

Facebook confirms first data center outside US on edge of Arctic Circle - henrikschroder
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/report-facebook-planning-to-build-5-acre-server-farm-in-northern-sweden/2011/10/26/gIQA0v3IJM_story.html

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epaulson
What impact is this going to have on them from the legal side of things?
They've got enough trouble with Facebook Ireland Ltd. and privacy/data
retention, but now that they're actually storing user data in an EU state,
does that make things more complicated for them?

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mongol
The EU Data Rentention Directive should apply. From Wikipedia

"According to the directive, member states will have to store citizens'
telecommunications data for six to 24 months stipulating a maximum time
period. Under the directive the police and security agencies will be able to
request access to details such as IP address and time of use of every email,
phone call and text message sent or received. A request to access the
information will be possible only with a court order."

However, this is not yet a law in Sweden, and it was not implemented in time.
I believe Sweden pays a fine for this and but the political opposition has
suspended it until 2012. It should be law by the time the data center is
operational.

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forza
I guess FRA will be happy.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FRA_law>

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mongol
Yes, this is jackpot for FRA. It is also jackpot for those that wish Facebook
less influence, since you can bet that Facebook traffic will be closely
monitored by FRA, and if you don't like that, you must use Facebook less. But
of course, Facebook will still know more about you than FRA will.

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brlewis
_He said European users would get better performance from having a node for
data traffic closer to them._

That's for sure. Did they previously have at least a CDN presence in Europe?

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henrikschroder
They're using Akamai. My profile picture is hosted on profile.ak.fbcdn.net,
which for me resolves to a machine that looks like it's in a datacenter of my
ISP.

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HamMan_0
I feel like this story sounds a little like something from Robopocalypse :)

Seriously though, kudos for them if they can capitalize on natural cooling.

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hackermom
They might _save_ a small portion of their cooling costs. They won't go even
by a long stretch. Keep in mind that in Luleå the summers reach 22-23 degrees
Celsius easily. People are tanned and wear t-shirts, shorts and skirts up
there during the summer just like anywhere else down south.

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reemrevnivek
Here's Wikipedia's climate data for Lulea:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lule%C3%A5#Climate>

Looks a little cooler than most of the northern US. "Artic Circle" or not,
you're right, this isn't "Open the doors and cool the servers" cold.

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seanos
But it is "Open the doors and cool the servers" cold in winter at least, so
savings from cooling are sure to be substantial. Coupled with the cheap
electricity in summer, and well developed infrastructure, and you can see why
it was chosen.

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ww520
At first I thought, Canada? Yeh Canada. Then I found out it's Sweden. Still
cool.

Hope this doesn't start the joke of "the cpus run so hot they melt the
permafrost.

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hobohazard
Hmmm, i submitted this yesterday.

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alexwolfe
800 million users, good lord.

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hackermom
What an exotic way to say "northern Sweden". These marketing people, sheesh!

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henrikschroder
Well, they couldn't spell "Luleå" correctly either.

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seanos
Lulea is the correct English alphabet spelling.

