back to article Facebook triple stuffs Swedish data center

In concert with the launch of the Open Compute Foundation on Thursday in New York, social media giant Facebook announced it is building a data center in Sweden close to the Arctic Circle, its first outside of the United States. The massive data center, which will be three times the size of the 300,000 square footer that …

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  1. John Hawkins

    Make data centers, not railways...

    One of the local Green Party leaders, Gustav Fridolin, has said that the 100 million Swedish crowns the project has received from the EU should have been spent on infrastructure - railways, housing etc - instead of the data center.

    Can't say I particularly like Facebook - but iron and concrete instead of silicon? Is '19th century industrialist' the new green chic?

  2. Hatless Pemberty
    Linux

    From the life of the marionettes

    So. I wonder how long it is going to take for them to realize that here in Euroland we have data protection laws and privacy laws and things.

    Unless, of course, as an American Corporation, they want to claim some sort of extraterritoriality.

    Icon, because brrrrrr!

  3. Pen-y-gors

    Connectivity?

    errrm....how are they going to get the electronical databits in and out of this remote, chilly facebox? Do they have decent broadband in the Swedish forests? Or will it be dialup?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Two words

      Fiber optic

    2. Steve Walker
      FAIL

      Sweden has a very very very good fibre infrastructure. We should not be mocking it.

      Lots of homes have 100mbit to the property and there are decent rates of connectivity in the wilds as well.

      Nothing like our 1mbit ADSL crap.

      I am pretty sure that whoever put the data centre there knows how to connect to the outside world with it.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Running fibre cables to a datacentre is cheap and mostly a relatively small / short term cost compared with the long term cost for the electricity to power and cool the facility. This facility is going to be cheap to keep cool (less electricity) and the the power it does use is also cheap.

    Which surprised me why so many people cram data centres into the docklands near London where electricity and cooling are much greater.

  5. Grozbat
    Flame

    Heat going to waste?

    As far as my research tells me, they are letting the waste megawatts of heat dissipate into the environment instead of using it as heating for local housing, for example.

    Does anyone know if there is a technical and/or economic reason for this?

    Seems to me that 120 meagwatts could heat quite a few flats.

    1. cloudgazer

      Cost - pure and simple - also I don't imagine that there are many residences within easy hot water pumping distance.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It's all about the wiretaps, bitch

    Now, not only Zuck will know everything about you, but the Swedish "Stasi" will too...

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FRA_law

  7. Patrick O'Reilly

    State wiretaps

    Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Sweden introduce some extreme warrentless wiretap laws a few years ago, meaning all internet traffic passing through the country can be scrutinized at the drop of a hat?

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