Comments on: Microsoft 'mega data centers' to support Azure, Bing

New facility opens in Dublin to take advantage of the cool climate there. A Chicago facility, opening later this month, will house containerized servers.

[vincentyu2007]

"It can provide 5.4 megawatts of power now, expandable to a total of 22.2 megawatts, he added. "
You mean it CONSUMES 5.4 megawatts of power, right? You make it sound like a power generation facility.

[Zer0Wolf]

No, I believe it means it can provide 5.4 MW maximum right now. You can consume as much as the equipment/devices running there.
This, can however, be expanded to 22.2 MW.
Ah, I just thought of an analogy now. A motherboard installed with 2GB of RAM can provide 2GB. If you have only a few applications open, you consume say 500MB. But 2GB is the max.
And this memory would be expandable to 4GB.

[wjsteele]

It basically is saying that the infrastructure in the building can support 5.4 megawatts of power to the equipment inside it. So, basically, the building is equipped to consume (or supply to computers) a maximum of 5.4 right now, which can be expanded to 22.2 later if needed.

[n3td3v]

Cloud infrastructure, FTW.

[monkeyfun14]

Eh never seen a company so proud about how much power they can use...

[eadeguzman]

Not sure what's your point. Expressing the capacity of a data center in terms of mega watts of power is a good measure rather than just the square-footage which is also specified here. As a few readers commented here, it is maximum combined power of servers that can be plugged-in there. Just because it can supply that much, it doesn't mean they would.

The article also does not indicate where it's going to draw power from. It could be anything: nuclear power plant, biogas, etc...

[ncalishome]

eadeguzman is exactly right. Square footage means basically nothing if any of it is not built out yet. I've been in 3 or 4 large data centers in the SF bay area and most often there is loads of empty space waiting to be built out when needed.

Power capacity covers the backup infrastucture too.... Meaning they need to have enough generators on standby to keep this thing alive in case of a power failure. Walk out back of your typical data center and you'll find an impressive grid of huge diesel generators, and sometimes concrete slabs already poured and ready to drop another one on when they expand. This also means having fuel contracts in place to power these generators if there is there is an extended outage. It's not proud, it's prepared.

[viper396]

Power consumption is one of the key deciding factors of any major datacenter. You simply don't build one without taking that into account. It's one of the reasons many companies are now choosing cooler regions since cooling is what consumes most of the power.

[Mr. Dee]

Surprised one is not being built in Alaska and Canada. Aren't those cold regions year round?

[42istheanswer]

They're just moving closer to their globalist masters.

[viper396]

Yes, they are cold regions but they lack either the infrastructure, accessibility, or commercial incentives to build there. Alaska isn't exactly the ideal spot for year round travel accesibility.

[wolivere]

Well lets see Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada. geographical center of North America, major rail and traffic hub. Larger city 700k +

Great network Infrastructure, but biggest Bonus. GOBS, and GOBS of cheap renewable power.

But can we also say Calgary? Lots of Economic incentive there, low tax's big city modern, gobs of connections home of one the Largest ISP's in Canada.

So.. hmm yes why not build more Mega Data Centers in either?