Apple Considering Building Huge New Data Center in Oregon

[ericinboston]

This is post is a joke. Because you're stuck in 1992, means iCloud isn't popular?
How do you even have the nerve to post an (antiquated) opinion on something you haven't even tried?

Thankfully most people today do not think as you do.

Nice reply...thanks for quoting. Why don't you take some time and point to each of my comments and tell me where I am mistaken...rather than write YOUR OPINION THAT SIMPLY GENERALIZES MY ENTIRE POST.

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I am sorry and not to be an ass, but you are way off the mark! The data centers you are looking at are nowhere approaching an exabyte of raw storage. You mean to say petabytes.

There is no "size" definition of a "data center". I've worked around data centers since 1991. They're all different then and still different now.

Petabytes of storage have been deployed since 1990.

You and I can argue all day long...until Apple publicly states how many raw bytes it will hold, we're all guessing. But data centers can and DO store in the exabyte size currently. Don't believe me?...USA Government has numerous examples.

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wtf are you talking about?

It's clear you haven't used iCloud because you have no idea what it is apparently. There is no bill to pay, it is free. Just making up bugs doesn't mean they are there. They aren't.

OMG...the amount of people on this forum that believe iCloud is 100% perfect in every conceivable way is just frightening. And you believe there are 0 bugs in iCloud!!! I am laughing so hard here.

You probably also believe in Keebler Elves.

 

[heisetax]

What really has happened

Anymore?

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Hopefully all the NC idiots who complained about the tax breaks given to Apple will read this sentence and grasp what it means.

Other than the construction worker influx, the long term employment is very, very minor. The word that I have heard is that the perks for Apple may never have a positive payback for the area in question. So other than bragging rites there is little to gain & much to lose.

 

[AppleScruff1]

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.

Apple needs to cut it's expenses.

 

[darkplanets]

Other than the construction worker influx, the long term employment is very, very minor. The word that I have heard is that the perks for Apple may never have a positive payback for the area in question. So other than bragging rites there is little to gain & much to lose.

Never underestimate the power of property tax. It can be a massive cost, even for the average homeowner. Now consider it on this scale over a longer time frame... tax breaks aside they're not likely to give up or sell the property anytime soon, and that's what these townships are banking on.

Also I fail to see why this would be negative at all-- it's not like a data center is dumping waste/polluting the local environment or is disruptive towards anything for that matter aside from power consumption.

 

[klrobinson999]

Yay, 50 more jobs for Oregon! ;-)

 

[stealthman1]

That power consumption is disgusting. They say the equipment used to run the internet and things like data centres are incredibly pollutant. I suppose it will give Greenpeace more reason to slate Apple and it's uncaring attitude to the planet.

What do you think powers the internet? Tofurkey? Maybe everyone could just drive to the library...

 

[Spectrum Abuser]

I am sorry and not to be an ass, but you are way off the mark! The data centers you are looking at are nowhere approaching an exabyte of raw storage. You mean to say petabytes.

He mean't Exabyte. Educate yourself on this subject before calling people out. AT&T even announced they go through 23.4 Petabytes in a single business day.

 

[Swift]

so is this all for the cloud or is apple planning something else?

Well, I imagine it will have something to do when movies go on the cloud eventually. For all this cloud stuff, the ultimate secret is no outages and no glitches in speed or reliability. Once they've committed to it, they have to be continually building out.

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Never underestimate the power of property tax. It can be a massive cost, even for the average homeowner. Now consider it on this scale over a longer time frame... tax breaks aside they're not likely to give up or sell the property anytime soon, and that's what these townships are banking on.

Also I fail to see why this would be negative at all-- it's not like a data center is dumping waste/polluting the local environment or is disruptive towards anything for that matter aside from power consumption.

Apple's doing it, so all the negatives will be exaggerated and the positives skipped over. Nary a peep about Google's massive servers, you notice.

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It's practically 2012...maybe Apple should lead by example and build some killer solar panel farm or wind energy to HELP or completely power this place?

