Iron Mountain's Experimental Room 48 87
twailgum writes "Twenty-two stories underground in Iron Mountain's Western Pennsylvania facility, 'you'll find Room 48, an experiment in data center energy efficiency. Open for just six months, the room is used by Iron Mountain to discover the best way to use geothermal conditions and engineering designs to establish the perfect environment for electronic documents. Room 48 is also being used to devise a geothermal-based environment that can be tapped to create efficient, low-cost data centers.'"
YES! (Score:1, Funny)
Nothing like a geo-thermal, 20+ story deep, deep-mountain lair.
Wonder what'll happen after 2012 (Score:1)
Wonder what'll happen after 2012... :o
iron mountain facility (Score:5, Interesting)
Always wondered who and how they plan out which direction they use to cut new rooms.
Re:iron mountain facility (Score:5, Funny)
Always wondered who and how they plan out which direction they use to cut new rooms.
Computerized simulations. Right now they have a massive military force built up just in case they hit adamantine and follow the vein to a glowing pit.
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As long as it isn't room 101...
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Always wondered who and how they plan out which direction they use to cut new rooms.
They used state of the art simulation software [bay12games.com], of course.
Ideal environment (Score:5, Funny)
perfect environment for electronic documents
Kernel Butler: Would you like a defragmentation this evening, sir?
Document: No thank you. I would however like an integrity scan.
Kernel Butler: Right away sir. Anything for Mrs. Backup?
Backup: No thank you. I just got all my bits redone at the BZip2 fitness center. I've been trying to watch my size and nothing's been working until -
Document: Oh, do be quiet. You've been prattling on about your size for ages. Nothing's wrong with size. I've just cleared 1MB and I'm none the worse for it.
Kernel Butler: Anything else, sir or madame?
Document: No, that will be all.
Kernel Butler: Thank you. I will schedule your scan immediately, sir. Goodnight.
Is it worth the cost? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Is it worth the cost? (Score:5, Informative)
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Good bit of trivia, that. Dew you think they considered incorporating Lime Mountain? Probably left a bad taste in someone's mouth.
Re:Is it worth the cost? (Score:4, Interesting)
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I'm wondering the same thing. I'm also curious about environmental impact. Less cooling systems mean less carbon emissions, but that's possibly offset by the all the work to excavate.
I guess it all depends on how long the data center runs down there. Eventually running cool underground could pay off because it could be used for the next 100+ years.
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Also, I'm a little remiss that I never knew this existed. I grew up one county over from Butler County and would have loved to have toured a facility like this. Then again, it probably didn't exist in its present state when I was growing up...
Re:Is it worth the cost? (Score:4, Informative)
I am from the area, and the Pennsylvania mine was almost solely government records for a long time. Iron Mountain took over in the late 90's. You see Iron Mountain trucks all over Pittsburgh collecting records now.
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I am from the area, and the Pennsylvania mine was almost solely government records for a long time. Iron Mountain took over in the late 90's. You see Iron Mountain trucks all over Pittsburgh collecting records now.
Yes. As a matter of fact, they were going door-to-door. A few weeks ago, I got a knock on my door. Turns out it was some Iron Mountain dude, wanted to know if I had any electronic records I cared to offload. Said he'd free up some GB for me.
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I wonder if the cost of digging into the side of the hill and carving out all these facilities is recouped through energy savings very quickly. I guess it all depends on the number of machines they would be running and the cost of electricity in their area- but if it takes 20 years, or even 10 to recoup the cost is it worth it?
It's an old question - opex vs. capex. For long term value, where you see the expense would be accelerating for one factor over time (energy costs) it may make sense to make a large capital expenditure to bring that down. A loan is something a business can eventually pay out to zero. If it's an element that's core to your business, it makes even more sense.
Energy use is a large part of the cost of any data centre. Cost is likely to go up over time.
One of the cool things about digging down for a DC is th
What about the rest of us? (Score:5, Insightful)
Very cool stuff, but the rest of us who don't own mines don't really benefit from this solution. TFA says the mine layout and the underground lake are an "anomaly" of nature to begin with. We need solutions for "normal" data centers.
