way it is now. But the real question is, what happens when the Mexicans apoligize on behalf of the Spanish, and then give Mexico back to what's left of the na
Re:I don't buy it. (Score:1)
KFG
Re:I don't buy it. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:duh! (Score:2)
You want at least three or four major bandwidth providers coming into the country.
Bangalore was popular because of low land prices, and its location in the middle of the three main landing station for fibre into India (Mumbai ~ 900 km, Kochi ~ 900 km and Chennai ~ 400 km).
A case for the beach (Score:2)
Re:A case for solar power (Score:2)
Re:A case for solar power (Score:2)
Re:Who gives a shit? (Score:2)