Apple Considering Building Huge New Data Center in Oregon

[Oletros]

Well I was talking about the NC residents who are upset at the tax breaks, and I highlighted the quote about how Apple is planning to build a datacenter near Facebook's data center in OR. Which should have told you that I wasn't talking about geographic diversity in Apple's planning.

The point was, Apple's "one time" construction in the area in NC could bring other technology investment from other companies. Oh well, it's the internet.

Thanks, yes I have totally missed, I only saw the geographic part

 

[Rocketman]

I have launched rockets near Bend, OR closer to Brothers, and this site is just north of it. It is a desert and there is not a heck of a lot of rainfall.

The incentives to be in Oregon are great. Lower energy cost, but even if electricity were free in CA rather than far more expensive, it would still be very low cost to locate in OR due to a bunch less taxes, regulations, labor costs, housing costs, and on top of it all a better way of life in ways not competing with dense urbanization. One can always fly to Frisco or The Big Apple if one needs a dense urban experience.

The local airport is a short distance away.

Rocketman

 

[cameronjpu]

I wonder if Oregon will pay Apple to come there and also pay for the construction of the data center?

Are you implying that that's what N Carolina did? If so, you might want to look up the definition of a tax break. Apple is paying NC vast amounts of money, vastly more than NC would earn off the land without Apple, it's just less than Apple would pay without negotiating.

 

[Piggie]

Great. One volcano or big earthquake, and there goes both iCloud and Facebook.

Actually you are totally correct.
Just like storing your most precious data in the same room and the house burns down.

These companies if they want to serve a world of customers do need to put data centres in totally different locations, as you say one natural disaster in one part of the world and the whole thing is screwed.

 

[NixPix]

I said petabyte(s) as in plural so please reread. Perhaps then you can see how many terabyte(s) are in a exabyte and you can do a little research on what it would take to have fully redundant storage in the exabyte territory.

Having a massive complex full of 1,048,576 one terabyte disks in storage servers/arrays, in racks is not redundant storage. You can then go and do a little research of where we are in 2011 in terms of delivering an exabyte of storage in what would be a compact (unit as a whole) medium and I have news for you it isn't disk drives, it's tape. Tape by itself is slow and it's not redundant.

The only present demand for processing/crunching exabytes worth of data on demand are for three letter agencies (one starts with an N the other starts with a C), not for iCloud.

Sorry to burst your bubble, sir.
Hate to burst your bubble, but consumer cloud isn't as big as you think it is.

What you actually said was "The data centers you are looking at are nowhere approaching an exabyte of raw storage. You mean to say petabytes."
I then talked about 2TB disks while there are 3TB disk available and you still go on about using a million disks just to prove your point?
You said raw storage, I showed you math on raw storage, back down.
Tape is a laugh considering the speeds they are at.
I can easily fit 1PB per rack with raw disks. Show me the math on why you can't fit an exabyte (approaching an exabyte of raw storage) into a large datacenter.
I'm not saying it's what Apple use or if it's even needed, but only that it's possible by all means.

 

[AJH1993]

Prineville is out in Central Oregon, far from the city. Why not in Hillsboro by Intel, Nvidia, etc?

 

[Big Kahuna]

Build it in Minnesota. Loads of wind power (green energy), and you can partner with Seagate for the hard drives.

 

[coltman75]

Per Wikipedia: As of 2011, no storage system has achieved one zettabyte of information. The combined space of all computer hard drives in the world does not amount to even one yottabyte, but was estimated at approximately 160 exabytes in 2006.[1] As of 2009, the entire Internet was estimated to contain close to 500 exabytes.

I wonder how many years it will be before I can walk down to the local computer store and buy a yottabyte external hard drive.

 

[miografico]

What you actually said was "The data centers you are looking at are nowhere approaching an exabyte of raw storage. You mean to say petabytes."
I then talked about 2TB disks while there are 3TB disk available and you still go on about using a million disks just to prove your point?
You said raw storage, I showed you math on raw storage, back down.
Tape is a laugh considering the speeds they are at.
I can easily fit 1PB per rack with raw disks. Show me the math on why you can't fit an exabyte (approaching an exabyte of raw storage) into a large datacenter.
I'm not saying it's what Apple use or if it's even needed, but only that it's possible by all means.

Look I am going to chalk this up to you're a punk who has absolutely no clue what you are talking about, let alone has ever had any data center experience. I don't know if, "back down" is supposed to be a puff out your chest, internet hero tough guy thing, but I am not impressed.

