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Apple's North Carolina Data Center Appears on Google Satellite Imagery
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Or you could go back to the early photos posted here on MacRumors and see that this land was where the construction trailers, cars, trucks, etc. were parked while the building was put together.
And that land was "downhill" from the current building. ( sure they could regrade that plot).
And that cleared plot is smaller than the current building.
If they did a twin ( no really good reason to "twin" a building that large on the exact same site), closer to a public road is a bad plan.
Remotely Controlled Facility
Very large facility, yet only around 60 parking spaces. Therefore, one could speculate that such a facility will be largely controlled from remote location(s).
This of course makes a lot of sense when one factors in that the tech facility is located in a rural area -- not one where many software/hardware engineers are expected to be around.
Also, due to the rural location, one should expect it to not be any sort of call center, filled with non-engineer workers performing tasks such as tech support, customer services, etc.
The facility is "centrally located" for the East Coast (Maine -- Florida) with the possibility of a "sister" facility (currently) located in Silicon Valley to serve the West Coast (Washington, Oregon, California).
No such facility is known for Central US (Denver - Austin, TX - Chicago).
Very large facility, yet only around 60 parking spaces. Therefore, one could speculate that such a facility will be largely controlled from remote location(s).
This of course makes a lot of sense when one factors in that the tech facility is located in a rural area -- not one where many software/hardware engineers are expected to be around.
Also, due to the rural location, one should expect it to not be any sort of call center, filled with non-engineer workers performing tasks such as tech support, customer services, etc.
The facility is "centrally located" for the East Coast (Maine -- Florida) with the possibility of a "sister" facility (currently) located in Silicon Valley to serve the West Coast (Washington, Oregon, California).
No such facility is known for Central US (Denver - Austin, TX - Chicago).
I think it is both weird and cool that there is so little parking for a facility so large. Only one explanation for that, Skynet grows within...
That anything suddenly shows up on Google is hardly news. A lot of what's shown is rather old. New intern at the MacRumors office who is unfamiliar with Google Maps?
"North Carolina said the Apple server farm will have about 50 full-time employees."
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10256583-37.html
Is it just me or does the birds-eye-view make it look like the inside of an iPhone 4 with headphones attached to it??
You don't see the machine gun nests at each corner? The fence with razor wire? The kennel with the dogs?
Yeah, lets whip this picture up into a froth of nothingness. Looks like no parking lot unless that huge brown dirt area has been asphalted post picture, but how many people would the place need...
One thing that is pissing me off is the way that the Google Maps screens auto-zoom and move around. Is this a feature of the 'Magic Mouse', and if so, how can I kill it?
Or maybe to add a level of 'Area 51' to it, a bus picks up the employees in the dark and delivers them to the center and then drops them off after dusk...
what do they need the parking for - couple of net admins could keep that place humming along
(j/k)
what do they need the parking for - couple of net admins could keep that place humming along
(j/k)
AND do it remotely too...
If I were to hazard a guess of what equipment they would be using, it likely would be IBM Power Series 795 boxes coupled with a large amount of DS8000 based SANs. These are nice because AIX machines require a lot of thought for the initial configuration and planning, but once you get the sysplans made, it isn't hard to clone a bunch of these. I can see an onsite admin staff of 50-60 people. It would boil down to:
3-4 IBM CEs for changing out equipment with a stash on site.
5 AIX admins.
1-2 Cisco reps for hardware.
5 network guys.
5-7 for building management (security, electrical, chillers, CRACs, toilets, etc.)
5-10 security guards on site.
1-2 general managers for the above.
Exactly. The Google map of my home still shows the dead grass in the front from when I purchased it years ago, and I don't exactly live in a rural area.
Well your guess is completely out.
Think Linux, think VMs - although you would be correct in the make of servers but not the models, thinks blades and think a shared fabric network.