Apple's Massive North Carolina Data Center Ready By End of Year

[iMac0765]

Excellent points! This is just basic physical common sense.

Or even better, beside Santa Claus. The North Pole in CANADA!

 

[deconstruct60]

what happens when the person you are calling is not online? That is a huge barrier to entry right now for video calling.

Not.

The value increase in video calls over voice calls is in the interaction. There is zero interaction in a recorded, one sided video. An email/text message will work for someone who isn't around. It is going to be a completely one sided conversation if the person isn't available.

The barrier for video calling is that it isn't universally available nor cross vendor standardized. If you removed that and had no "video record" you would do just fine. The vale of the network is wrapped up in how many folks participate not feature list length .

 

[iansilv]

Not.

The value increase in video calls over voice calls is in the interaction. There is zero interaction in a recorded, one sided video. An email/text message will work for someone who isn't around. It is going to be a completely one sided conversation if the person isn't available.

The barrier for video calling is that it isn't universally available nor cross vendor standardized. If you removed that and had no "video record" you would do just fine. The vale of the network is wrapped up in how many folks participate not feature list length .

I disagree- a lot of family members- all who have ichat on their macbooks- don't bother using it first because they know if they go to the effort to open their computers and call by ichat and the other person is not online, they won't be able to just leave a message in the same "transaction."

So they call, and then say, "Oh hey- let's ichat!"

If they knew they could leave a video message to the person if they were not online, the act of making the communication through a video chat interface (ichat or facetime) would be their first go-to means of communication.

 

[carmenodie]

That ain't no data farm!
That's the Apple church!
The Cupertino Temple!
I hope the employees aren't wearing Nikes.

HHHHHHHUUUUMMMMMMMM!

 

[DrDomVonDoom]

Are there server cows on this server farm? From which I could get some Server Milk? or iMilk...,

MooooOOOOOooooOOOOOOOoo

 

[ctucci]

Hot

NC seems like a hot (temperature wise) place to have a data center. Cooling is a major cost factor in data centers. Would have been interesting if Apple had picked Maine, Quebec or Iceland to house a datacenter, all have first class data connections and low average climate temperatures.

Well, Maiden's a bit West, and in a higher elevation. A bit under 1000 feet above sea level. Not too horrible, and somewhat near the Research Triangle.

 

[mdriftmeyer]

And one in Europe to off-set Europe?
And one in Asia to off-set Asia?
etc.

America isn't the only country/continent

We agree. Now with $45+ Billion in cash and securities, it's not difficult to project more build outs.

 

[Data]

There must be something new coming nobody has counted on yet or knows about, would be great if it would extra's that come with the mobile me accounts that would be great.

 

[iansilv]

There must be something new coming nobody has counted on yet or knows about, would be great if it would extra's that come with the mobile me accounts that would be great.

Video Mail for when the person you are facetiming does not pickup. I am telling you this is what is coming.

 

[DMann]

Well, Maiden's a bit West, and in a higher elevation. A bit under 1000 feet above sea level. Not too horrible, and somewhat near the Research Triangle.

The surrounding deciduous trees offer further support that this region is not of a temperate climate.

As stated before, the facility has likely been built several stories underground, making climate control even less of an issue.

 

[KidIcarus412]

You are kidding yourself if you think this facility is mostly underground

 

[Revelation78]

Please tell me you are not this stupid.

This way of "thinking" is extreme narcissism at best. What makes you think the government is sooooo interested in what you have to say?

Here is a protip about the government. They don't want to listen to your phone calls or monitor your web surfing. They only thing they want is...our money. That's it.

Also, your lack of all things technical is staggering. Might you realize how difficult it would be to log all telephone and internet communication? It would take a server farm the size of North Carolina itself.

You are a paranoid idiot.

Wow, time-out for you....

First off the person you quoted is not incorrect, nor are they correct. The NSA does "listen in" on all calls in the US. A computer listens for key words, such as president, assassinate, attack, terror, etc....

If the system reports that any keyword is detected during a phone coversation, then it is flagged for a "live" agent to review the call. Upon review, the call is either dismissed or logged for further evaluation and escalation.

 

[mingoglia]

Excellent points! This is just basic physical common sense.

There are other things to consider as well. For example, here in Phoenix we have several data centers including a 300,000+ data center in downtown Phoenix. That's where Toyota Financial, Starwood hotels, and many other big companies have their "stuff". It's about 113 degrees here in Phoenix right now... but the fact that there are no natural disasters here offsets the temperature "issue".