Let's take your model for raw storage vs. useable storage. How does a RAID enabled NAS work and for and what is the max capacity per NAS unit? What are the dimension of each EMC Isilon unit? Apple is a big fan of their tech (Depending upon which model how many U's is it?) What are the levels of RAID? Are they using a cheap medium SATA or a more expensive medium SAS. Are they willing to sacrifice fast rebuilds by maxing out the capacity of the unit or woud they rather run them at 60% max load and scale them out?

Take the storage servers out of the equation. There are still drives that need to be installed in their web servers. Are they really going to pop a couple terabyte drives in each 2u webserver when they are scaled out anyway by load balancers, and their sole function is an access point and data relay, not storage. And, they don't take up any space either right?

And the racks themselves, the routers, the load balancers, switches, the cables, pipping... they don't take up any space at all! Let's not forget that the data center as a whole unit is completely useable space. There is no containment whatsoever. The floors aren't raised... racks are just sitting on concrete. Forget the backup batteries! Who needs them!

And I can go on and on and on. But, this is my last response to you because you are the the man when it comes to building out datacenters that have an exabyte worth of raw storage. Oh, and btw raw storage does mean the drive is functioning and active not in the storage area of the center where they would have to have... I don't know some backup drives at the ready if there might be a drive failure?

 

[shikari89]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

This is great news for me. Maybe I'll apply for a job there

 

[striven]

Why would Apple build a data centre in an earthquake zone??

 

[extensor]

So they build on both coasts. The flyovers don't count anymore.

Anymore?

 

[cire]

Totally, what the pint is?

The pint is 2 cups and according to Wikipedia the total capacity for flour storage in the world is 12.5 exapints and this is growing at 100 petrapints each year. Most companies seriously committed to flour storage split it into to storage centers, one in the north near the Canadian border and the other in the south.

At least that's what Wikipedia says.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

Headline six months from now:

Microsoft Considering Building Huge New Data Center in Oregon, Next To Apple's Data Center, Next To Facebook's Data Center.

Microsoft has no plans to use their data center. But, since Facebook and Apple built them, Microsoft felt that it was necessary.

For the Zune?

Seriously, building a data center in Oregon, close to any faults, could be a really bad idea. How about Nevada or New Mexico instead.

And if they are doing solar again, how about not clear cutting a huge swath of green to install it...

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anymore?

*snap*

 

[wizard]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

The only valid type of green energy is windpoer guys. Solar panels are not really cost effective.

As to Oregon never been there. However I would suggest that Apple move a little more inland possibly to the Dakotas. Why, cool stable environment that would drastIcally cut air conditioning costs. Plus you have a more central location.

No body in their right mind would build in California or Washington so I guess Oregon is the near by solution.

 

[hitekalex]

This is great news for me. Maybe I'll apply for a job there

What job would that be? Modern datacenters are managed mostly remotely, and employ very few people on-site. Those few who are employed on-site perform low-level manual tasks (think janitorial, shipping/receiving) that cannot be done off site.

 

[Liquorpuki]

Why would Apple build a data centre in an earthquake zone??

We've got nuclear power plants in earthquake zones. Structural engineers learn seismic design to make it work.

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

The only valid type of green energy is windpoer guys. Solar panels are not really cost effective.

How you figure that?

 

[MCIowaRulz]

To the poster who said Apple should a data center in ChTown I think your right. Apple needs to show some midwesterners some love with speed access to iTunes. I have this for a net connection yet it feels slow for iTMS

 

[blazerdude20]

I don't know why more companies don't build in cold places like Alaska or Maine or Chicago...open the darn windows from Nov-May and get free air conditioning which is a HUGE electricity eater.

the reason for companies to build in central and eastern oregon is that it is cold here 9 months out of the year. oregon also has HUGE amounts of over capacity for electricity. in addition to the dams oregon has huge wind farms. which actually are being turned off because the grid isn't pulling enough to justify running them.... yet. basically power here is stupid cheap.

also oregon has big tax breaks for companies moving here.

"If power were free in California, it would still be cheaper to operate in Oregon," according to a marketing pitch from Fortune Data Centers, a Silicon Valley company, for its forthcoming server farm in Hillsboro.

the quote is from oregonlives recent story on server farms. http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2011/11/data_clouds_settle_in_oregon_w.html

 

[sonarghost]

You could send a ton of Delorians back in time with that kind of power. Doc Brown would be proud.

 

[Devie]

Personally I don't think iCloud is as popular as Apple wants it to be...I haven't touched it at all...not really a believer in "owning" stuff that I can't touch...such as cds, dvds, or books. Not to mention the glitches that may go with it "oh darn, iCloud is slow today...oh darn, iCloud is asking me to accept the License Agreement for the 3rd time this week...oh darn, iCloud says my account has a problem...oh darn, iCloud says I didn't pay my bill..."