There's already been lots of articles about the solar panels they're putting in in North Carolina. Is the hydro in Oregon much cheaper? They may decide to put in a large solar array up there too.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/29/apple-solar-farm-north-carolina_n_1035155.html

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When iTunes matches a song it is for all intents and purposes synced with what is Apple's music library as a whole. When a song is not found it is uploaded to the cloud. Because Apple has a a static figure in their head that each account can have a maximum of 25,000 songs and knowing full well that in 99% of cases you will have a low non match rate compared to their library - they can build an equation from there and scale out for their storage needs.

The bigger portion of the storage would therefore not be relegated to iTunes Match, but iCloud itself and the personal storage associated with that. Because they have an imposed limitation of 5 gigabytes (You can upgrade at a cost) per user and because they are most likely using extremely advanced compression/decompression in the upload/download of that content - they can once again create their own equations for scaling out as future storage becomes a requirement. Remember just as there over a million terabytes in a exabyte there are over a million gigabytes in a petabyte.

If every user were to have upgraded to the maximum allowed storage on iCloud, which at the present time is 50 gigabytes they could support roughly 20,000 users with one petabyte. If you look at their recent orders for storage in the petabyte rage and take figure of 12 petabytes and times you get 240,000 users at full capacity. Because fully capacity is a gross exaggeration in any circumstance take a much more reasonable figure of the average user using 1gb worth of their iCloud storage at any given time and dividing a petabyte by one you are then supporting over a million users times that by 12 and you are supporting 12 million.

So, yes they will need to grow out and they will need to scale, but I doubt they are going to hit an exabyte wall in one datacenter ever. That's preposterous to even think about they would just keep building data centers. It's just pure math and knowing what the statistical trends for data consumption are coupled with scaling out as the consumption trend increases which it will.

I noticed just today, when I was using my Apple TV (2), that all my TV shows have been copied to iCloud too. Two seasons of Mad Men, for instance. Now I choose the episode and it starts showing in about 10 seconds, and it plays without a hitch. I didn't buy TV Match or anything like that. But add up all the TV shows Apple has sold to individuals: these programs also exist on the cloud, and must be streamed to the Apple TV, which has next to no storage on its own. Huh.

 

[snberk103]

Just a quick note for those debating the pollution impacts of the power source a potential Apple server farm in Oregon may create:

Please note that the power will come from hydro-electric sources, either in Oregon, Washington, or British Columbia. Hydro is a renewable power source, and relatively non-polluting. And while there are impacts on the environment from the existing dams, they have far less impact than burning fossil fuels. Plus more and more power is coming from micro-plants, that don't store water behind dams but use the freely flowing rivers. i.e. almost zero impacts on the environment.

Please carry on the pointless debate about exa, petra, terra, yotta - bytes.

 

[Oletros]

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.

Now you have to go after typos?

Says a lot of you

 

[japanime]

One can always fly to Frisco or The Big Apple if one needs a dense urban experience.

I once visited Frisco, Texas. Nice town, but I'd hardly characterize it as a "dense urban experience."

 

[CFreymarc]

Why don't they build one outside of the US, in order to guarantee a better iCloud service for international customers?

Build a data center overseas and there are a big issues that may compromise data security and confidentiality. Many cloud computing centers of other companies are located or co-located in places like India and China where there are the bandwidth and the treaties for data privacy.

However, either of these and other countries can make National Security claims and slurp the data wholesale. These claims are arbitrary and could be justified as loss of international market share of a state / sovereign sponsored company.

Also, it is a PR issue. Something like 75% of Facebook users are in the USA (I'm sure this is changing and debatable) so keeping it stateside is a proper move.

 

[iJon]

If Apple buys and creates such a datacenter (this is all rumor) then I would assume Apple is really trying to increase iCloud and/or new tv programming.

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..."

Some day. Some day.

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"Because the Cloud is universal! The cloud has no boundaries! It's euphoria! Believe everything we say!"

Technically the physical boundaries should not have a difference in "cloud" stuff since cloud=internet. But in reality, each country has it's own pipe, and then that pipe is divided out however the government and businesses choose. Just like here in the USA...USA doesn't even have the best internet experience as far as speeds.

