Mozilla Builds a 1 Megawatt Data Center

[Guest]

Mozilla revealed that it has begun construction on a new data center in Silicon Valley.

Mozilla Builds a 1 Megawatt Data Center : Read more

 

[polly the parrot]

Cool.

 

[huron]

I realize that these datacenters are what drive the technology we use, but I'm always amazed at their size an power consumption.

 

[nikorr]

Not bad...

 

[nikorr]

For Mozilla : )

 

[JasonAkkerman]

[citation][nom]polly the parrot[/nom]Cool.[/citation]
Actually very hot. =P

 

[phishy714]

In a world that aches for effeciency and lower consumption of resources... why the hell is this good again?

 

[STravis]

Hmm...interesting. That still doesn't tell us anything about the capabilities of the facility.

 

[bak0n]

I worked at Genuity years ago, both a floor under MAE West and in Mountain View. Just because the facility says it will be a 1MW facility doesn't mean its going to use it. It solely means it is capable of using it.

Our old data center ran an OC-192 backbone. However most of those fibers remained unlit because they weren't needed. They were there in hopes of future grow in fully managed mid/high level enterprise solutions. This will be much of the same.

 

[that_tg]

How does Mozilla earn money to build anything? What are the ads that I am missing? Sales to corporate customers?

 

[STravis]

[citation][nom]that_tg[/nom]How does Mozilla earn money to build anything? What are the ads that I am missing? Sales to corporate customers?[/citation]

And - what does this data center (and the ones already in existence) do?

 

[d_kuhn]

1MW is decent sized but there are MUCH larger one's out there already. It's pretty rediculous how much energy tens of thousands of processors can suck up.

 

[NapoleonDK]

As a Data Center Technician in the Pacific Northwest, I'm shocked that antiquated facilities like this are still being built. They will never reach the power density or PUE/DCiE threshold they are aiming for. Aside from the Liebert DS CRAC units along the walls, this data hall looks like it was built at least 10 years ago. Raised floor/dropped ceiling layouts with perforated tiles always result in poor hot aisle/cold aisle isolation, and the Liebert DS units (with their single-speed centrifugal blowers) run at hog-wild inefficient fan speeds and overcompensate for bypass air with 150+ CFM/kW!

For the record, modern energy star certified servers in eco-mode run at less than 80 CFM/kW with some equipment in the ~50 CFM/kW range. This leads to a deltaT of 39.5DegF @ 80CFM/kW or 57.5DegF @ 55 CFM/kW! A supply air temperature of 72DegF in the data hall could have exhaust temperatures at the rear of the server of nearly 130 degrees. The answer is not to DILUTE this exhaust air with excessive bypass and wasted fan energy, but to duct the hot server air directly back to the cooling unit with a variable-speed fan programmed to maintain a steady slight negative pressure in the ducting system. Data centers like these are the cancer that permeates modern high-performance computing.

/Mozilla I am disappoint/

 

[RabidFace]

Wonder how long before we see 1.21 Jiggawatts data centers?

 

[southernshark]

I suspect that in our lifetime we will see solar power plants built on the light side of the moon, with the energy being transferred to super computers on the dark side of the moon which use the natural freezing temperatures of that place to their advantage. The computer banks will be manned by robots of course.

 

[Thunderfox]

So what exactly does Mozilla do with datacenters? It's not like they have services like Gmail or a search engine to host, so what is all the storage and processing capacity used for?

 

[dil]

[citation][nom]southernshark[/nom]I suspect that in our lifetime we will see solar power plants built on the light side of the moon, with the energy being transferred to super computers on the dark side of the moon which use the natural freezing temperatures of that place to their advantage. The computer banks will be manned by robots of course.[/citation]

quick.... go patent your idea. then sitback quietly till some one actually dose it so that you can sue them and collect monye....

 

[aldaia]

[citation][nom]huron[/nom]I realize that these datacenters are what drive the technology we use, but I'm always amazed at their size an power consumption.[/citation]
[citation][nom]D_Kuhn[/nom]1MW is decent sized but there are MUCH larger one's out there already. It's pretty rediculous how much energy tens of thousands of processors can suck up.[/citation]
As D_kuhn says this is a "small" data center. The K supercomputer needs about 12 MW. Facebook is building a 100++ MWatt datacenter.
The massive power usage of data canters may be the reason behind the growing interests in ARM based servers.

 

[Guest]

southern shark: does that mean that dark fiber will go to the Dark Side of the Moon? *snort guffaw*

 

[mzeier]

[citation][nom]that_tg[/nom]How does Mozilla earn money to build anything? What are the ads that I am missing? Sales to corporate customers?[/citation]

Mostly from monetized search revenue - http://www.quora.com/How-does-Mozilla-earn-money .

 

[mzeier]

[citation][nom]STravis[/nom]And - what does this data center (and the ones already in existence) do?[/citation]

Mozilla's out of power at the ones already in existence. This lets us continue to expand and grow.

 

[mzeier]

[citation][nom]Thunderfox[/nom]So what exactly does Mozilla do with datacenters? It's not like they have services like Gmail or a search engine to host, so what is all the storage and processing capacity used for?[/citation]

All the websites that support Firefox are here along with services like Firefox Sync and BrowserID. Some sites, like addons.mozilla.org are about 100 web servers.

 

[Guest]

I read that the Concrete Contractor company hired for the site development of the new Facebook Data Center had a challenging time due to the aggressive project schedule and adverse weather conditions