You seem to be getting some flack for this post, but dammit I agree.
I do not like the idea of iCloud. Someone has ALL of my data sitting in their servers. Servers go down, or hacked, or anything, my data is held in limbo or worse. What I really REALLY wish iCloud was, was a simple home server, all synced up with all of your devices, constantly being pushed back to it. That would've been amazing if Apple did that, simplified.

Now I do love the idea of being at work, doing some work, just saving it, turning off the machine, going home and there it is on my desktop all updated and ready to do what I may need to do.

Big things I do not like with the future iCloud idea is that a lot of people have a lot of sensitive, personal information on their computers. Just a pure example, a couple of steamy pictures of the mrs. Most men wouldn't want them to be anywhere but exactly where they know it to be, to be deleted if necessary. And by the sounds of the future of iCloud, I don't need a big HDD in my computer, just one big enough to handle the OS with a few gb remaining.

I've already had some fun with the iCloud syncing driving me nuts. I have two iPhones (one work) and an iPad. I update stuff on my work one, it pushes to my others. Its annoying, I like to keep that separate, but since I have iCloud turned on, and same accounts for iTunes, it pushes anyway.

Instead I'm buying a NAS. Atleast then I can also push my Windows stuff to it.

 

[MSM Hobbes]

You seem to be getting some flack for this post, but dammit I agree.
I do not like the idea of iCloud. Someone has ALL of my data sitting in their servers. Servers go down, or hacked, or anything, my data is held in limbo or worse. What I really REALLY wish iCloud was, was a simple home server, all synced up with all of your devices, constantly being pushed back to it. That would've been amazing if Apple did that, simplified.

Now I do love the idea of being at work, doing some work, just saving it, turning off the machine, going home and there it is on my desktop all updated and ready to do what I may need to do.

Big things I do not like with the future iCloud idea is that a lot of people have a lot of sensitive, personal information on their computers. Just a pure example, a couple of steamy pictures of the mrs. Most men wouldn't want them to be anywhere but exactly where they know it to be, to be deleted if necessary. And by the sounds of the future of iCloud, I don't need a big HDD in my computer, just one big enough to handle the OS with a few gb remaining.

I've already had some fun with the iCloud syncing driving me nuts. I have two iPhones (one work) and an iPad. I update stuff on my work one, it pushes to my others. Its annoying, I like to keep that separate, but since I have iCloud turned on, and same accounts for iTunes, it pushes anyway.

Instead I'm buying a NAS. Atleast then I can also push my Windows stuff to it.

+1 exobyte

For sure, I agree… maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but I like to hold, to possess certain items, esp. those that I've paid for,,, and those that I want to use, when I want to use 'em - not be worried about 'net speeds or even if I have connection. For vast majority of people (since majority of people live w/in a city 'boundary'), sure this issue decreases,,, but for those foolish goofy people who by choice, desire, necessity live in the boonies, well then 'tis kinda iffy at times just how good our Cloud connection may be. So,,, I would also be one that would love to see the Cloud be more of a massive TimeCapsule, for backup / redundancy. Meantime, yeap, I be another one looking for a quality NAS-type system for our digital library.

 

[cameronjpu]

What job would that be? Modern datacenters are managed mostly remotely, and employ very few people on-site. Those few who are employed on-site perform low-level manual tasks (think janitorial, shipping/receiving) that cannot be done off site.

He builds furniture. Don't you think they'll need some?

 

[ericinboston]

Your only saving grace in that paragraph was starting it with "Personally".

your point is?

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I wonder how many years it will be before I can walk down to the local computer store and buy a yottabyte external hard drive.

I think a very long time...30+ years. Back in the 80s it was a few megabytes, mid 90s was a few gigs, mid 2000s it was hundreds of gigs, 2010+ it is barely 2TB (2000 GB). So basically every 10 years we go up a factor.

And not to sound crazy (I'm sure many will post quotes from Bill Gates and others from the 80s)...us consumers, on average, barely use more than 30 or 50GB of true data storage. Sure, there are the 10% of us who have a few hundred gigs worth of ripped dvds and cds...but even ripping Blurays (25-50GB a disc) is only 7x-10x larger than a dvd...so even if you have 200GB worth of dvds on drives, buying the equivalent bluray is gonna be 1.4TB-2TB.

I see hard drive space, for consumers, plateau'ing at 1-2TB.

 

[vitzr]

WTF, a Facebook flag! A Bunny Ranch flag, sure, but Facebook?

Apples in bed with Facebook so it can be integrated into all Apple hardware. Apple loves Facebook.