This is a random question, but has anyone considered building data centers just at high elevations to save on cooling?
Maybe that's why there are data centers in Salt Lake City. High elevation, nearby talent pool, relatively central to the US.
Maybe that's why there are data centers in Salt Lake City. High elevation, nearby talent pool, relatively central to the US.
I don't know why people use Salt Lake City as a location for data centers in the sense of its cheaper to cool. We are high elevation, but we are a high-elevation desert. It's usually pretty hot here. We have winters, true, and it's way dry here, but the winters are rather mild, especially compared to places like Wisconsin or Chicago, where I am originally from. It must be because of cheap electricity and/or tax laws. We have a lot of wind power here, and some coal power as well. One thing's for sure: cooling isn't why they build datacenters here. I have no idea why but I'm not complaining either :)
Also, it is quite a bit cooler than say Las Vegas or Phoenix, while being more central. The relatively mild winters is also a benefit in terms of geographic stability, you're less likely to see structural issues than you would in other areas of the country with more wild swings. It's also possible for certain components to be too cold as well.
Tax incentives and a relatively less expensive labor pool don't hurt either.
Salt Lake City isn't even significantly cooler than San Francisco and Seattle.
https://www.currentresults.com/Weather/US/average-annual-tem...
Perhaps if you could build a data center at 10,000+ or 12,000+ feet, it might make a difference.
First, the I-80 corridor is one of the most important and highest density fiber backbone routes on the continent, which runs right through the city. From a network topology standpoint, this makes it a pretty great place to aggregate massive quantities of data from around North America.
Second, it is a large city in one of the most geologically and meteorologically stable places in the continental US, far from an ocean (or anything really), which makes it a good choice for disaster recovery and backup sites. That locale has been used for this purpose for decades, not just for data centers.
tl;dr: Virtually unlimited and extremely well-connnected bandwidth in one of the least disaster-prone regions of the US.
Oregon's High Desert (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Desert_(Oregon)) is a good one.
Apple and Facebook have data centers in Prineville, OR. Google has a GCP data center in The Dalles. Amazon has at least one in Port of Morrow and one in Port of Umatilla.
In fact they can be all lined up on a 236 mile stretch. https://goo.gl/maps/inGGCCk2qBb8Bg5z5
Back in 2011 Facebook published about the efficiency of Prineville data center, mentioning 100% outside air direct evaporative cooling https://engineering.fb.com/core-data/designing-a-very-effici... and efficiency of water use https://www.opencompute.org/blog/water-efficiency-at-faceboo...
...Now in 2019 we have data centers in various locations across the world but efficiency goals are no different if not more ambitious. So something more flexible was developed and now in production. https://engineering.fb.com/data-center-engineering/statepoin... IIRC it doesn't mean we high deserts aren't special anymore. They still are.