Apple Considering Building Huge New Data Center in Oregon

[kdarling]

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 built one of the world's largest data centers up there almost five years ago.

Apple is late to the Northwest data center party. Amazon, Facebook, Intuit, Yahoo, you name it... they're all already built or building.

Maybe they will do in Oregon what they are planning to do for the "spaceship campus" in Cupertino, build a power supply of their own, with back up from the grid if needed.

Not possible unless they build their own dam or nuclear power plant.

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.

The reason they all build up there is because of the inexhaustible and relatively clean power source of hydroelectric plants along the Columbia River.

Technically the physical boundaries should not have a difference in "cloud" stuff since cloud=internet.

The speed of light isn't infinite. Physical distance matters a lot when it comes to latency.

Consider the original idea people had of using geostationary satellites 22,500 miles away to feed the internet (and phone calls) around the world. To go around the earth you might need to bounce at least twice off such satellites.

So 22,500 * 4 = 90,000 miles. At speed of light = 186,000 miles per second = about a half second journey. The reply takes just as long. That's a huge latency.

That's why there are so many undersea fiber optic lines around the world... it's much faster to use transmission lines close to the surface.

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 believe that some data centers also use recycled river water to cool down.

 

[Internaut]

This makes a lot of sense. With iCloud, Apple is making a commitment to looking after customer's data and geographically remote, mirrored sites would enable them to do this in a reasonably nuke proof manner (well, at least that's my best guess on why they're so keen on building data centres).

 

[justperry]

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.

And one of the most inefficient things on the world.

Why is it so that the internet doesn't really evolve.
For instance, if I refresh this page to update and get the last messages on this thread the whole page completely refreshes instead of just downloading the added messages.
Another example, if people update software then most of the time the whole program is downloaded again instead of the changed code, Apple does in fact do a reasonable job when updating the OS but it could do much better.
If for instance you've got a 1 Mb program and the update would change by 100 Kb it would be possible to just download just that and a special program would then change the code which needs to be updated.
This way the internet would be much greener than it is now.

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

Prove it.
I can think a thousand reasons to look something up on the internet which I do now but wouldn't necessarily do before and therefore have to go to the library to look up those things that are not that important.
The answer is NO, I would not make a trip to the library for that but now that its easy to do just that on the internet in mere seconds I do.
The Laptop is on most of the day, always on connection so it definitely consumes more than when there was no internet.

 

[Oletros]

I believe that some data centers also use recycled river water to cool down.

Google data center in Hanima, Finland uses the North Sea water to cool down it.

Microsoft uses free air from outside to cool down the data centers, running them a 35 C

 

[Rocketman]

Microsoft built one of the world's largest data centers up there almost five years ago.

Not possible unless they build their own dam or nuclear power plant.

The reason they all build up there is because of the inexhaustible and relatively clean power source of hydroelectric plants along the Columbia River.

Redmond is about 10 miles from Prineville, OR.

Prineville is about 100 or so miles from the Columbia River, so there are transmission losses. One asks why not locate along the river near say, Goldendale or The Dalles.

The Apple spaceship (Farpoint Station) power supply is likely to be gas powered. They can do the same there in Prineville since they have good access to gas lines and truck routes for LNG.

Rocketman

 

[apolloa]

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

You sure traffic is not visibly down because everyone is skint? As for Apple being green, well, I'm not sure about that due to it's suppliers being in the news for it's environmental impact. And critical business advantage, is the problem, companies couldn't care less about the planet, more about the bottom line. Hence why I don't believe Apple is as green as it can be.

The reason they all build up there is because of the inexhaustible and relatively clean power source of hydroelectric plants along the Columbia River.

That is good news and one of the examples of how America is trying to be a bit greener, Alway's prefer the green alternative to nuclear, coal and oil.

 

[marcusj0015]

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

Good point, I didn't even think about that.

 

[AidenShaw]

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!

Most writers attribute lightened traffic to the simple fact that a lot of people are out-of-work and not commuting.

Conversely, they're associating recently worsening traffic in Silicon Valley with economic recovery.

As Wally said:

 

[blackpond]

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.

So, for cars, electricity is green, but for server farms its disgusting pollution?

A liberal double standard...

 

[Rocketman]

Most writers attribute lightened traffic to the simple fact that a lot of people are out-of-work and not commuting.

As a rare and well beaten Aiden Shaw fan, I will also add the price of gas and the political unrest inside this country.,

But. All-in I would say most folks rebounded from gas prices because it impacts people on the margin most, poor people, and it has abated since the peak.

The recession is real and a factor, but unfortunately most vehicle traffic is end user not business and also on the business category, capacity is down a good amount but vehicle sorties not so much. Slightly less full vehicles.

Even unemployed and under employed people drive to "Occupy rallies". They pitch the tents and commute to and fro their real homes and luxurious hotels.

As for RM in favor of AS, please on some thread you post to post how folks can leverage PC components to make a super-awesome Mac cluster using PC clients.

Mac OS, PC cost benefit. Never let them get you down sir.