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It's practically 2012...maybe Apple should lead by example and build some killer solar panel farm or wind energy to HELP or completely power this place? Would be terrific PR for Apple, would be much cheaper over time, and might get Apple some tax breaks or other stuff down the road.

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.

I agree with you on owning physical things but not on all fronts.

While I enjoy having eBooks, I still prefer to buy physical books. I like the look of them on a bookshelf and I just find I have better reading habits for books when I have physical versions.

For DVD's, I hate them. I much prefer to have a digital version of the movie.

I'm 50/50 on music. I buy physical cd's of artists that I might be seeing on concert for the chance to get some autographed. Other than that, as long as the music is in FLAC or ALAC I will make the purchase digitally.

As for the little rant afterwards, I don't agree at all. You seem like someone who has already made up their mind about iCloud and probably didn't plan on using it for the get go (maybe I'm wrong)

As for Apple building a solar farm, here's the info from yours truly, MacRumors.

https://www.macrumors.com/2011/10/25/apple-building-solar-farm-at-north-carolina-data-center/

As for data centers in cold locations, Facebook has taken your advice. I agree with you though, appears to be an intelligent move.

http://www.blogherald.com/2011/10/2...based-data-center-says-its-really-cold-there/

 

[CFreymarc]

Just a quick note for those debating the pollution impacts of the power source a potential Apple server farm in Oregon may create:

Please note that the power will come from hydro-electric sources, either in Oregon, Washington, or British Columbia. Hydro is a renewable power source, and relatively non-polluting. And while there are impacts on the environment from the existing dams, they have far less impact than burning fossil fuels. Plus more and more power is coming from micro-plants, that don't store water behind dams but use the freely flowing rivers. i.e. almost zero impacts on the environment.

You have that right. Whenever I see "environmental concerns" of any new business venture that is making money, I look at the finger pointer's money trail. Many environmental groups have been accused of short selling the stock of companies just before the release their public lambast. While this is supposedly illegal as all hell under SEC rules, if done under a hard to connect, overseas brokerage account, this is very hard to prove.

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It's practically 2012...maybe Apple should lead by example and build some killer solar panel farm or wind energy to HELP or completely power this place? Would be terrific PR for Apple, would be much cheaper over time, and might get Apple some tax breaks or other stuff down the road.

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 problem is that there is no solar nor wind power infrastructure that can provide this much power. Hydro, nuclear, oil and coal, considering the architecture, are a hundred to a thousand times more efficient per square meter of power generation.

This "green energy" rhetoric is just that -- rhetoric -- with what some say has the hidden agenda of reducing the power generation capacity of the USA to weaken its position in the global market.

IMO, this huge green energy rush of the current administration has done more damage to alternative enegry investment than any of the oil and coal companies could have dreamed of doing. No one but the Fed had the big money to screw things up this bad.

The Solyndra scandal IMO has put back the solar energy industry back forty years when it was first seeing some daylight (yes, bad pun intended) and may never recover in its current format.

 

[CFreymarc]

I agree with you on owning physical things but not on all fronts.

While I enjoy having eBooks, I still prefer to buy physical books. I like the look of them on a bookshelf and I just find I have better reading habits for books when I have physical versions.

For DVD's, I hate them. I much prefer to have a digital version of the movie.

I'm 50/50 on music. I buy physical cd's of artists that I might be seeing on concert for the chance to get some autographed. Other than that, as long as the music is in FLAC or ALAC I will make the purchase digitally.

My biggest issue with digital subscriptions is that no remote network infrastructure is 100% reliable. Anything I "buy" in digital format on line, I make damn well sure there is a local backup of it for restoration. Also, in the DVD rush of the past ten years, a lot of older, niche productions are boiler-plated to physical media distribution with no digital download causes in the contract. Yes, it will eventually catch up but I see these niche productions getting lost in data centers where they may never get promotion nor access due to lack of demand.

While it is not getting much publicly, there is a big concern on the permanence of all computer data stored for the past forty years. Will anyone be able to read this data a century from now in archive? What if there is massive catastrophe -- man made or natural -- where this digital data is destroyed? Is there a print out somewhere that someone can refer to for historic research?

