an over-the-top data center

Bill Stewart nonobvious at gmail.com
Tue Dec 9 01:20:03 UTC 2008


Data centers in used nuclear bunkers aren't new - www.thebunker.net
has done that for a decade in the UK.  They found that having a
cool-looking site made it easy to sell to bankers who wanted
reassurance about physical security, and at least with the computer
technology of the time it was easy to do HVAC, since the place was
naturally cold, and they had good redundant power grid connectivity to
work with.

As far as the risks of publishing the location of your data centers
go, I've generally been on the pro-publishing side; real attackers
would *never* think of looking for the large building downtown with no
windows, or looking for a data center business named "One Wilshire"
near Wilshire Blvd (:-)  More seriously, though, many customers need
physical diversity for their circuits, and while it's more reliable to
get that from a single fiber carrier than try to get predictable
diversity from multiple carriers, there's still a need to do some
auditing.

Of course, if you've got a bunker already, it's pretty cheap to get
your CEO a monocle and a white cat, whereas if you're starting with
the monocle and the cat, getting a bunker can be fairly expensive.




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