Either way, this was a great read. Thanks for sharing.
Re:What about the rest of us? (Score:5, Funny)
Very cool stuff, but the rest of us who don't own mines don't really benefit from this solution. TFA says the mine layout and the underground lake are an "anomaly" of nature to begin with. We need solutions for "normal" data centers.
Ah, the classic Dwarven Fortress "Your build only works with an underground lake, a magma river and a giant spider inhabited chasm" problem.
I suggest the classic Dwarven Fortress solution: "Select your site based on the natural elements and build the artificial ones." Oh and also "Don't let workers bring cats to the data center."
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It sounds like you may have a personal cat-data center story. :) Care to share, or did the cat suffer a tragic end in the turbine blades of a cooling rack?
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Wouldn't it be difficult to hire and retain qualified dwarves, though?
Re:What about the rest of us? (Score:4, Interesting)
No, they just flock to your datacenter.
The most interesting part is where does one get the magma in Iron Mountain they use to kill off thier nobles^H^H^H^H^H^Hmanagers?
Also I saw a definite lack of levers in the photographs. I'm guessing they don't show them so that way you don't know where the traps are.
Re:What about the rest of us? (Score:5, Funny)
The most interesting part is where does one get the magma in Iron Mountain they use to kill off thier nobles^H^H^H^H^H^Hmanagers?
"And so we reach Experimental Room 49. Dr. John Hammerer, you may get inside. Would you please press the red button with the big red 'DON'T TOUCH' text. Thank you."
"And now, dear team, as carp infested water fills the chamber I suggest you to think about the consecuences of nobility and promotion."
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http://dwarffortresswiki.net/index.php/Carp [dwarffortresswiki.net]
Damn carp.
Re:What about the rest of us? (Score:4, Interesting)
As I posted elsewhere in the thread, I used to audit an underground facility.
One of their problems was employee turnover, a hundred feet down there aren't any windows or sunlight, one person there quit on their very first day.
I assume like submarine crews, it takes a certain kind of attitude to work underground in a 60 degree room all day with no sunlight. Lighting was provided by the same sort of opressive Fluorescents any cube rat qould recognize. Unlike cube farms, we had rooms the size of football fields (like I said elsewhere these spaces were normally used for warehousing) so you never felt crampt.
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Don't dig too deep.
Re:What about the rest of us? (Score:4, Informative)
Well, if you don't want any geothermal heat for electricity, you can use one of these for just cooling.
I worked for an outfit where I had to audit a facility that was built in an old Limestone Quarry (basically a flat underground mine, not an open pit mine) there were 3 million square feet of useful space underground around 80-100 feet deep. There are lots of these facilities in the Kansas City area, most of them are used for warehousing.
Anyhow for our needs it was constant temperature in the 60s and constant humidity, unfortunately despite poured concrete floors, and cinder block partition walls, there was a lot of dust from the unpainted ceilings. Also folks periodically found rocks in their workspaces that would fall from the ceiling.
It worked really well for paper records, but until we dealt with the dust, it played merry hell with our drive arrays.
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Geothermal energy not renewable and cheap. (Score:4, Informative)
I had a colleague from Europe, where geothermal heating was very popular in 1980s. What they did not realize was that the earth is such a insulator that the available "heat" from the ground slowly gets used up and over some 20 years there is nothing left, the earth surrounding the buried pipe got so cold and the heat from the surrounding does not flow in fast enough.
Not an insurmountable problem. They should pump heat back into the ground in summer by using the same pipes as the radiator for their A/C. But if they cheap out during installation, the geothermal heat wont be renewable.
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They should pump heat back into the ground in summer
This is why man invented global warming.
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It is interesting to hear that the ground in the European installation got cold. I would have expected that heat would migrate up to re-warm the earth. But I'll be both cooling and heating my system with the ground water.
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If what the GP says is true, probably what happened was they were just using the heat available from too small of a volume, I imagine.
