Aerial Photos of Apple's Oregon Data Center Site

[MacRumors]

Following up on its aerial tour of Apple's North Carolina data center earlier this year, Wired has again taken to the skies to get a glimpse of Apple's data center site in Prineville, Oregon.

While construction on the first of two 338,000 square-foot buildings planned for the site is just getting started, Apple's initial "tactical data center" is already in place.

Apple finished this building earlier this year, but just south of it, you can see what will be the site of its much larger 338,000-square-foot data center. Apple wants to eventually build two of these monster data centers on the 160-acre site, but right now, there's no sign of the second facility.

Apple's tactical data center in Prineville

The photos also show the close proximity of Apple's project to Facebook's twin data centers. Facebook's first 330,000 square-foot data center opened last year, and the second one is nearing completion.

Apple has been working quickly to expand its data center capacity, opening its North Carolina data center last year and earlier this year announcing both the Oregon project and another one in Nevada as it seeks to support the rapidly growing needs of its digital stores and iCloud.

Article Link: Aerial Photos of Apple's Oregon Data Center Site

[DrJohnnyN]

Good for Apple, and good for us.

[justperry]

Now, will this make Siri snappier.

[cderry]

Is this on Hoth?

[unplugme71]

seriously, who cares. just make the damn things work and provide an excellent user experience.

[orbital~debris]

What's a 'tactical data centre'?

[gregwyattjr]

Thought this was Area 51 for a second.

[needfx]

just like the one I got in my back yard

the other back yard silly

[guzhogi]

Originally Posted by orbital~debris

What's a 'tactical data centre'?

Wondering the same thing.

[Metzgermeister]

is it my twisted mind? But when I saw this pictures it reminded me of aerial pictures of an old concentration camp.

Are we sure it isn't a new Foxconn plant?

[Frign]

To be honest, the first image looks like a photograph of Area 51 with snow.

@topic: I think it is very good this datacenter uses 100% renewable energy. What will Greenpeace say now?

[testcard]

Originally Posted by orbital~debris

What's a 'tactical data centre'?

As opposed to a strategic data centre? Who knows?

[Daalseth]

Originally Posted by unplugme71

seriously, who cares. just make the damn things work and provide an excellent user experience.

This is part of the strategy to 'make the damn things work'. If the structure of how they are doing that does not interest you that's cool. I am a longstanding geek who is very interested in how they plan on providing the services they promise. I also grew up in Oregon so this is doubly of interest to me.

So I care, that's who.

[Shearwater]

How green was my Valley?....well, before Apple moved in....

[karl878]

http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/artic...al_data_center

[Mac21ND]

I feel like there's a thin line between this photo and drone strike maps.

[rmwebs]

Originally Posted by orbital~debris

What's a 'tactical data centre'?

Originally Posted by guzhogi

Wondering the same thing.

Originally Posted by testcard

As opposed to a strategic data centre? Who knows?

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

[cderry]

Originally Posted by Frign

@topic: I think it is very good this datacenter uses 100% renewable energy. What will Greenpeace say now?

Lots of squirrels are now homeless.

[flottenheimer]

I'd love to see some photos from inside (any of) Apple's Data Centers.
Does anyone have a link?

[nsayer]

What I think is missing in the public discussion of these sites is the communications infrastructure. A big bag of bits in Oregon or Nevada is not useful per se. They need to have very, very fat pipes effectively to everywhere (certainly everywhere Apple's customers are).

I used to work for a well known streaming content provider. They had a slightly different problem in that they had a relatively small collection of bits that they needed to make available to their customers. They used parallel scale - they would locate what amounted to a NAS at a number of nexuses around the country. When you went to fetch the content, you'd be directed to the topologically closest one.

So what does Apple do instead? I imagine a non-trivial percentage of their traffic at this point goes straight to the wireless providers (all of those app and music downloads, push notifications, FaceTime setup messages, etc). Do these data centers just have a big fiber link to Verizon and AT&T? To where else do they directly connect and how?

[Mhkobe]

They took Facebook's advice and started building in Oregon, here's to hoping they'll do it again and use the Open Compute Project (and contribute?).

[deconstruct60]

Originally Posted by nsayer

What I think is missing in the public discussion of these sites is the communications infrastructure. A big bag of bits in Oregon or Nevada is not useful per se. They need to have very, very fat pipes effectively to everywhere (certainly everywhere Apple's customers are).

You didn't make notice of Facebook's data center being in the above picture also. That's one reason why Apple plopped another one down "across the street". There already is major redundant cable going through the area.

Likely same issue for the Nevada site. There are a couple of higher profile CA based companies that put back-up/expansion sites out near Reno ( just couple hour drive up I-80 from SF Bay Area ).

They used parallel scale - they would locate what amounted to a NAS at a number of nexuses around the country. When you went to fetch the content, you'd be directed to the topologically closest one.

For relatively static contact that works fine. Apple outsources that for purely static stuff.

So what does Apple do instead? I imagine a non-trivial percentage of their traffic at this point goes straight to the wireless providers (all of those app and music downloads, push notifications, FaceTime setup messages, etc).

Push notification probably not. In order to route that you need personal account information. If the push notification is going to the Mac and iPhone it is not particularly likely they are both on the same cell service backbone.
Likewise for Facetime set-up.

Music is static data. There is nothing unique about which different users having access to the same song. Apple could replicate their whole catalog at different ISP's and cell backhaul network centers. (or outsource it). The locations are dynamic but shipping a customized URI to the data isn't a major bandwidth problem. It is the actual content that chokes the pipes.

Do these data centers just have a big fiber link to Verizon and AT&T? To where else do they directly connect and how?

These data centers serve users worldwide. You're thinking too small. It is the major Internet backbone vendors Apple needs connectivity to. It is short hop connectivity to Tier 1 Internet backbone providers that is important.

For Oregon is more likely that Century Link ( Qwest) is the larger major "pipe" running through that area. There are portions of Verizon and AT&T that are tier 1 providers but they aren't the only (or biggest in Verizon's case) ones.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tier_1_...ier_1_networks

In fact you actually would not want all of these data centers on the same Internet backbone provider. Ideally would have a different pair coming into each center.

[Fishrrman]

Very telling that Apple has chosen to build these critical pieces of its infrastructure in North Carolina, Oregon, and Nevada.

That is, OUSIDE of California.

I'll reckon that the new hardware assembly facility is not going to be in California, either. It may even be located in a right-to-work state.

Of course, the new headquarters is going up in CA, but I sense that at some point Apple is going to discreetly move its "official" headquarters out of CA, too. The spaceship will still be there, but the actual "seat of the corporation" will have been moved to a state with a more favorable business climate than it's in now....

[Shearwater]

If they have used Apple Maps this may not even be Oregon!!...

[nsayer]

Originally Posted by Fishrrman

Very telling that Apple has chosen to build these critical pieces of its infrastructure in North Carolina, Oregon, and Nevada.

That is, OUSIDE of California.

I'll reckon that the new hardware assembly facility is not going to be in California, either. It may even be located in a right-to-work state.

You do realize that California *is* a right-to-work state, don't you?