Opera Plans Containerized Data Center In Iceland

1sockchuck writes "Iceland's supply of renewable power has gained a high-profile international data center customer. Web browser developer Opera Software was announced today as the first customer of the Thor Data Center, which will house Opera's servers in data center containers that can use fresh air cooling, rather than chillers (a strategy also used by Google). The Thor Data Center is located in Hafnarfjorour, to the west of Iceland's ash-spewing volcano. Iceland's data center operators insist their location represents no operational risk from volcanic activity."

Sounds to be nice location

[XnR'rn]

Good for them. Renewable energy. Lower cooling bills.

I wonder how large the datacenter needs to be to have a significant ecological impact?

Re:

[K. S. Kyosuke]

They can use rivers to both power the machines and to cool them. The nature probably won't even notice, especially since the energy of the water gets back into water.

Re:

[Korin43]

Heating up rivers does have an effect though. I'd guess they've looked into it already, but you can completely mess up ecosystems by messing with rivers.

Re:

[K. S. Kyosuke]

As I wrote, there is such a thing as a law of conservation of energy. If you heat the water with the waste thermal energy from circuits powered by the potential energy of the same water, how does that differ from letting the water simply fall down from mountains and heat up in the process, in terms of the temperature rise?

Re:

[gsnedders]

In terms of global temperature rise, none. In terms of the eco-system within the river itself, and what fish and other animals can live off it given a temperature rise, there's a lot of difference.

Re:

[sznupi]

What temperature rise? The energy that "heats" the river...came from the river.

Re:

[K. S. Kyosuke]

You fail physics 101.

Thor Data Center

[Elektroschock]

Thor is a pagan name [wikipedia.org], how will Christians respond to their offer?

Miniature replicas of Mjöllnir [youtube.com], the weapon of Thor, became a defiant symbol of Norse paganism.

What if the Hulk would come and take the data from Thor [youtube.com].

Re:

[maxume]

I imagine they will set it on fire.

Re:

[sznupi]

With the recent story of droids making streets in Austria safer (while I can see that "baptising" them & cars at my place simply doesn't work) or, closer to Iceland, some practical jokes with one volcano...it becomes more and more clear which gods are the true ones anyway. And will not ignore forgetting them for much longer.

Why only now, you ask? Well, they might work on different timescales.

Or a case of really bad hangover.

Sbelling

[Anonymous Coward]

The location isn't spelled "Hafnarfjorour", it's "Hafnarfjörður".

Sheesh! How can you get a simple thing so wrong?

Re:

[Savage-Rabbit]

The location isn't spelled "Hafnarfjorour", it's "Hafnarfjörður".

Sheesh! How can you get a simple thing so wrong?

Yes it is! I live in Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch [wikipedia.org] in Wales. For some strange reason visitors keep spelling the name wrong.... wierd isn't it?

404

[buchner.johannes]

We're sorry. Lava flows have taken away this object.

Svavar Kjarrval

[Anonymous Coward]

The town's correct spelling is Hafnarfjörður
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafnarfj%C3%B6r%C3%B0ur

Re:

[Kynde]

The town's correct spelling is Hafnarfjörður
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafnarfj%C3%B6r%C3%B0ur [wikipedia.org]

Hafnarfjörður and Hafnarfj%C3%B6r%C3%B0ur look pretty much the same to me.

Re:

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Hafnarfjörður and Hafnarfj%C3%B6r%C3%B0ur look pretty much the same to me.

Only if you're trained in reading Norse runes, apparently. I'm not.

Why not?

[Opportunist]

Just make sure you have good dust filters.

ash?

[john_uy]

how about if winds blow the ash to the site?

Re:ash?

[doctormetal]

Then they just call it ash cloud computing.

Re:

[KDR_11k]

Then any jet engines located inside the data center will suffer damage. I don't believe jet engines are a common server component but I'm not in the business.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really a problem in Hafnarfjörður. Prevailing winds are from the west-south-west and Hafnarfjörður is west-north-west from Eyjafjallajökull.

For those looking for Hafnarfjörður on a map, its a suburb south of Reykjavik (dons asbest suit).

Obvious coverup is obvious.

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously a cover-up for their secret underground volcano-lair. Cue the sharks and LASER beams.Soon they'll be holding the world ransom for a hundred billion dollars.

They don't produce much geo energy really

[flyingfsck]

A few other countries, including the mean old USA, produce much more geothermal energy than Iceland. Iceland has very few people - only some 300,000 - about the size of a largish town anywhere else in the world.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course Iceland produces less geothermal energy than the US. It's a lot smaller isn't it?
But Iceland covers 95% of its energy needs with geothermal power (the rest is water power).
And it has potential to produce as much geothermal energy as needed; in some places all you have to do is dig down a few feet and you have direct access to boiling lava.

Sun invented that some time ago: Blackbox

[IYagami]

More info at

http://www.sun.com/service/sunmd/ [sun.com]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Modular_Datacenter [wikipedia.org]

Sun Modular Datacenter (Sun MD, known in the prototype phase as Project Blackbox) is a portable data center built into a standard 20-foot intermodal container (shipping container) manufactured and marketed by Sun Microsystems. An external chiller and power are required for the operation of a Sun MD. A data center of up to 280 servers can be rapidly deployed by shipping the container in a regular way to locations

Re:

[M3lf.cz]

Unfortunately, the sun site has been already Oracl0vn3d: the videos and gallery are not working...

Re:

[1sockchuck]

Except that by the time Sun "invented" the Blackbox, Google had already secretly built an entire data center filled with data center containers [datacenterknowledge.com]. And applied for the patent on the concept, which it got.