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Datacenter building
Hello,
I wonder if you can pic any location to build a datacenter? I think the most important part will be the uplinks - does anybody know what a 10 Gigabit line costs?
I don't know, but can you go, pic a office put a rack in, book a gigabit line, ask ripe for ips and finished?
Regards
Comments
Na, just host it in your shack.
Well that's not really a "datacenter". To me "datacenter" means fire suppression, generators, cooling, security, etc.
Yeah this, we can hardly call the plant room at my office where we keep our servers a datacenter. And even with a gigabit line and limited protection, still wouldn't host anything commercial there.
@liam: Germany - why?
yes, of course seems to be cheaper. But be interested in how it would work.
>
Just get a long cable from your house to your shack, your home ISP will be fine.
I don't have any experiences about building DC but I can imagine that electricity can be as big factor as uplinks. Everything (cooling, servers.. ) eat electricity.
I would rate electric as the #1 factor in a data center, then cooling. I would hazard a guess more money is invested in providing a stable environment than the uplinks.
I'm involved in a venture to build a new DC and can confirm that electricity is the #1 factor ;-)
Just out of the city, but we are still in the early stage ;-)
I worked for a data center in the past that had previously built their own facility. If you want something more than a "server in the closet" it becomes pretty pricey.
Oh god, you reminded me of my old private school. They had 5+ PC's in this small-ish closet as servers... the A/C was shared with a couple of offices, and so they had like 4 desk/floor fans in there, lol. It was horrible.
I plan on building a tiny datacenter once I complete college and have money.. That sha'll be interesting.
Also consider disaster areas. Like placing a DC on top of a major fault line is probably not the best idea.
Power is the number one cost for datacenters. When you go to build one, the contractors first questions is power. All other costs combined are not even close to the cost of power. At $dayjob we're building another data center now actually.
Electricity in the US is about to skyrocket with all these clean energy requirements (not that I'm against it) that shuts down power sources without replacements.
Just setting up some servers in a warehouse does not equal a datacenter.
Power
HVAC
Fire Suppression
Insurance
Raised Floor or Overhead (I'm of two minds on this depending on ability of HVAC situation)
Network Access
Facility crews (to run the building not the network)
Those three things are not just something you do fly by night. Renovating a building into a 10,000 sqft datacenter costs around 20-25 million dollars and that's a lot of upfront capital no bank is going to give you to just start up a datacenter if you walked in from off the street.
http://www.bizjournals.com/austin/stories/2002/05/13/story3.html?page=all
I found that interesting when I heard about it. I think I found what it went for at some point, even.
We operate 2, soon
Your main problem is getting enough power, 150cm3 alu (*2) or more or even your own transformer.
Beneath that costs getting fiber is dirt cheap - A few 10k setup and around 5k monthly costs.
You then need to factor in the floor (double floor or not etc, load capacity), AC (extra power circuit, extra ups, extra generator), Generator (switching systems for 4 systems (A,B,Ups,Gen) are very expensive), Design (air flow, cold/hot system, cabling, physical security) and so on and on....
Even for a cheap DC you can't factor under 100k EUR initial costs and 10k+ (with not much power) monthly.
Your best bet is office space, with roof rights (roof ACs are much better than normal split systems) or industrial space which already has power and you get the rights to mount AC systems.
As said, getting fiber is one of the last problems then.
Yes.
1 issue is power
2 issue is cooling
connectivity is relatively easy to organise
Especially in FDC buildings <_<
Francisco
What does that get you? A paper box with some cooling? Im involved in a project of building a datacenter and to have something nice, and up to par with something you would actually want to be in your talking millions.
Anything less than that in my opinion is not a datacenter. The cooling units alone are a couple hundred thousand.
The Data Center I worked at cost a few million. Not only in the purchase price of the building, but the initial batch of servers, power equipment, backup power equipment, cooling equipment, security equipment, cameras, initial costs for backbone providers, etc.
@othelloRob Cooling System - You reminded me of the time when the Data Center's cooling system died. In the middle of the summer. I had to escort the repairman around. That was fun...and warm.
No redundancy?
@PytoHost There was redundancy, but in accordance with Murphy's Law, it had to break as well.
If you were to buy an already built DC, it would cost you about $7m just to bring it up to code depending on the location.
Was LEB/LET just down for anyone? (Last ten minutes or so)
Probably time to go to bed..
As others have indicated, a 10G line wouldn't be an issue (although you'd want more than one 10G line for sure). It's amazing the kind of electrical and cooling systems some datacenters have, not to mention redundancy.
Around 200m2 of good space - You don't need more money for this (and if you do you overpay, even with raised floors and N+1 AC)
Equnix had a DC in Miami shutdown by county officials but in their defense, they bought it that way