 

[deconstruct60]

I disagree- a lot of family members- all who have ichat on their macbooks- don't bother using it first because they know if they go to the effort to open their computers and call by ichat and the other person is not online, they won't be able to just leave a message in the same "transaction."

What? if you send a message to someone in your buddy list when they are offline then the message is kept by the chat server. ( at least any chat server that is decent, but a Jabber server will at least. ). It gets delivered the next time they log in. You are not going to have an interaction conversation, but recorded video isn't interactive either.

They don't know if someone is going to see it right away or not. That is because don't know next time they will log in because they don't turn it on all the time. The factor is a bigger one of are they going to "check it" versus can they deliver the message. What they are falling back on is that your family is more incline to check their phone messages.

"Videocall" recording has the same problem because won't have unified message box. This will be Apple's box... just like the Jabber/IM server has it s own message box. If still addicted to only checking phone one ... folks won't leave message.

 

[iansilv]

What? if you send a message to someone in your buddy list when they are offline then the message is kept by the chat server. ( at least any chat server that is decent, but a Jabber server will at least. ). It gets delivered the next time they log in. You are not going to have an interaction conversation, but recorded video isn't interactive either.

They don't know if someone is going to see it right away or not. That is because don't know next time they will log in because they don't turn it on all the time. The factor is a bigger one of are they going to "check it" versus can they deliver the message. What they are falling back on is that your family is more incline to check their phone messages.

"Videocall" recording has the same problem because won't have unified message box. This will be Apple's box... just like the Jabber/IM server has it s own message box. If still addicted to only checking phone one ... folks won't leave message.

But think about this- iPad, iPod touch- these devices don't need this boot-up / login in sequence. they pretty much just remain connected. You pick up the thing, see a message indicator that you missed a face time call, watch the message, and call back- on facetime. Just like voicemail.

Like the jabber servers you mentioned for chat, this would be one unified standard for delivering videomessages when the device was online. If th edevice is off, the message is stored until it can be deivered.

All I am saying is that for me, the idea that you can only communicate with someone if they are currently online has been a big barrier to videochatting. Most of the time a message being left can convey an idea, just like a voicemail. So if the same convenience of leaving voicemails could be extended to videomails, videochat may take off, at least more than it has been. Of course, fi every ipad, ipod touch, iphone and imac had the hardware, that might help things along too.

 

[Digitalclips]

Not sure why that is purposed as the dominate push. Listen to the other parts of the call. There are 100 million and rapidly growing iOS devices. Some aspects of their normal functions hit Apple servers. Facetime address lookup , Store browsing and buying , notifications ( all notifications get routed through Apple). By end of year could be 110 million devices. Let's say 5% at any one time are actively pinging Apple's servers over the course of a minute. That's 5.5 million connections. That is with 95% of the users not doing anything. What is Apple suppose to do if that jumps to 20% one day?

With iPad at 1M/month additions and Touch/Phone additions running around 4-5M/month that "low level user usage" number gets bigger every year. They aren't going to fill the entire complex up with computers before it goes online. It will be years before it fills up completely.

Second, Apple needs a back up for their one primary site now. It is not some smallish server farm. If there is a failure in Fremont (e.g, major earthquake), all of the services there will failover to the NC center. That in addition to the workload the NC center normally did will need to housed in one building. Apple is going to slice some of the work out of Fremont and send it to NC permanently, but they are both likely going to serve as emergency backups of the other. The NC complex will be bigger in square footage so not an equal share. However, not unusal to leave part of the building empty so they don't have to match perfectly to split the load.


Yeah there is some cloud-ish things they will do: GameCenter , mobileme additions , etc. that may land uniquely in NC. However, that is a repeat of the same problem they have know where critical service(s) is/are delivered out of one single location.

The earthquake back up plan makes a lot of sense!

 

[Digitalclips]

Wow, time-out for you....

First off the person you quoted is not incorrect, nor are they correct. The NSA does "listen in" on all calls in the US. A computer listens for key words, such as president, assassinate, attack, terror, etc....

If the system reports that any keyword is detected during a phone coversation, then it is flagged for a "live" agent to review the call. Upon review, the call is either dismissed or logged for further evaluation and escalation.