Rocketman

 

[marcusj0015]

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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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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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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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.

Don't fool yourself, Apple only keeps one copy of each electronic thing, they just mark your account as allowed to see/use it.

 

[Justinf79]

Oregon? Really? Won't all that rain mess up their gigahertz?

Prineville is in eastern oregon, where it rains much much less than on the other side of the cascades.


Anyways, I guess this is cool news, as Google has a datacenter in The Dalles, Oregon, as well.

 

[kiljoy616]

This would be great for Oregon. We have lots of electricity. Only problem is it's sold to California.

Not enough population to make impact. This is good for Oregon any way you look at it. Its not fracking(gas drilling) but at least it could bring money into the state. Been to almost all the states but never been to that one. Have to go one they to that state and see why its all about.

 

[marcusj0015]

So, for cars, electricity is green, but for server farms its disgusting pollution?

A liberal double standard...

It's all about where the power comes from.

 

[snberk103]

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.
...
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.
....

I've thought for a long time now that one of the best uses for large wind and solar arrays, is to put them near traditional hydro electric sites. When power demand is low, use these alternatives sources to pump water uphill and back into the dam. The water behind the dam is a battery of stored energy. When demand is high, the hydro site taps into the stored energy of the water. The alternative sources could then supplement the hydro if it's windy/sunny leaving more water behind the dam to be used later, when needed.

This way the alternative sources are not being relied on to supply base power, or peak power. They are merely making an existing system (hydro) way more efficient.

Once upon a time, and maybe still to this day, the hydro plants at Niagara Falls were built to pump the water back up to the reservoirs at night during low demand times to supplement the run of river generation during the peak demand times. Why not do the same thing with wind and solar?

 

[marcusj0015]

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.

Is this a joke? holy **** man.

 

[jhwalker]

your point is?

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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.

Wow, I sure hope not! I have 1TB of music alone, + another TB of photos. Haven't started on videos yet, but with 4,000 discs to (possibly) rip / store, that would be another big chunk :/

 

[cire]

Now you have to go after typos?

Says a lot of you

Actually, that you don't laugh at a joke, says more about you

How are you today

 

[beefstu01]

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.

The US does this ALL the time. Also, Microsoft has admitted that the US uses the PATRIOT act to access data from datacenters overseas (linky). States wanting to grab data is a concern that you're going to run into wherever you go. Check out Google's government request report to see how common these things are around the world.

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.

This is more the reason (though not so much PR as it is colocation to your users). There's no reason to open a datacenter outside the US if most of your users are internal to the US and you're figuring out the whole cloud-thingy. Otherwise you're just throwing money down a hole.

 

[divinox]

I've thought for a long time now that one of the best uses for large wind and solar arrays, is to put them near traditional hydro electric sites. When power demand is low, use these alternatives sources to pump water uphill and back into the dam. The water behind the dam is a battery of stored energy. When demand is high, the hydro site taps into the stored energy of the water. The alternative sources could then supplement the hydro if it's windy/sunny leaving more water behind the dam to be used later, when needed.

This way the alternative sources are not being relied on to supply base power, or peak power. They are merely making an existing system (hydro) way more efficient.

Once upon a time, and maybe still to this day, the hydro plants at Niagara Falls were built to pump the water back up to the reservoirs at night during low demand times to supplement the run of river generation during the peak demand times. Why not do the same thing with wind and solar?

One obvious issue with that solution is times with overcapacity* in the dams for example due to heavy rain, or just low demand. During these periods, any electricity produced (and "hydro-stored") through these alternative means would be, in fact, wasted (unless fed into the grid of course, but as noted, it would oftentimes coincide with an overall overcapacity in the grid as whole**).

* bad word, but i guess you'll get the point.
** you're not using the dam cause you don't need the power. if you don't need the power, you may not need the wind-power either.

Addendum:

Last but not least. (I might be wrong in my thinking here, but: ) If you have the choice of using hydro, and then re-charging hydro with wind/solar. Why not rather skip the whole "hydro-charging" and just feed out the wind/solar power into the grid while using less hydro? Less transition loss that way, one would assume.

 

[archer75]

Great place for a data center. We have cheap electricity here. A large high tech workforce. The area here is known as silicon forest due to all the fabs. And we don't get a lot of inclement weather or natural disasters.

Great for Oregon!

 

[66318]

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

[url=http://www.speedtest.net/result/1628365422.png]Image[/URL]

It's not as simple as just plopping a datacenter down in the midwest or "flyover" country. Traffic on the internet rarely takes the shortest geographical path if it has to cross between different internet/backbone providers. Everyone has peering agreements, and these change daily, changing the routes your data takes frequently. Most of the major peering agreements happen on the coasts. By placing data centers on the coast, you already have about the best connectivity possible to them if Apple has only 2 locations.

It's all a numbers and routing game. If they build one in your state, there is no guarantee your traffic will even go to it. Odds are, it would travel on your ISP network to the nearest major city for them, then travel on a different provider to the coast, then be in a position to transfer to a major backbone and at this point the coastal data centers are internet "closer".

