The Economist recently had an article on the evolving locations of server farms throughout the world. Since data processing and warehousing are becoming funtamental to virtually every industry , it’s becoming an essential “utility”.
While it will always be requisite for many servers to be located near population centers for speed requirements (search engine results, real-time financial data, etc), data processing and data back-up facilities can be located practically anywhere on earth, provided the data center has access to fiber-optic lines.
The article mentions how remote Quincy, Washington has become one of the bigger data centers in the United States. Being located on the Columbia River, it not only has access to a cheap hydroelectric power, it has abundant water to cool the fiber-optic lines, and its isolation provides security. According to Wikipedia, the local utility district offers server farms electricity at 3 cents per kilowatt hour, which is about half the national average.
Since almost half of the electricity used at data centers is used for cooling the facility, it makes sense to build these server farms in colder environments. Currently, Iceland is marketing both its cooler climate and abundant geothermal energy to lure data centers, and Microsoft plans on building a data center in Siberia.
In the future, there will likely be options for using the most environmentally friendly data servers. Perhaps there will eventually be a “green search” button on Google’s homepage, allowing consumers to conduct searches using (slightly slower) services of remote data centers.
Tags: Economist · green technology · server farmsNo Comments
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