I'm no expert on Thermodynamics, but I did decently well in my college physics courses, so my slightly educated guess is that they were drawing the energy from too small a volume of earth. If I bury a heat exchanger underground, then start using a heat pump to draw energy out of the earth at some rate per second, let's call it R, I can do that with a small heat exchanger buri
Reference please on "earth's heat being used up" (Score:3, Interesting)
Interested to hear about your reference on "the earth's energy being used up" - do you have any references? I thought that using the earth as a storage device was more about the ground gathering solar heat and giving it up slowly during the winter, a bit like the sea (amelioration effect near the seaside for coastal towns), and also heat gradually permeating up from the centre.
Really interested to hear if the storage of heat gets "used up" and takes several years to warm up to the temperature of the ground
Re:Reference please on "earth's heat being used up (Score:4, Informative)
Coming to the "earth heat being used up", essentially as the pump operates the earth in immediate contact with the buried loop starts cooling down and heat from further up would "flow" towards the buried loop. After running this system for decades there will be temperature gradient next to the loop. Most places in USA the frost line is 42 inches. That is no matter how cold the air gets, it can not raise the temp 42 inches below the ground above freezing! Shows how good an insulator earth is.
After two decades of operation the ground next to the loop reaches freezing temp. There is the temperature gradient, even though the temperature beyond three of four feet is much above freezing and places six to eight feet from the loop is practically not affected by heat pump running for decades, the heat pump becomes very very inefficient.
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The total net outflow of heat from the Earth's core isn't that large. It's about 1/10000 of solar power (per square meter of surface area) on average, IIRC. There are a few locations where it's plentiful, but on the whole it's just the ground storing solar thermal heat.
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Ground temperature at the surface to a reasonable depth (not sure exactly what that is) is equal to the average annual temperature. The problem is doing horizontal pipes below the frost line vs. vertical bores spaced adequately apart.
We looked at doing a geothermal project for a limestone mine to be converted to a data center, but it wasn't practical as they filled it in to reduce flooding risk and chamber height. Best approach is heating/cooling the aquifer, but that has similar problems at a macro-scale
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[citation needed]
Seriously, I live ub the middle of Europe, and I am very interested in renewable energy (because once I can afford a house, I will most certainly not be able to afford oil) - and I have never heard about anything like that.
Do you have something more credible than "my colleague told me so"??
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They kind of imply this as a "growth option/plan" in the TFA.
The owner wants to pipe cold air down to the underground lake in the winter to freeze it, and use the lake for cooling.
It reminds me of someone who built a year-round refrigerator that basically operated by freezing water into a giant chunk of ice in the winter, and then using that ice for cooling year round. They used a homebrew heatpipe system, and took advantage of what is normally a problem in heatpipes - they only work if your heat source is
Re:Experimental Room 48 (Score:5, Funny)
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A Colossus: The Forbin Project reference -- Excellent!
Well if Dr. Strangelove has anything to say... (Score:2)
Ten 0s for every 1?
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Old news for me at least (Score:5, Interesting)
I find it funny that this is being run as an experiment since I work at a mine.
We've had our datacenter down a '2 level' (~300ft) for years where it's secure (IE: Hard to get to) and a constant 4 celcius regardless of the season.
Only major issue we've had is with regards to humidity and ensuring that the dewatering pumps keep running. (Although... at a 5200 ft in depth it would take a few years for the water to get to the DC if the pumps shut off)
Typo? (Score:2)
Maybe the poster made a typo? I bet he meant 14C, and just left off the leading 1. The reason I say that is I've always heard that underground (until you get very deep underground, at least), it's always about 60F/14C. I've never heard of it being that cold (4C) several hundred feet underground.
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I actually did mean 4C.
Average temperatures around here range from -40C to +30 (more so towards the -40) so it is rather cold just below surface and leading up to ~25-30C at 8800ft range.
Aside from my earlier comments each mine will be different however (hardrock/softrock/etc...)
In our particular environment, hardrock along a fault water is a bit of a problem.
Diesel soot and dust would also be a major issue if it weren't for the fact the current active workings are far below 2 level. (The PC's that come up
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They mention in TFA that the geology of the Iron Mountain mine is somewhat unique in that it has a shale cap - the end result being that the mine area is very dry until you descend to the level of the lake.