It would be a shame that late 20th to early 21st century archives are lost in the next few centuries due to lack of proper archive. For example, want to get data on an employee of a big company in the 1950's, there are deep archives or at least microfiche of personnel records stored. Try finding a printed record of an employee from the late 80's to early 90's! That backup tape could easily be lost and years of data -- since the physical size is so small -- could vanish.

 

[justperry]

Well over an exabyte for raw storage ...but mostly a lot of the "storage" is RAIDed and/or backed up and redundant. So actual "data" that you and I may download (if we had the option to download, say, every song on iTunes) is probably 1/5th to 1/10th what the actual total storage is.

It's a bit hard to calculate without any physical characteristics. It's pretty easy, however, to count drives....if each 1TB SATA drive was 5" by 7" by 2" thick, you could figure out how many would fit in, say, a 10x10 foot room...but then you need to take into consideration electricity, # of outlets available, heat, etc.

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 am sorry and not to be an ass, but you are way off the mark! The data centers you are looking at are nowhere approaching an exabyte of raw storage. You mean to say petabytes.

All I could find on Wikipedia was this quote:

In August 2011, IBM was reported to have built the largest storage array ever, with a capacity of 120 petabytes

So I agree with Miografico that it seems you are way of the mark, another quote and link to the wiki page:

Archives: The Internet Archive contains about 5.8 petabytes of data as of December 2010.[13] It was growing at the rate of about 100 terabytes per month in March 2009

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petabyte

 

[justperry]

Nice reply...thanks for quoting. Why don't you take some time and point to each of my comments and tell me where I am mistaken...rather than write YOUR OPINION THAT SIMPLY GENERALIZES MY ENTIRE POST.

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There is no "size" definition of a "data center". I've worked around data centers since 1991. They're all different then and still different now.

Petabytes of storage have been deployed since 1990.

You and I can argue all day long...until Apple publicly states how many raw bytes it will hold, we're all guessing. But data centers can and DO store in the exabyte size currently. Don't believe me?...USA Government has numerous examples.

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OMG...the amount of people on this forum that believe iCloud is 100% perfect in every conceivable way is just frightening. And you believe there are 0 bugs in iCloud!!! I am laughing so hard here.

You probably also believe in Keebler Elves.

Source?
Edit: Exabytes In one data centre

 

[Liquorpuki]

The problem is that there is no solar nor wind power infrastructure that can provide this much power. Hydro, nuclear, oil and coal, considering the architecture, are a hundred to a thousand times more efficient per square meter of power generation.

The issue is not power or efficiency. It's reliability. It's possible to build a green station to provide that much power (100 MW). The problem is if it's all solar or wind, there's no guarantee it'll provide it 24/7 because nobody can control the sun/wind.

And oil is not used for electricity generation, it's used to make your car go down the street.

This "green energy" rhetoric is just that -- rhetoric -- with what some say has the hidden agenda of reducing the power generation capacity of the USA to weaken its position in the global market.

It's not rhetoric, it's limited tech because you can't store it or control it. Which means you can use it to complement your generation portfolio but not for baseload.

And the idea going green is going to weaken the US position in the global market is retarded, for the sole reason when it comes to electricity, there is no global market. Since the US doesn't export electricity it makes no difference how we generate it.

 

[vrDrew]

While the raw storage capacity of a datacenter - measured in petabytes exabytes or whatever, is an interesting debating point - it also kind of misses the point of what modern data centers do.

I'd recommend taking a look at the Cisco Global Cloud Index: Forecast and Methodology, 2010-2015 white paper.

Cisco forecasts that annual global cloud traffic will grow from 130 exabytes this year to 1.6 zettabytes by 2015. But most interestingly, only 17% of that traffic goes directly from the cloud to end user. The vast majority, some 77% of total traffic, stays within the datacenter itself. This is due to the separation of the computing and storage functions; load balancing; back-ups; and failover.

From this, I think its safe to say that a datacenter is more than just some massive hard-disk drive. Most of what goes on there, and the performance end-users will experience, has to do with skill and efficiency with which the system as a whole is designed. The systems engineers have to design the system to meet the specific requirements of the end users, which will most likely differ from industry to industry.

