It seems that businesses are looking at moving their data centres up North to gain the benefits of a cooler environment and easier access to green power. Read here.
Clearly being a lot colder is going to reduce the requirements of the air con for the computers but the key reason it says is the availability of renewable energy such as windmills and hydroelectric power. Strange that because I always thought we piped the electrickery to wherever we wanted it. Plus we could have lots of empty computer data centres all over the place just waiting to be filled with new offices full of people which will require heating. I suspect that they may get a few local firms using their data centres but it is likely to be new data centres rather than people migrating their old ones. A company I was working for has data centres all over the world and power availability was taken as a given no matter where they considered going. Comms and people were always the issue. If I was migrating I would be going all the way and migrating them to the frozen North, Greenland, Iceland, Alaska or other like climes.
Either way, its a good PR gimmick and that’s all it is. Nobody in their right mind is going to trust their datacentres power to windmills. Well, thinking about it that does actually leave a large group of people. The government. They are always looking for shiny new data centres to store the masses of data that they collect on us. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that they are the ones who end up relying on windpower. After all, when the company they outsource to feeds them back their own propaganda for having datacentres there and gives them the ticks in the box for windmills they can hardly respond with the statement ‘Its all lies’ can they? Hung by their own petard.
Can’t wait to see the SLAs that get signed up for on that. Emergency generators will be one of the criteria for meeting those SLAs as well. Dirty great big diesel generators. At least all the pollution from them won’t add to what we have here and make someone a nice picture for the next nature magazine. Diesel fumes in nice clean Scotland. Tut tut.
Although when you actually come down to the nitty gritty. Does it really matter where on the planet the extra BTUs are output. OK. It will use less electrickery to cool the hardware up North but it’s still the same BTUs pumped into the atmosphere and now it’s being applied to pristine wilderness. If the electrickity is generated by windmills or hydro either way means little carbon footprint wherever it is located. Something doesn’t quite add up here. Its almost as if its just a sales gimmick but with the added bonus of some boxes being ticked. Really important boxes though.
Bottomline though is if it was cost effective all the firms would have datacentres at these Northern locations where you have six months of night to keep things a tad cooler. They don’t.
It only stands to reason that where there’s sacrifice, there’s someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there’s service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master. — Ayn Rand (1905 – 1982)
A solution without a problem
It seems that businesses are looking at moving their data centres up North to gain the benefits of a cooler environment and easier access to green power. Read here.
Clearly being a lot colder is going to reduce the requirements of the air con for the computers but the key reason it says is the availability of renewable energy such as windmills and hydroelectric power. Strange that because I always thought we piped the electrickery to wherever we wanted it. Plus we could have lots of empty computer data centres all over the place just waiting to be filled with new offices full of people which will require heating. I suspect that they may get a few local firms using their data centres but it is likely to be new data centres rather than people migrating their old ones. A company I was working for has data centres all over the world and power availability was taken as a given no matter where they considered going. Comms and people were always the issue. If I was migrating I would be going all the way and migrating them to the frozen North, Greenland, Iceland, Alaska or other like climes.
Either way, its a good PR gimmick and that’s all it is. Nobody in their right mind is going to trust their datacentres power to windmills. Well, thinking about it that does actually leave a large group of people. The government. They are always looking for shiny new data centres to store the masses of data that they collect on us. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that they are the ones who end up relying on windpower. After all, when the company they outsource to feeds them back their own propaganda for having datacentres there and gives them the ticks in the box for windmills they can hardly respond with the statement ‘Its all lies’ can they? Hung by their own petard.
Can’t wait to see the SLAs that get signed up for on that. Emergency generators will be one of the criteria for meeting those SLAs as well. Dirty great big diesel generators. At least all the pollution from them won’t add to what we have here and make someone a nice picture for the next nature magazine. Diesel fumes in nice clean Scotland. Tut tut.
Although when you actually come down to the nitty gritty. Does it really matter where on the planet the extra BTUs are output. OK. It will use less electrickery to cool the hardware up North but it’s still the same BTUs pumped into the atmosphere and now it’s being applied to pristine wilderness. If the electrickity is generated by windmills or hydro either way means little carbon footprint wherever it is located. Something doesn’t quite add up here. Its almost as if its just a sales gimmick but with the added bonus of some boxes being ticked. Really important boxes though.
Bottomline though is if it was cost effective all the firms would have datacentres at these Northern locations where you have six months of night to keep things a tad cooler. They don’t.