I'm guessing that your post was flagged

 

[scoobydoo99]

This way of "thinking" is extreme narcissism at best. What makes you think the government is sooooo interested in what you have to say?

Here is a protip about the government. They don't want to listen to your phone calls or monitor your web surfing. They only thing they want is...our money. That's it.

Also, your lack of all things technical is staggering. Might you realize how difficult it would be to log all telephone and internet communication? It would take a server farm the size of North Carolina itself.

Riiiight. your naivete is quaint. "They" monitor all calls. Have for quite some time. Of course, that doesn't mean human monitoring. Simple voice recognition algorithms using keyword search is sufficient, then flagged items are sent to humans for verification. Computing power and storage are cheap. It is quite trivial to finance and implement these systems using black budget money.

The surveillance state is at least 10 years ahead of public awareness in technology.

When demonstrating your staggering lack of awareness, it would be best to not call names

 

[xxgilxx]

Skynet!!!!!

 

[joneill55]

Cloud computing is still a myth.

Maybe my Mobile Me account will work now

 

[joneill55]

Perhaps there was cheap real estate? Perhaps there were massive tax benefits?



Yes and hell yes!! The motto in economic development "your only as good as your last Bl#% Job

 

[gehrbox]

You are kidding yourself if you think this facility is mostly underground

Either you are correct or Apple has started building sets for James Bond movies.

 

[marksman]

5. Iceland is central to both North America & Europe.... but again, I might be missing the special sauce which makes NC more central....globally than an island which is between North American & Europe/Russia/etc.

I am not sure you really know what a datacenter is or does or how it's geographical location impacts it.

Otherwise you would know Iceland is about the worst possible place in the world for a data center except for people who live in Iceland.

 

[juicedropsdeuce]

Yes!!

New servers to handle the load for when the iPhone 5 pre-orders start.

EXACTLY! For all of us smart ones who waited out the beta (dud?) that is iPhone4.

iPhone5:
-Verizon (and others?)
-Better antenna (duh)
-Dual core
-Bigger battery
-Double RAM
-Multi-touch glass back for scrolling (games?) (this is the reason they tested the external antenna on the iPhone4)
-64GB
-Bumper not required!

Did I mention Verizon?
Rock out my 3GS until then! Yeah!

 

[deconstruct60]

But think about this- iPad, iPod touch- these devices don't need this boot-up / login in sequence.

They do "login" to the apple servers. What the specifics of the authnetication sequence are doesn't really matter for this topic. You can set iChat to auto login for you too. Most people don't which is probably wise.

You pick up the thing, see a message indicator that you missed a face time call, watch the message, and call back- on facetime. Just like voicemail.

You are still missing the point have multiple indicators/boxes to check. You have just added yet another light/indicator to check. This is commonly done already. Yahoo IM will tell me if I have a email waiting because they are integrated.

Like the jabber servers you mentioned for chat, this would be one unified standard for delivering videomessages when the device was online. If the device is off, the message is stored until it can be deivered.

Don't really see big point of decoupling Facetime from iPhones. In that case really don't have a problem. Same as can flip a regular call into a facetime calls if someone is offline should be trival to dial the phone number and leave a voice message. There is little difference in leaving some voice rather than video. You get the additional upside is now pointing as same message box ... not adding yet another one. For folks who are deaf and want to sign at each other... "cancel because not there" action can flip to email. They are highly likely to have an email account. For other folks could also attach smallish voice data attachment to an email if that works.

It is the video of you. If it is a "ooh look at me wearing a funny hat" message. Take picture and share it later. The whole thing has a selfish viewpoint to the message "the targeted person wants to see an image of me". It isn't whether you want to leave them a message or not it making them look at you. Most of the value of visual interaction is to see the other person. What THEIR facial expression. What are THEY trying to visually communicate. Trying to assert that voiceonly or text wouldn't do is asserting that what you look like is more important than the message.

Apple is going to have a hard enough time trying to get Facetime through some standards committee. It is even harder if had to put video recording servers on the back end.

So if the same convenience of leaving voicemails could be extended to videomails, .

People are far more likely going to tell you if you break this down to the root causes is that they want fewer message boxes to check. Routing a "user offlne" message to one of the more commonly used "message boxes" they aready have is going to be better than creating yet another one.

Since you can launch Facetime from contact info and/or get to it. Shouldn't be hard to come up with a default nonvideo action to take to leave a message.

The whole thing of online/offline is not the core of the issue.