This is touched on, briefly, in the discussion:

The ratio of traffic exiting the data center to traffic remaining within the data center might be expected to increase over time, because video files are bandwidth-heavy and do not require database or processing traffic commensurate with their file size.

The Cisco White Paper makes for some interesting, if challenging, reading. There is also a graph that gives a very good hint as to why you won't see an Apple datacenter outside of North America for while.

 

[Soccer5se]

It would be great if ICloud would save your video as well. I really like the idea of snapping a pic and that pic being sent to my home computer. However, I was really expecting them to do the same when I shot a video as well. Maybe it will happen by the time the Iphone 5 comes next year.

 

[the8thark]

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

One trip to the future for a garbage -> car fuel convertor and you're good to go.

 

[apolloa]

What do you think powers the internet? Tofurkey? Maybe everyone could just drive to the library...

God you have NO idea do you? You have your computer, links to the telephone exchange, or maybe the CAB first (Green road side box in the UK) which if using fibre has power in it to boost the signal, then from the exchange it may link to another bigger exchange and so on to the POP site, then it links to the network backbone, then through the network and pop sites, across the planet, onto other pop sites, then telephone exchanges then to where the server you getting the information from is based, then all the way back to your computer.
You are talking about millions of pieces of powered equipment globally on 24/7 365 day's a year, hence why they rightly state, the internet is one of the most polluting things on the planet. Because of all the energy it uses. Now, add just one data centre into that, and you may see how it''s, as I said, disgusting the power it uses.

I'm not going to stand in the way of it all, but I think these data centre owners like Apple should think about using as much green power as possible, but I don't expect they could care less. And I wonder if people driving to a library would be half as pollutant?

Their is an environmental cost to networking the planet.

 

[Boomhowler]

...

As for data centers in cold locations, Facebook has taken your advice. I agree with you though, appears to be an intelligent move.

http://www.blogherald.com/2011/10/2...based-data-center-says-its-really-cold-there/

Thanks for being quicker than me with that link, I was hoping that I didn't have to post it myself

High quality renewable energy (hydro power) with a power grid already built to sustain a steel melting plant, good fiber across europe and geography wise close to asia makes Luleå an ideal spot for such a data center. Maybe other companies than FB should start looking outside of the US for their data centers as well?

 

[OldMike]

When I read this story, it reminded me of something I had read a few months ago about how iCloud was actually using Microsoft and Amazon web services (some have said that this is actually true, while others dispute it).

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/02/icloud_runs_on_microsoft_azure_and_amazon/

I had also come across this Robert Cringely article, in which he states that Apple is not even utilizing its Maiden, NC datacenter:

http://www.cringely.com/2011/06/have-you-heard-the-one-about-apples-data-center/


Now I am not saying whether these stories are true or not - its just what I had read a while ago. Since then, no new stories have surfaced either proving or refuting what these stories state.

If it is true that the Maiden, NC center is not being utilized (or even if it is being used - it can't be to capacity yet according to the Cringely article), then I find it surprising that Apple would be building another large datacenter.

Just curious what other MR members have heard about the two stories linked above and think?

 

[Rocketman]

You are talking about millions of pieces of powered equipment globally on 24/7 365 day's a year, hence why they rightly state, the internet is one of the most polluting things on the planet.

I think these data centre owners like Apple should think about using as much green power as possible

I wonder if people driving to a library would be half as pollutant?

1. The widely dispersed nature of the IP network makes it use power but also makes it tolerant of lossiness either from localized equipment failures, larger scale power outages and disasters, and even larger scale political intrusions. So the cost of doing business does seem justified on some real level.

2. Apple is about as green as it gets. Facebook tried to be even greener then disclosed their methods so other server farms could duplicate the process as they determined power efficiency was not a "critical business advantage".

3. The use of the internet (IP network) actually substantially reduces trip miles for physical research, shopping, and wasted trips on existing needed sorties by improving communication and efficiency of those trips. This now applies to a majority of the population. Traffic is visibly down and even in LA the traffic jams are lighter!

Rocketman