Iron Mountain's Experimental Room 48 87
twailgum writes "Twenty-two stories underground in Iron Mountain's Western Pennsylvania facility, 'you'll find Room 48, an experiment in data center energy efficiency. Open for just six months, the room is used by Iron Mountain to discover the best way to use geothermal conditions and engineering designs to establish the perfect environment for electronic documents. Room 48 is also being used to devise a geothermal-based environment that can be tapped to create efficient, low-cost data centers.'"
iron mountain facility (Score:5, Interesting)
Always wondered who and how they plan out which direction they use to cut new rooms.
Is it worth the cost? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Is it worth the cost? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Is it worth the cost? (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm wondering the same thing. I'm also curious about environmental impact. Less cooling systems mean less carbon emissions, but that's possibly offset by the all the work to excavate.
I guess it all depends on how long the data center runs down there. Eventually running cool underground could pay off because it could be used for the next 100+ years.
Re:Is it worth the cost? (Score:2, Interesting)
Also, I'm a little remiss that I never knew this existed. I grew up one county over from Butler County and would have loved to have toured a facility like this. Then again, it probably didn't exist in its present state when I was growing up...
Old news for me at least (Score:5, Interesting)
I find it funny that this is being run as an experiment since I work at a mine.
We've had our datacenter down a '2 level' (~300ft) for years where it's secure (IE: Hard to get to) and a constant 4 celcius regardless of the season.
Only major issue we've had is with regards to humidity and ensuring that the dewatering pumps keep running. (Although... at a 5200 ft in depth it would take a few years for the water to get to the DC if the pumps shut off)
Re:What about the rest of us? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What about the rest of us? (Score:4, Interesting)
No, they just flock to your datacenter.
The most interesting part is where does one get the magma in Iron Mountain they use to kill off thier nobles^H^H^H^H^H^Hmanagers?
Also I saw a definite lack of levers in the photographs. I'm guessing they don't show them so that way you don't know where the traps are.
Reference please on "earth's heat being used up" (Score:3, Interesting)
Interested to hear about your reference on "the earth's energy being used up" - do you have any references? I thought that using the earth as a storage device was more about the ground gathering solar heat and giving it up slowly during the winter, a bit like the sea (amelioration effect near the seaside for coastal towns), and also heat gradually permeating up from the centre.
Really interested to hear if the storage of heat gets "used up" and takes several years to warm up to the temperature of the ground - what, 10 metres away? 100 metres away? How long does it take to heat back up?
UK government amongst others are still heavily promoting geothermal energy so suprised if what you say is common knowledge that they continue to recommend this path.
cheers!
Re:What about the rest of us? (Score:4, Interesting)
As I posted elsewhere in the thread, I used to audit an underground facility.
One of their problems was employee turnover, a hundred feet down there aren't any windows or sunlight, one person there quit on their very first day.
I assume like submarine crews, it takes a certain kind of attitude to work underground in a 60 degree room all day with no sunlight. Lighting was provided by the same sort of opressive Fluorescents any cube rat qould recognize. Unlike cube farms, we had rooms the size of football fields (like I said elsewhere these spaces were normally used for warehousing) so you never felt crampt.