

Inside Facebook’s Oregon data center - philip1209
http://gigaom.com/cleantech/a-rare-look-inside-facebooks-oregon-data-center-photos-video/

======
ChuckMcM
I find it interesting that no major harm seems to have come to Facebook after
they revealed what it looked like inside their data center :-) Some folks
would have you believe that a refrigerated room full of servers was a state
secret.

As I've told lots of folks, there isn't a lot of 'secret' non-obvious stuff
for most folks when they decide to build an entire data center just for their
gear. It completely removes the constrains that a generic co-location facility
has to support 'any' gear, and that freedom allows you to do custom stuff
which makes you more efficient. When the building, power, cooling, and compute
is one integrated system its like a really really big PC cabinet :-)

~~~
orangethirty
_When the building, power, cooling, and compute is one integrated system its
like a really really big PC cabinet._

Which makes it all more interesting. Seeing how they engineered to building to
work somewhat like an old VW bug engine (the building uses water to cool, the
engine uses oil) is very cool. Made think of how, in the not so far future, we
might be building cities with data infrastructure as part of the regular
utilities. And I don't mean cabling or optic fiber, but how we might use water
from the sewers to cool down some underground datacenter. I might even see
datacenters being spread alongside sewers. As the hardware becomes smaller, we
might just create a data center in a tube and cool it with dirty water. Who
knows?

~~~
ChuckMcM
Way ahead of you :-) I made up some plans for a 'pocket' data center (think
pocket battleship). In the past such things have been infeasible because the
scale was needed to achieve the economics, but advances in energy deployment
and network design have created an opportunity here. Now we just need $25M to
build one :-)

~~~
orangethirty
Given how Instagram is "valued" at one billion dollars (was it two?) I don't
see how you would have much trouble raising twenty five million for something
as game changing as that. Your pocket data center sure opens up a lot of
possibilities. A cell phone datacenter. Well, sort of like a high powered
botnet built around cell phones.

You get funding, I board a plane to wherever you build this, and help you hack
it. :)

------
1SockChuck
Data Center Knowledge posted detailed video tours in April 2011, when the
Prineville data center opened:

[http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2011/04/18/video...](http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2011/04/18/video-
inside-facebooks-server-room/)

[http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2011/04/19/video...](http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2011/04/19/video-
facebooks-penthouse-cooling-system/)

Robert Scoble of Rackspace also posted photos and video from that initial
tour. Since then Facebook has held two media tours of the facility. It's not
rare at all, but the media that are just now gaining access are using the
usual overhyped headlines to attract eyeballs.

------
kshatrea
I don't mean to be snarky, but I don't think it is rare for us at all. I've
seen a few articles before on the Prineville data center. I remember an
article when they unveiled "Open Compute". At that time, there were quite a
few articles about it.

~~~
chucknthem
> I don't mean to be snarky

Then please don't and try to refrain from posting :)

The rest of us haven't seen it yet and there are a few photos of the non open
compute servers too. It's also perfectly fine to post older articles and
stories here because they are often interesting to the HN community and make
for good discussion.

~~~
mediocregopher
I don't think his/her issue was with the fact that this has been posted before
or that it's "old", the article certainly isn't, but with the fact that the
article is describing going into this datacenter as a rare experience.
Apparently, it's not a very rare experience, and calling it so only serves to
sensationalize the title.

------
aleem
That is 1 server for every 50 users.

Seems a bit excessive at first think but that is the price of resilience.

~~~
powertower
900MM-users div 180KK-servers = 5000 users/server

Considering only a fraction of that is concurrent users at any given time
(maybe 10%), it still seem a bit excessive, but they're not running a web
server, they're pushing data around so it's a bit different.

They also have to handle peak times and have redundancy.

------
larrys
This was cool. But while the title says "a rare look inside" I wonder how rare
this really is? When something is rare or unusual many times it ends up first
on a major news show where it can gain from mainstream publicity and
influence. Specifically coming to mind in the US is "60 Minutes" which
frequently airs never before seen or extremely rarely seen things (and
interviews) and is given access because of their exclusivity and established
brand. Everybody uses facebook so things like this would be of interest to a
national news audience. I'd venture to say that giving gigaom access is hardly
rare.

As an example:

[http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57345302/a-rare-
look-a...](http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57345302/a-rare-look-at-the-
vatican-librarys-treasures/?tag=currentVideoInfo;videoMetaInfo)

And of course there was this back in January of 2012:

[http://www.intelfreepress.com/news/a-peek-inside-
facebooks-o...](http://www.intelfreepress.com/news/a-peek-inside-facebooks-
oregon-data-center/)

~~~
philip1209
"A rare look inside" seemed odd to me, but I decided to repost the original
title verbatim. If pg wants to edit it, he is welcome to!

~~~
larrys
Oh I'm not referring to the HN title but the article title. The HN title
generally should be the article title.

<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

"Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or
linkbait."

(I wouldn't say it's absolutely clear that the original title is linkbait
either although it could be depending on the circumstances).

~~~
philip1209
To follow up, the title was edited by HN - looked like pg worked his magic :-)

------
joering2
Jokingly, I've seen those before and yes there are always fun to watch - the
only thing that could impress me now is if they build one on Mars.

But jokes aside, don't you think with the way the users' numbers are going,
the way the stock is plunging, the way that judges deny settling of privacy
related issues, don't you think that Facebook should immediately pause all
this type of projects and get back to drawing board?? you know, figure out how
to increase revenue before possibly filling out the last pixel of white space
with overwhelmingly irrelevant, boring and/or spammy ads??

~~~
flyt
\- Facebook earned one billion dollars of cash on the day of the IPO.
Subsequent stock swings don't affect the ability of the company to operate day
to day, or make capital improvements.

\- Facebook has a number of old, less efficient datacenters running older,
less efficient servers. By replacing this old infrastructure with their own
self-built datacenters in Prineville, OR, Forest City, NC, and Lulea, Sweden
they are actually over time decreasing their total cost to operate the site,
and riding moore's law to more efficient and powerful server systems. This
actually saves the company money to operate the service, as well as
streamlining and standardizing their production infrastructure for more
ability to "move fast".

~~~
joering2
Seriously, 50% down of the stock value is a "stock swing" for you?

Of course it "affect the ability of the company to operate day to day". Not to
mention morale of the team (and the monetary value of the company stock the
own), it does affect it; good read here [1]

as of your second point, I agree with it and see the value now.

[1]
[http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080918053426AA...](http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080918053426AAWO9IE)

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JPRan
What a waste of natural resources. All this just so I can poke someone?

------
morinted
This is pretty cool!

I don't personally use Facebook often and I do find the giant Like button to
be... ominous.

This gallery doesn't "deeply interest" me, though, apart from the fact that it
makes me more curious about Google's data centers. I don't know why they have
to be so sneaky about them.

