an over-the-top data center

Deepak Jain deepak at ai.net
Mon Dec 1 23:19:14 UTC 2008


Apologies to the list. 

I didn't know whether to fork this into a couple of replies, or just run with it. I chose the latter. 

1) This datacenter is only 12,000 sq ft. (submessage: who cares?)

2) The generators are underground. A leak in their exhaust system kills everyone -- worse, a leak in their fuel tank or filler lines (when being filled from above) could do the same. Yes, you could address this with alarms (provided they work and are tested, etc).

3) No one cares if the server farm is blast proof (it isn't), if the connectivity in/out of it gets blasted (submessage: silos were meant to deliver one thing, datacenters aren't in the same operational model once they need connectivity to the outside world)

4) With all of that fog and plant life, I wonder how they critically manage humidity. [Or if they even do].

----

To the question of carrier hotels and their supposed secrecy, etc. If you need connectivity to multiple providers, those providers know where the buildings are, and presumably so do most of their employees. If 500,000 people (say the top 10 companies together) know where the building is, it's not a secret. **

Carrier hotels aren't meant to be more secure than the lines coming into them. Those lines are coming in on unsecured poles, manholes and the rest. Their most dramatic failure modes are pretty obvious if not well-studied. Internet "security" [as in resilience] is built on the concept of a point-of-view of connectivity with multiple failures and routing around them -- NOT sacred nodes that cannot fail or universal end-to-end reachability. Internet "security" [as in integrity] is not something that's been proven on the Internet yet [general case, please no banter about encryption/quantum oscillation, etc].

Lots of people have already said this is dull -- it is, it is also a nice set of pictures.

** Submitted without proof. This covers all the buildings that make claims about not having their name on the door and have loading docks with no security on them. (you know who you are).

Deepak





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