
Google's new data center in Finland - drtse4
http://royal.pingdom.com/2010/09/15/googles-mega-data-center-in-finland/
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avar
Google page about the data center: <http://www.google.com/datacenter/hamina/>

I can't see it on Google Street View, unless it's that area of tents on the
map. But I don't see anything that looks like a paper mill there.

Maybe they just dropped the marker in a random location.

Edit: Yes they did, here's an actual Google Maps link:
[http://maps.google.com/maps?t=h&q=60.536944,27.116944...](http://maps.google.com/maps?t=h&q=60.536944,27.116944&ie=UTF8&ll=60.540821,27.130566&spn=0.016547,0.11776&z=13&layer=tc&cbll=60.539887,27.125669&panoid=fKiaXsB2CZcsakOg8BuX9g&cbp=11,229.57,,0,2.45)

The street view doesn't show the location, just a guarded gate into the area.

Here's a Finnish Wikipedia article about the site (with the coordinates):
<http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summan_paperitehdas>

And Google Images of the site:
[http://www.google.fi/images?um=1&tbs=isch:1&sa=1&...](http://www.google.fi/images?um=1&tbs=isch:1&sa=1&q=summan+paperitehdas&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=)

~~~
drtse4
Looks like it is/it was a geocaching location
[http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=f13ea...](http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=f13ea14e-e452-4248-ad26-272721c7dd8a)

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jparise
Interestingly, Nokia started off as a Finnish paper mill.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia#Pre-
telecommunications_er...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia#Pre-
telecommunications_era)

~~~
Alleyfield
What's even more interesting is that prior deciding to produce mobile phones -
Nokia's biggest asset was producing rubber boots.

~~~
MikeCapone
I think this was mentioned in a recent issue of The Economist.

Just out of curiosity, is this were you found out about it?

~~~
Alleyfield
To fulfill your curiosity - No. I knew it beforehand as I'm a Finn myself.

And here's the first logo of Nokia. It's quite, uhm, interesting compared to
what they're doing at the moment, wouldn't you agree <http://www.about-
nokia.com/images/nokia-logo1.jpg>

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nirmal
_Google plans to employ 50-60 people to run the data center. So far they have
found four, so they have some head hunting to do._

Google Maps says Hamina is a 2 hour drive from Helsinki, can any Finns comment
on if this is an accurate time? Or is it one of those 6 months of the year the
roads are dead sort of thing?

~~~
sushi
Yeah It's almost 2 hours 15 minutes drive from Helsinki but driving is the
only option to reach Hamina. There is no rail system connecting Hamina (there
was one, no longer operational).

I have been closely following the news about this particular datacenter and it
really is strange that Google hasn't found enough engineers for the job there.
I have been seeing the ads for the jobs at Hamina datacentre since last one
year or so.

~~~
zeemonkee
I've only been to Hamina once (nice harbour BTW) but I don't recall if there
was a university or technical college there. I'd have thought Helsinki/Espoo,
Tampere or Oulu would have been better for communications and near to
recruitment grounds.

~~~
sushi
You are right. Helsinki/Espoo, Tampere or Oulu would have been far better
choices from the point of recruitment but this is a large piece of land and
probably Google didn't want to let it go.

Besides they must have thought the name _Google_ is enough to get smart people
where ever they want.

btw this is what centre of Hamina looks like :
<http://torikamera.haminetti.net/user/toricam.html>

~~~
iuyhgtfvgbhjn
I assume they are getting a big chunk of local/national/eu grants to support
the depressed area and a quick pass on building/environmental permits which
you wouldn't get for building it in the capital.

Plus as the article says - this is really the St.
Petersburg/Stalingrad/Leningrad data center without the political problems of
having to keep renaming it.

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mhb
How big an issue is corrosion when using sea water for cooling? I thought this
was why fire departments don't use salt water to put out fires.

~~~
Retric
They probably use a two loop system so most of their pipes are not filled with
salt water.

~~~
j-g-faustus
Yes, that's what they are saying in the linked video, around the 1-minute
mark:
[http://www.hs.fi/talous/artikkeli/Google+raotti+ovea+hakukon...](http://www.hs.fi/talous/artikkeli/Google+raotti+ovea+hakukoneen+uumeniin+Summassa/1135252144819)

    
    
      [We will be] taking the heat outside of the building and 
      using cold [sea] water to remove it
    

So it could mean air cooling inside the building, using salt water to cool the
air.

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herdrick
I've been wondering for a while why Google and others don't put data centers
in Iceland. Electricity there is almost free of charge and has zero carbon
footprint - in fact zero emissions of any sort. (It's geothermal.) The
location is remote so you would have some extra latency but for lots of stuff
that'd be fine.

~~~
iuyhgtfvgbhjn
Poor international connectivity.

Small country, where do you hire a lawyer with expertise in Icelandic IP law?
How much jurisprudence is there?

Do you trust the government given that they just basically walked away from
their bank guarantees

~~~
herdrick
I don't think you would need IP lawyers to set up and run a data center. And
yes I do trust the Icelandic government.

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paulitex
Was anyone able to glean Google's plans for the huge volumes of heated sea
water 'waste'? I sure hope they're not planning on just pumping it back into
the Baltic - warming of the world's oceans and seas is a very serious problem
(see [http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/07/temperature-
ocean-...](http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/07/temperature-ocean-life/)
for a summary).

It seems this only shifts their heat dissipation problem from having to cool
servers to having to cool large quantities of sea water. Perhaps the latter is
an easier problem to solve (gigantic outdoor cooling tubs?) but I don't know.

~~~
jonknee
Many power plants heat sea water (either for steam or cooling), I think the
ocean can handle a data center just fine.

Update: I should add that I'm all for environmental study to make sure that
they aren't venting it out in a sensitive ecosystem or at a radically
different temp. Done correctly this can be an important development towards
sustainable data centers.

~~~
Alleyfield
We're talking about the baltic sea here. Its average depth is 55m.

Besides, it's already quite contaminated so there is a lot of environmental
protection going around it.

[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb/BalticSea...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb/BalticSea_March2000_NASA-S2000084115409_md.jpg)

As you can see, there really isn't places for the water to flow back and
forth, so it's not a case of "the ocean is going to handle it"

Always consider the context.

~~~
russss
Yes, but it's still a massive body of water. Local heating of the water may be
an environmental issue (although a small one, I think), but heating of the
entire Baltic Sea is absolutely negligible.

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Marticus
I believe this is the final answer for water-cooled systems, haha.

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icco
I'm kind of confused why we care. It's another data center, big whoop. I am
worried about the waste from warming sea water, but other than that, meh?

~~~
jodrellblank
If you don't care, why comment?

I am impressed at Google putting datacenters in cold climates for cheaper
cooling. You know they have enough datacenters and custom software that they
can migrate heavy compute jobs around the planet, keeping them running in
night regions where the temperature is lower and cooling cheaper?

~~~
icco
It's not that I don't care, I just don't understand why this is news. I'd love
to know if what you claim they are doing is actually happening, but I didn't
see that in this article. From what I can tell, all this article says is
"Google is creating a new data center and it is cooled by the ocean."

