Data Center Building Boom In Silicon Valley

1sockchuck writes "Data center developers are building like mad in Silicon Valley, with seven active projects in Santa Clara alone. The building boom includes the resumption of several stalled projects that prompted concerns of a shortage of wholesale data center space in the Valley. The flurry of construction activity is different from the overbuilding during the dot-com boom, which was characterized by too much funding and too few customers. This time, industry experts say, the end of a funding drought has created a situation in which construction is struggling to stay ahead of demand from companies like Facebook — which just scarfed up an entire new data center in Santa Clara."

customers

[seanadams.com]

During the dot-com boom, as I recall there was no shortage of customers for data centers, and every one I visited was filling up new space as fast as they could equip it. Mostly with expensive servers that were underutilized. The problem was those customers were ultimately not viable. They weren't building "on spec".

Still I agree that this rising demand on the tail of the recession is a good sign, for the valley in particular.

Re:Strange move

[uniquegeek]

... and how far from a fault line? Seems about one of the dumbest place to build one to me as well.

Re:customers

[the_humeister]

What I don't understand is why build the data centers in Silicon Valley? Why not build somewhere cheaper, like the midwest, and have the sales office in Silicon Valley?

Re:A lot of commercial real estate sits empty

[bezenek]

Several former office-space buildings are being converted to data centers.

In a regular commute from West San Jose to the Google-plex area in Mountain View I have seen these changes. An existing office building has its windows removed/covered and then a sign goes up showing data center space available or the name of a data warehousing company.

This conversion seems less wasteful as far as materials, but I am not sure how using an existing building compares to building a data-center-specific one for long-term energy efficiencies.

-Todd

Power density?!?!

[mcrbids]

Don't know if you've ever taken a look outside a data center, but they often have multiple, high-voltage power feed dead-end at the building. At my current colo, the excellent Herakles data center [slashdot.org] in Sacramento, CA, they are literally located directly under a major set of power lines.

So you take some office building that was burning perhaps a couple hundred watts per 100 SqFt during mid-day, and colocate 42U racks within, raising energy density from maybe 200 watts/100 SqFT to a few thousand. To give some idea, I personally oversee about 3,000 watts in a single 1U rack at my colo, well over 200 cores, and many terabytes of data. And that's in a single 1U rack, maybe 24" wide and 36" deep, with some allowance for aisleway... and my situation isn't even mildly unusual.

We're not talking 3,000 watts capacity, we're talking 3,000 watts 24x7 continuous draw, of redundant, backed-up power - the most expensive kind. Whole houses usually don't draw this much. And this is a *single* 42U rack.

This is feasible? That's a *lot* of power...

Training/certification

[TouchAndGo]

Just out of curiousity, what sort of job experience, schooling, certification etc. would they be looking for for jobs at these data centers?

Re:Training/certification

[timmarhy]

cisco certification, MS certification (not just MSCE...). work experience in another data centre is an obvious plus, but any experience managing large networks and server would do.

it's more about who you know nto what you know still

I'm not impressed

[syousef]

We're not talking 3,000 watts capacity, we're talking 3,000 watts 24x7 continuous draw, of redundant, backed-up power - the most expensive kind. Whole houses usually don't draw this much. And this is a *single* 42U rack.

This is feasible? That's a *lot* of power...

What are you on about? 3kW is nothing and many 2 story houses running an airconditioner run 5 times that! Sure it's not backed up and unless then owner is rich or insane it's not running 24x7 so you may have some point on expense, but to put things in perspective 1000W vacuum cleaners are relatively weak. Again I'm not suggesting these are run 24x7. But we're not talking the power out put of the sun at 30 paces when we're talking 3kW.

Similarly "many terabytes" is unimpressive when I can get 2TB drives for well under $200 and 200 cores ain't so impressive when a standard mid range desktop comes with 4 these days.

Re:Power density?!?!

[georgewilliamherbert]

Obviously, you build a new power entrance, transformers set, etc.

Which is cheap, compared to the generators and UPSes to switch over to in case the mains go poof.

The AC system and chillers will cost more than the mains feed, less than the UPS / generators.

Raised floor isn't cheap, but it's cheap enough.

Once you've done a bunch of datacenters with multiple thousand systems per building, it's just a question of statistics.

Re:Strange move

[masterwit]

"Zero company loyalty"

Well most ignorant investors, well invest in talent. But honestly I think this is very intuitive... I have an MBA and decided that was not for me. (now a math / programming, but judge all you want idc) you nailed the business perspective my friend and well, I will still invest. But in the same sense, because I must be the devil's advocate: you can never know the market. Name a better place? Where else will you find talent on demand, I'm sure there is a place, but add infrastructure into the equation. Hey help me fellow slashers of info, is there really a better place for this to be situated, we need talent and little infrastructure investment? (the "we" is used loosely) I am not be arbitrary here, just asking for where would be better?

Just a humble opinion, don't judge...

Re:customers

[An dochasac]

Yes the engineers and customers are in Silicon Valley, that's fine. But we have this thing called the Internet [wikipedia.org] which means it is no longer necessary to put data centers anywhere near the customers or engineers. And if it's not necessary, it makes absolutely no sense for servers to compete for space in one of the most expensive real estate markets in the world when there are billions of acres of wasteland that would work just as well for a server farm. I've used a thin client desktop with the servers hosted over 3000 miles away and the latency was better than it was when the server was hosted only 8 miles away. Only video games and the kind of hyperactive trading that led to this month's stock crashes have latency requirements which would be significantly impacted by having your server in central valley or the Midwest or Iceland [icelandreview.com] or Offshore [datacenterknowledge.com] and you will save an enormous amount of real estate and energy costs. I'm convinced that high-level corporate decisions are still based on inertia and nineteenth century factory-whistle mentality.

Re:sure sure

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly, I think somewhere on the east coast, Atlanta especially, NYC or Chicago would be best as far as latency to users is concerned.

Re:Strange move

[tompaulco]

Put a data center in Oklahoma, and you'll find some nice cheap IT workers, who have very little idea what they are doing.
I think you will find that there are plenty of well-educated, intelligent IT workers in Oklahoma who choose to be here because they are willing to trade off 25% lower salaries for being able to buy a home for less than 1/4 what it costs in larger markets. Plus Oklahoma City was voted by Forbes as the most recession proof city.
I enjoy living in Oklahoma. Relatively balmy winters, a little hot in the summer, but not unbearably so, and I live in a 15 year old 3 story 5,000 square foot house on an acre of land within 7 miles of the center of Oklahoma City. I purchased it for only $255,000. Oh, and the economy is not tanking here. My house is worth over 50% more than when I bought it 8 years ago.
There are several thriving data centers here in Oklahoma City. Our company was entertaining data centers in the LA area and Atlanta, and we actually had one in Dallas, but it turned out to be much better for our pocketbook, uptime and customer support to have it in Oklahoma City.