Facebook Revealed As Behind $1.5B "Catapult" Data Center In Iowa 82
Earlier this month, an article raised the question of who owns the giant data center being built in Altoona, Iowa. Today, the Des Moines Register has an answer, gleaned from "legislative sources." The giant facility, estimated to cost $1.5 billion when construction is complete, is to house a data center for Facebook. The article lists various attributes the site has to make it attractive for all that data, including access to transportation, extensive network infrastructure, and relatively low risk from natural disasters.
Re:Why is ONE building costing $ 1.5 Billion ? (Score:5, Informative)
Not to mention a data centre requires much more complex engineering for the systems installed inside of it. It has to be able to get a huge amount of electricity and handle that load, it must be properly and efficiently air conditioned. As well it's probably fitted with all kind of precautionary systems such as argon gas fire extinguishing so as to prevent data loss due to fire.
Re:Don't forget good average latency (Score:2, Informative)
Indeed. The spot where they chose is actually within spitting distance of a large datacenter by lightedge. It is also located on I-80 and within 2 miles of I-35. Heck, even Dice, the now owners of Slashdot, is located in Urbandale about 15 miles down the road by a large TDS/Team Datacenter.
A lot of the connections from East to West and North to South of North America go through Omaha and Des Moines. Just north of the facility, there is a datacenters with gobs of alternative connectivity that they get as an artifact of having both the connections to Des Moines and dedicated connections to Omaha and Chicago.
Overall, Iowa is really, really connected to the backbone even though the telco laws are FuBar.