{"id":90149,"date":"2019-05-30T08:49:25","date_gmt":"2019-05-30T15:49:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/?p=90149"},"modified":"2021-07-23T12:46:25","modified_gmt":"2021-07-23T19:46:25","slug":"these-arent-your-ordinary-data-centers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/these-arent-your-ordinary-data-centers\/","title":{"rendered":"These Aren’t Your Ordinary Data Centers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Barcelona<\/a><\/p>\n

Many of us would concede that buildings housing data centers are generally pretty ordinary places. They\u2019re often drab and bunker-like with few or no windows, and located in office parks or in rural areas. You usually don\u2019t see signs out front announcing what they are, and, if you\u2019re not in information technology, you might be hard pressed to guess what goes on inside.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re observant, you might notice cooling towers for air conditioning and signs of heavy electrical usage as clues to their purpose. For most people, though, data centers go by unnoticed and out of mind. Data center managers like it that way, because the data stored in and passing through these data centers is the life\u2019s blood of business, research, finance, and our modern, digital-based lives.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why the exceptions to low-key and meh<\/em> data centers are noteworthy. These unusual centers stand out for their design, their location, what the building was previously used for, or perhaps how they approach energy usage or cooling.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s take a look at a handful of data centers that certainly are outside of the norm.<\/p>\n

The Underwater Data Center<\/h2>\n

Microsoft’s rationale for putting a data center underwater makes sense. Most people live near water, they say, and their submersible data center is quick to deploy, and can take advantage of hydrokinetic energy for power and natural cooling.<\/p>\n

Project Natick<\/a> has produced an experimental, shipping-container-size prototype designed to process data workloads on the seafloor near Scotland\u2019s Orkney Islands. It’s part of a years-long research effort to investigate manufacturing and operating environmentally sustainable, prepackaged datacenter units that can be ordered to size, rapidly deployed, and left to operate independently on the seafloor for years.<\/p>\n

\"Microsoft's<\/a>
Microsoft’s Project Natick at the launch site in the city of Stromness on Orkney Island, Scotland on Sunday May 27, 2018. (Photography by Scott Eklund\/Red Box Pictures)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Natick<\/a>
Microsoft\u2019s Project Natick in Brest, France<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
https:\/\/news.microsoft.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/prod\/2018\/06\/Natick-ShortClips-9.mp4<\/a><\/video><\/div>\n

The Supercomputing Center in a Former Catholic Church<\/h2>\n

One might be forgiven for mistaking Torre Girona<\/em> for any normal church, but this deconsecrated 20th century church currently houses the Barcelona Supercomputing Center<\/a>, home of the MareNostrum (Latin for Our sea<\/em>, the Roman name for the Mediterranean Sea) supercomputer. As part of the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, this supercomputer is used for a range of research projects, from climate change to cancer research, biomedicine, weather forecasting, and fusion energy simulations.<\/p>\n

\"Torre<\/a>
Torre Girona, a former Catholic church in Barcelona<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"The<\/a>
The Barcelona Supercomputing Center, home of the MareNostrum supercomputer<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n