For Data Centers, Google Likes the Southeast (datacenterfrontier.com) 63
1sockchuck writes: With new construction projects underway in Alabama and Tennessee, Google will soon have 5 of its 8 company-built U.S. data center campuses located in the Southeast. The strategy is unique among major cloud players, who typically have server farms on each coast, plus one in the heartland. Is Google's focus on the Southeast a leading indicator of future data center development in the region? Or is it simply a case of a savvy player unearthing unique retrofit opportunities that may not work for other cloud builders?
oxcam's razor (Score:1)
The dude at google managing these data centers comes from that area and wants to see his family.
Something about eggs and a basket (Score:4, Interesting)
I get what they're thinking: friendly economic packages from the locals, close proximity to population centers, lots of convertible existing infrastructure... but the risks of a cataclysmic natural or anthropogenic disaster seem very real over a long enough timeline in a given region.
At this point, nothing short of their own mismanagement seems likely to upset the Google juggernaut.
Re: Something about eggs and a basket (Score:1, Informative)
They get what they want: cheap land, cheap electricity (coal), low or no taxes (incentives), cheap labor. The states get employment. Oh wait, you're data center is only going to employ 100 people?? Aw, shucks!
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Blame God for putting so much of an efficient fuel source where it's easy to get to.
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"They get what they want: cheap land, cheap electricity (coal), low or no taxes (incentives), cheap labor."
And hurricanes?
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Hurricanes aren't really much of an issue unless you are along the coast. Stay 60+ miles away from the coast and the most likely damage is downed trees and powerlines
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1) Floodplains aren't unique to the coast, and the Mississippi River network goes far from the oceans.
2) Tornadoes.
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2) Tornadoes.
The #1 weather risk for a Datacenter is lightning., none of the ones you listed.
If you're building a datacenter, then you can design it to withstand, and selection of elevation for flood risk avoidances. Tornados are a risk, even when there's no hurricane, and the risk is lower most of the time than in flatland areas in the more northerly regions... ask some Kansas residents.
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They get what they want: cheap land, cheap electricity (coal), low or no taxes (incentives), cheap labor. The states get employment. Oh wait, you're data center is only going to employ 100 people?? Aw, shucks!
I'd bet labor and land/rent costs are the principal reasons. If it's $100,000 a year per datacenter worker in California and $60,000 per year for that same worker in Georgia, if there are a hundred workers, that's four million dollars a year. There may not be as many workers in Georgia or other Southeastern states to source from compared to California and other places known for tech, but there's not as much demand for them either, so the wages aren't being inflated through worker scarcity and competition
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Actually nuclear (and hydro), but the rest is true. In NC/SC, there are vast tracts of former textile mills where there's plenty of cheap land and power.
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Anything taking out 2 or more of those data centers out at the same time, for a prolonged time, is either:
1) a global cataclysmic event, in which case it really does not matter where your data centers are.
2) a massive US Infrastructure failure, power of network, in which case it also really does not matter where your data center is. A prolonged failure of this magnitude is unlikely to be, and stay, geographically limited. Also your users are likely of the grid as well
There is a limit to the effectiveness of
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Still, it only makes it a little less likely your huevos en una canasta strategy fails epically.
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If Google was building permanent nuclear waste storage facilities, or grand coliseums it wanted to last a hundred generations, they'd need to consider climate/disasters/Civil War 2.0/etc. over a much longer horizon.
I'm certain that their capital planning includes detailed lifecycle assessments for any new facility like a datacenter. While I'm not privy to such, I
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Also by clustering it reduces the costs of laying some seriously high capacity private fiber between them and the five centers can function more like one mammoth center.
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Much of the infrastructure in that area was built during the massive cold-war build-up of post-nuclear-attack communications infrastructure, in bands around the District of Columbia. The mandate remains for such an infrastructure within reach of a government in flight from a first nuclear attack.
Military mandates move mountains, so I would guess that a few mountains were moved at Google headquarters, a few at the local and state levels, and possibly one or two at the cash level.
Are they planning to buy an A/C company? (Score:3)
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They're probably using warm water cooling. The winnings on the rest of the costs like the electricity is analyzed in the article, and are likely compensating the additional cooling costs. I suspect the latency balance is the most important consideration, considering the locations.
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Lots of sun means lots of solar power potential. Chill the place down real good during the day ...
The west coast is getting more and more risky. The "big one" is like a hard drive failure - not if, but when. Lots of fires. Not enough water.
The east coast - you certainly don't want to build in what will be the Gulf of Florida. Then there's hurricanes and storm surges.
The deep south - hurricanes and storm surges. A crazy religious environment. Too many red republican states with policies that discourage ed
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The flyover states - cheaper land, lower costs, fewer natural disasters
Not to mention great pings to everywhere and easy access to backbones for even smaller shops.
When you're in the middle of nowhere, you're in the middle of everywhere. :-)
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Lots of sun means lots of solar power potential.
