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Mighty Skynet

macrumors newbie
Dec 9, 2012
1
0
Not quite right

It's a temporary/popup datacenter. If you look at the closeup of it, you'll notice you've got one main (Rather temporary looking) building, and shipping containers along the side of it. Each of those shipping containers is kitted out a a mini datacenter.

The trailer parked up behind those, will likely be the backup generator for the temporary server farm.

They are fairly common now, however really shouldnt be used for something as important/mission critical as iCloud IMO. I've seen a few providers resort to using these only to have it all go tits up when anything happened weather wise.

I guess it's all down to how well built they are. Quite a few companies make and use these now. HP, IBM, Sun, Google, Cisco, Toshiba to name a few.

Sun provide a bunch of great videos showing their 'Project Blackbox' datacenter in a shipping container: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svLdboZdfQ0

The "shipping containers" on the outside of the main building are in fact "Chillers". They take hot air out of the data centre at ceiling level and blow the cold air back into the Data Centre. You can see the heat exchangers at the end of each of the chillers.

Another similar Apple Data Centre photo shows clearly the basic set up :-
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/08/apple-maiden-construction?pid=218

You are correct about the trailer, it is for power. Notice the black power cables in the silver cable tray. These cables lead into the main building, the Data Centre.

P.S. I work at a Data Centre in Australia.
 

seanmcpherson

macrumors newbie
Jul 28, 2010
9
0
Apple DC

Those aren't chillers, actually, as we'd refer to them in the US (ie, there's no chilled water involved). They're Trane Intellipak SXHK (up to 130 ton air-cooled DX + fresh-air economization packaged systems), commonly deployed on rooftops or curbed installs (such as this one). Same type they used in NC on the identical tactical solution. There are plenty of views from shot-from-the-air photos and satellite imagery that helps show the # of fans, dimensions, even the Trane logo (visible on the side in the Wired shots once again), etc which match exactly those in the Intellipak guides. Plus there're 2 Cummins rental roll-up trailerized generators, along with the even # of HVAC units, indicating the HVAC is possibly N+N (A/B sides) as is the power. In that case, we could say the facilty may support up to 4x130 tons of redundant HVAC. Assuming a safety margin, that'd mean the rejection is up to 3200 MBh sensible between 3 units combined. Assuming high 90%s efficiency on whatever power handling is taking place inside (if they step down from 480, have any short-run battery UPS or flywheels to catch the load during a loss of utility, etc), and with a bad-day of 95F ambient plus a reasonable entering dry-bulb condition with high return air temps, they could have a conservative IT load of 750kW-1MW in there, and support that on a single rollup 1500 kW gen per available side.

I design and build datacenters in the US :)
 
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