Florida Town Builds Data Center In Water Tank 104
miller60 writes "The Florida town of Altamonte Springs has converted an old water storage tank into a new data center. The decommissioned tank previously held up to 770,000 gallons of water, but its 18-inch-thick walls provided a hurricane-proof home for the town's IT gear, which had to be relocated three times in 2004 to ride out major storms. The Altamonte Springs facility is the latest example of data centers in strange places, including chapels, shopping malls, cargo ships, old particle accelerators and caves."
That's thinking outside the box (Score:2, Insightful)
Why didn't they just use some colo company and save a bunch of money on maintenance and headcount?
The next one in... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:That's thinking outside the box (Score:3, Insightful)
Why didn't they just use some colo company and save a bunch of money on maintenance and headcount?
(tongue-in-cheek) why not outsource outside USA? I heard some geos have much cheaper labor, that should be good for the town's budget.
Re:That's thinking outside the box (Score:5, Insightful)
Strange places? (Score:5, Insightful)
How are this strange places? A data centre doesn't need windows, doesn't need easy highway access, doesn't need to sit next to the subway station or even close to high populated areas (close as in walking distance) - it's a bit like a "build and forget" kind of structure that are best kept a bit out of the way.
So you're naturally looking for cheap space, that is safe against the elements. Existing strong buildings come in play of course - like this water tank. Chapels are also often constructed well. Same for former bunkers and other underground locations like abandoned mines.
Yes it's interesting, maybe not obvious, but thinking about it this are not strange places but actually quite logical places to build your data centre. The only one that sounds strange to me is the shopping mall one. Space in shopping malls tends to be pretty expensive.
"Tapes are unreliable" (Score:5, Insightful)
So, the quick recovery offered by the mirrored SAN is sexy, with an appropriate price tag. Writing off tape entirely seems very wrong.
Re:"Tapes are unreliable" (Score:5, Insightful)
Strange places? (Score:3, Insightful)
DCs are not moving into strange places. It's just that people are starting to realize that _any_ large and reasonably well-built structure is suitable as a DC. Electric power is usually a given, AC can almost always be installed and then you are down to "is it cheaper to get (redundant) fiber to this old structure or to build a new DC".
That's the beauty of a DC. The computers in there don't care where they are.