Huge Data Center Going Up In Sin City

pacopico writes "The Register has a report on an intriguing Las Vegas-based company which is building one of the world's largest data centers called the SuperNAP. The company — Switch Communications — claims it will be the most densely packed and power efficient data center ever built. The report notes, 'Legend has it that the company managed to acquire what was once meant to be Enron's broadband trading hub for a song. This gave Switch access to more than twenty of the primary carrier backbones in a single location. Switch tied this vast network to existing data center hosting facilities and attracted military clients, among others, to its Las Vegas shop.'"

Heat

[fitten]

Isn't Las Vegas.... warm? Seems like it will require lots of cooling.

Tell that to the indians

[Hankapobe]

The Indians [lvpaiutetribe.com], as in Native Americans, didn't seem to have a problem.

Re:Heat

[Splab]

Well the article actually explains why they can archive that kind of density. Instead of trying to force cold air up through raised floors which air doesn't want to do they have build it so each rack of servers deliver their hot air into duct and sucks in cold air from the other side. (Isle between racks are cold, backs of racks are hot).

On top of that the desert is actually a pretty frigging cold place to be at night - which they again can use to their advantage. They talk about 4 different options for cooling what works in different types of conditions during the day/night.

Theres nothing fishy about it - its all science.

Re:Heat

[chamont]

Sorry, but Vegas only gets small percentage of the power from Hoover Dam, like around 20%. That, and the fact that there won't be enough water to support its population in 10-20 years means it's a bad place for a datacenter. I'm not trying to diss Vegas, I was born and raised there, but this sounds like a bad idea.

Proximity to California Effect

[wsanders]

The LA to LV corridor has always been a main rail corridor, it was LV's reason for existence in the first place, and rail lines are where the fiber goes. And except for the 100 miles or so between Barstow and the state line, it's solid suburbia all the way from the coast to LV. LA and LV are twin cities!

California is basically out of electricity capacity, has earthquakes, and land and taxes are expensive, so Nevada is not only an economy unto itself, but a nearby tax haven. No coincidence that Las Vegas and Reno, the only two cities of any size in NV, are right across the border.

Re:Heat

[bogjobber]

I agree. Los Angeles should be abandoned and you can give us folks upstream all that water and power back.

But to make my point a little more seriously, every single city in the country is by nature uninhabitable for the number of people we have there. That's just as true for New York, Chicago, and LA as for Las Vegas and Phoenix. Southern Nevada has a tiny fraction of the population of Southern California, and uses a proportionately small amount of the water and power from the Colorado River. So why is it Las Vegas that gets criticized?

Re:Heat

[bilby727]

the desert is actually a pretty frigging cold place to be at night - which they again can use to their advantage

Except it's not cold in the city at night. Daytime heat builds up in the concrete etc and it is released during the night. They are not building the facility out in 'the desert' where they might be able to take advantage of the conditions you suggest.