The rare exceptions to the coasts these days seem to be Dallas and Chicago. Even there, it's hard to say traffic in the flyover area will go to those cities even if they are geographically closer.

(This is oversimplifying a lot to try and explain it, each major backbone map is a bit different depending on the provider. Level 3 for example has a somewhat decent flyover coverage, due to their HQ being in Denver.)

 

[Liquorpuki]

I've thought for a long time now that one of the best uses for large wind and solar arrays, is to put them near traditional hydro electric sites. When power demand is low, use these alternatives sources to pump water uphill and back into the dam. The water behind the dam is a battery of stored energy. When demand is high, the hydro site taps into the stored energy of the water. The alternative sources could then supplement the hydro if it's windy/sunny leaving more water behind the dam to be used later, when needed.

This way the alternative sources are not being relied on to supply base power, or peak power. They are merely making an existing system (hydro) way more efficient.

Once upon a time, and maybe still to this day, the hydro plants at Niagara Falls were built to pump the water back up to the reservoirs at night during low demand times to supplement the run of river generation during the peak demand times. Why not do the same thing with wind and solar?

Primarily capacity and geographical issues. Even with pumped hydro as a battery you still can't put solar/wind at 100% penetration because you will have that week where the skies are overcast and the wind doesn't blow. That dam or pumped hydro station will go from 100% to 0% pretty fast, then you get a blackout. Geography wise, only a handful of places have two water sources right next to each other at different elevations.

Right now, utilities use pumped hydro as a short term battery and typically pump and dump within a day.

Last but not least. (I might be wrong in my thinking here, but: ) If you have the choice of using hydro, and then re-charging hydro with wind/solar. Why not rather skip the whole "hydro-charging" and just feed out the wind/solar power into the grid while using less hydro? Less transition loss that way, one would assume.

If the power is not gonna be used after it's injected into the grid, it'll be wasted. A big problem with wind is it blows the most at night, when peoples' lights are off and asleep. There's enough base load generation to cover nighttime load so instead of wasting it, a utility can use hydro as a 12 hour battery and put that electricity back in during the afternoon when everyone's awake. Or if they don't need it, they can sell it to another utility at a profit.

 

[divinox]

Primarily capacity and geographical issues. Even with pumped hydro as a battery you still can't put solar/wind at 100% penetration because you will have that week where the skies are overcast and the wind doesn't blow. That dam or pumped hydro station will go from 100% to 0% pretty fast, then you get a blackout. Geography wise, only a handful of places have two water sources right next to each other at different elevations.

Right now, utilities use pumped hydro as a short term battery and typically pump and dump within a day.



If the power is not gonna be used after it's injected into the grid, it'll be wasted. A big problem with wind is it blows the most at night, when peoples' lights are off and asleep. There's enough base load generation to cover nighttime load so instead of wasting it, a utility can use hydro as a 12 hour battery and put that electricity back in during the afternoon when everyone's awake. Or if they don't need it, they can sell it to another utility at a profit.

And Solar primarily gives power during the day... but that wasn't my point. Point is that once the dam is full, its full. Pumping up water just means its gonna be released without going through the turbines. Second, if you need to produce X units of electricity, using the hydro directly will always be more energy efficient* [i messed up, see the asterisk]. But yes, under certain circumstances it obviously allows for a somewhat neat way of storing energy through conversion.

That said, I'm talking from a Swedish perspective. We often have more water in our dams than we can use. If that isn't an issue in the states, the solution works just fine.

* or rather, using less hydro and more solar/wind. if you can pump up 100 units of water, you might as well not release 100 units of water at all, and instead feed the solar/wind into the grid.

 

[deconstruct60]

I've thought for a long time now that one of the best uses for large wind and solar arrays, is to put them near traditional hydro electric sites. When power demand is low, use these alternatives sources to pump water uphill and back into the dam.

The fundamental flaw here is the assumption that the water isn't needed downstream. Dams already inhibit flow downstream. Reducing it further is not without side-effects.

Pacific Gas & Electric has a facility similar to this but it isn't on a large river. They build a reservoir on top of a mountain and another at the bottom in the Serrias. They use the water primarily in a closed loop. Move it "uphill" overnight with Nuke power and let it come down during day time during peak flow demands.

To power it with solar it makes little sense. Peak demands tend to coincide with daylight hours. Wind also is rather weak generator so there typically isn't a large excess capacity to "conserve" during the night. At best wind would keep up with baseline nightly loads, let alone have substantial excess capacity to thrown into storage.

Once upon a time, and maybe still to this day, the hydro plants at Niagara Falls were built to pump the water back up to the reservoirs at night during low demand times to supplement the run of river generation during the peak demand times. Why not do the same thing with wind and solar?

That was when there were less users on the river. It isn't very practical now. Nor is it a good idea for most fresh water sources that are overtaxed. There are 7 (going on 8 not too long from now) billion people on the planet. Squatting on large quanties of fresh water for "batteries" is a flawed idea.