Amazing (Score:1)
Iron Mountain cut energy consumption for cooling by between 10% and 15% compared with the company's traditional data centers
For now, Iron Mountain uses the lake water .... the 50-degree water could eventually be circulated to the data center and back to the lake to naturally expel heat .... "We'd like to get to the point where we expend no energy for cooling," Doughty explained
They are awesome. It's like Zion.
Reminds me of (Score:1)
Paging Mr. Romero (Score:2)
Actually, it should remind you of this. [imdb.com]
Room 48... (Score:2, Funny)
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..Also includes the T-Virus...
Sounds more like Room 101.
They moved the power distrubution equip? (Score:1)
It seems to me that moving the power distribution out of the mine NEGATES the supposed archive integrity of the deep mine.
Experts?
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They are already moving warm air out of the datacenter. I would suppose that air can then pass through the power room to cool it, too.
InfoBunker (Score:1)
Ever since I had to travel to our BC/DR data center I find these stories bland. We are using a decommissioned Cold War Era federal government nuclear fallout command center.
Would you rather have your digital documents stored in a mineshaft, or in a data center rated to withstand nuclear bombs and EMPs?
http://infobunker.com/ [infobunker.com]
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I'd much rather be in that facility myself - rather than my digital documents - if nuclear bombs started falling close to my location.
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I'd much rather be in that facility myself - rather than my digital documents - if nuclear bombs started falling close to my location.
I think I'd rather be out getting a suntan that day. Do you really want to spend the rest of your very shortened life starving to death while defending a concrete hole in the ground from roving gangs of mutants? Surrounded by a post-apocalyptic wasteland? The only settlements will make Bartertown look like a nice family-oriented place to live. And don't forget the cannibals. And probably zombies, too.
Nope, the cockroaches are going to be the only winners of that battle; why fight them for the crown?
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Infobunker: InfoBunker is committed to providing our clients with the most secure, robust and flexible data storage environment attainable while maintaining affordability and delivering the utmost in customer service.
Iron Mountain: Helping businesses solve information management challenges.
I mean seriously, did the infobunker folks run the Buzzword Mission Statement generator when coming up with that, or are their marketing execs truly that
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Meh. In the war of the mission statements, Iron Mountain wins.
Infobunker: InfoBunker is committed to providing our clients with the most secure, robust and flexible data storage environment attainable while maintaining affordability and delivering the utmost in customer service.
Iron Mountain: Helping businesses solve information management challenges.
I mean seriously, did the infobunker folks run the Buzzword Mission Statement generator when coming up with that, or are their marketing execs truly that... um, talented?
Meh. In the war of nuclear bombs, InfoBunker wins. I mean seriously, nuclear bombs.
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A couple of miles of limestone are as effective as a lesser quantity of lead ... that is to say after a certain distance, 100% effective.
Ok well then is it N+2, can it sustain human life for 3mo after the nukes go off, does it have multiple fiber connects, microwave, and satellite networking? Does it filter the air to .3 microns? You're not doing a good job of convincing me that an old mineshaft is better than a purpose built, to military spec, nuclear fallout command center.
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But here goes anyway - damn you for making me use my brain. I am making certain assumptions based on what I've read -- primary among them being that IM didn't just jam a data center into the old mine any way it would fit.
It seems that the bigg
Google's offshore data centers (Score:2)
Expansion is difficult, and the setup is very expensive to begin with.
I wonder how this compares cost-wise with Google's offshore data centers.
http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2008/09/06/google-planning-offshore-data-barges/ [datacenterknowledge.com]
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Anything at sea will always be slight more expensive when it comes to the ware-and-tear section of the spread sheet.
they have to deal with salt spray and fresh water rain. both different oxidation processes and air pollution ( amazingly enough from my own observations, salt spray does not increase damage on exhaust vents, but fresh water does, this is just an observation, I have yet to do a controlled experiment on this, i think it's based on the reaction of fresh water with the acids of the exhaust but sal
They didn't mention its also safe against all but. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:They didn't mention its also safe against all b (Score:1, Troll)
Then again, a direct hit is unlikely, because she'd have to, you know, "...do a whole buncha boring technical stuff just to get ready...", and quit before she ever got close.