The SouthEast is actually fairly cloudy. The region also has solar panel ripping hurricanes and some of the world's most severe thunderstorms. If you want solar, you go to Arizona, not Alabama.
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The solar panel companies in Alabama have been mentioning, that as an advantage, the panels will help protect your roof in the event of a hurricane, because they are rated for exposure to higher wind speeds than the roofing shingles.
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What about the NorthWest? Plenty of water, cheap electricity from all the dams, there is some risk from earthquakes and volcanoes, but the risk goes down if they build east of the cascades where there is lots of sunshine (for solar power) and lots of cheap land.
I would think it would be much less risky than dealing with tornadoes in the flyover states.
Re: Are they planning to buy an A/C company? (Score:2)
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Get rid of fracking, you'll get rid of almost all the earthquakes.
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I would think that concentrating their datacenters in a part of the country where you need air conditioning 8+ months of the year would make it a wise investment. Even the most efficient data centers produce a fair bit of waste heat.
In that case, wouldn't Fairbanks, Alaska or Maine be a good place to build their data centers? So that those computers can be partly cooled by ambient cooling?
Location Location Location (Score:1)
Let's dispense with all the conspiracy theories. This is a business. A business is going to do whatever is financially (read: taxes) is in its best interest.
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Apparently you don't. If you want low latency, you host close to the connected users.
It turns out there's a massive amount of stuff that ultra-low latency isn't that important for.
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It turns out there's a massive amount of stuff that ultra-low latency isn't that important for.
I have no expertise here, but it strikes me that it's not just about latency due to path length and signal-propagation speed. It's also about traffic congestion.
If you shift a huge amount of traffic from inside the continent to overseas sites, you are moving form a highly connected network to one in which all the traffic has to move through a much smaller number of edges. If lots of companies moved lots of high-traffic data centers overseas, how would this traffic impact congestion on the international conn
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If that were true they wouldn't be building in America.
Yes they would. A data center is an expense, not a profit generator. You put your expenses in America, and take the write off at America's 39% corporate tax rate. Then you place your IP licensing profit center in Ireland, where you pay the corporate tax at 12.5%.
This sort of tax arbitrage is basic finance 101. Even small companies do it. My company employs less than a dozen people, but it is still worth it for us to rent a P.O. box in Dublin, where our trademarks, copyrights, and patents are legally do
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Then you place your IP licensing profit center in Ireland, where you pay the corporate tax at 12.5%.
We in the US should adjust the tax law to say that any revenue from licensing the right to use a patent or copyright registration with the US copyright office, or IP right use by a company for any operations in the US, is always US-based income, taxable against the registrant, regardless of the domicile of the registrant, and any failure to pay income tax on those changes the ownership of those IP right
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We in the US should adjust the tax law to say that ...
... and then other countries retaliate with tit-for-tat trade restrictions of their own. In the end, everyone would lose. The solution to stupid tax policy, is not to make it even stupider. We should reform our tax laws so they don't encourage companies to move jobs overseas. America is the only country in the world that taxes companies when they repatriate capital to create domestic jobs.
It's pretty simple really... (Score:3, Interesting)
It's the population, duh! (Score:2)
They're a general user focused company, so they want their data centers to be close to where most of the people in the U.S. are [datacenterfrontier.com].
Beyond that, then they look for places with existing power and Internet infrastructure they can tap into. This isn't a big mystery.
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I have to say it's this. 50% of the US population lives in the Eastern time zone. That means if you only have things on the east coast, you are most likely to cover everyone. Ask someone in a central state what their latency and network paths are, you end up going to Seattle, Chicago, Dallas, LA and sometimes the bay area to change networks. Not a lot of interconnection happens in the mountain states, and even markets like Phoenix while large don't quite have enough density to make sense.
"each coast" (Score:2)
major cloud players, who typically have server farms on each coast,
Did you know there are more than just 2 coasts
In addition to East and West, there's a;so the South (Gulf of Mrxico)
and theres also the North Shore (its Northeast of Duluth)
That would be a good place for a datacenter , less cost in cooling and no worries about hurricanes even with global warming.
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What did Canada do to blow this opportunity? (Score:2)
If I'm thinking about putting down a data center, I'm not thinking of the place that needs the most A/C due to climate. Canada is supposed to have cheap hydro-electric, and if its located a northern latitude, it doesn't need much A/C to keep cool.
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The latency to places in Canada where they have datacenters is atrocious, for much of the US. The more northerly you go, the bigger an issue it is.
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Well it's Canada. Isn't 'nuff said?
Don't get me wrong, I love the Canadian people. They certainly could do it. However who wants to freeze their balls off in the winter? Then there's the holier than thou attitude of the Canadians. They don't seem to appreciate the US. At least that's how it sure feels whenever I've been up there or worked with IT workers from Canada. One guy had a head so big I'm not sure how his head fit through the door. I'd say he was about an average IT guy.
Elvin Bishop Settin' on a Bail of Hay (Score:1)
That's also just called 'The South'.