Apple Data Centre Athenry = Middle of Nowhere.

dubhthach · 20-09-2015 6:58pm

To be honest the main reasons for locating data centers in Ireland isn't about the weather. It's to do with (a) tax (b) we sitting in middle between US and Europe ergo Latency. The weather is basically "icing on top"

The new cable that's going to land in Mayo will have one of lowest latency connections between North America and Europe (if not the lowest). Given there are proposals to lay a cable from Ireland to France (bypassing Britain) you guaranteed that the current latency levels into Western Europe are gonna drop further as well as bypass issues that could potentially arise in Britain. There's even proposal that the trans-artic cable to Japan will have a landing station in Ireland. Given that it's currently about 180ms to get to Tokoyo from Ireland any such landing station will see significant drop in this latency.

I'd actually bet that the main reason why Athenry site was chosen as oppose to somewhere in greater Dublin area was precisely due to the Mayo Fibre cable.

From Apple's point of view when all the actual systems running online retail presence are based in Ireland than they can go tell EU goverements to go f**k themselves when it comes to paying tax etc.

20-09-2015 7:16pm

Agreed, it's the closest site to the US in Europe, so it ticks a lot of boxes.

4ensic15 · 20-09-2015 7:18pm

Deleted User wrote: »

Agreed, it's the closest site to the US in Europe, so it ticks a lot of boxes.

Same was said of Shannon Airport and the Valentia radio station in their day.

20-09-2015 7:22pm

4ensic15 wrote: »

Same was said of Shannon Airport and the Valentia radio station in their day.

Latency is set by the speed of light, so barring some development that breaks the laws of physics, I don't see that fact changing in the future.

dubhthach · 20-09-2015 7:27pm

4ensic15 wrote: »

Same was said of Shannon Airport and the Valentia radio station in their day.

Unless they can beat the speed of light the latency between Europe and North America is only ever gonna drop due to clever routing of physical cable. The closet point in Europe to Long Island (eg. NY metro area) is Ireland ergo it's always going to have lowest latency link. There's a difference of over 10% compared to say Long Island to Cornwall or Long Island to Lisbon.

StonyIron · 20-09-2015 7:31pm

The latency through Britian could be anything ... They're known to packet sniff.

dubhthach · 20-09-2015 7:32pm

I wouldn't mind but other than the foundations/floor plate most Data Centers have very little concrete in them. By and large the frame of building is steel and the "skin" is steel/Alumuminium. This is particulary case in modern containerised data centers where all you need is structure to protect the containers containing the compute nodes from the weather.

A concept first proposed by the late great (and much missed) Sun Microsystems back in 2008.

dubhthach · 20-09-2015 7:34pm

StonyIron wrote: »

The latency through Britian could be anything ... They're known to packet sniff.

True in general though I see latency on order of 15ms from server in Galway to Telecity in London docklands. The key of course will be if proposed cable from Cork to France goes ahead, this will allow for total bypassing of Britain for most West European data. No doubt likes of Apple would just have Fibre into relevant local IXP (Internet eXchange Points) such as Paris/Amsterdam/Frankfurt.

StonyIron · 20-09-2015 7:37pm

dubhthach wrote: »

I wouldn't mind but other than the foundations/floor plate most Data Centers have very little concrete in them. By and large the frame of building is steel and the "skin" is steel/Alumuminium. This is particulary case in modern containerised data centers where all you need is structure to protect the containers containing the compute nodes from the weather.

http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Chicago-outside-1000.jpg

A concept first proposed by the late great (and much missed) Sun Microsystems back in 2008.

Not really a new concept Eircom had Alcatel containerised telephone exchanges in the early 1980s. They're just a pre-fitted, air conditioned container with racks of electronics. Makes deployment easy and quick when you're dealing with standardised gear.

20-09-2015 7:38pm

Each hosted company is totally self contained

good from a security point of view as the competitors can't see what kit is being used, unlike in many data centres that use cages.

dubhthach · 20-09-2015 7:40pm

StonyIron wrote: »

Not really a new concept Eircom had Alcatel containerised telephone exchanges in the early 1980s. They're just a pre-fitted, air conditioned container with racks of electronics. Makes deployment easy and quick when you're dealing with standardised gear.

Sure but new concept for DC's which when you think about it are by and large the direct descendants of "raised floor operations" of the Mainframe days

dubhthach · 20-09-2015 7:41pm

Deleted User wrote: »

Each hosted company is totally self contained good from a security point of view as the competitors can't see what kit is being used, unlike in many data centres that use cages.

If ye lucky, most of us plebs just have our racks out on floor beside racks of random third parties.

StonyIron · 20-09-2015 7:41pm

Containerising data / voice gear's nothing new :

http://www.sligotoday.ie/st-panel/openwysiwyg/uploads/ballyw22.JPG -- Eircom probably circa 1982 era stuff.

dubhthach wrote: »

Sure but new concept for DC's which when you think about it are by and large the direct descendants of "raised floor operations" of the Mainframe days

Mainframes are both the ancestors and off spring of telecoms gear. Most of that racking, wiring and layout originated in the pre-computer days of telephone technology.

Some used raised floors, some used wiring attic arrangements with everything above the racks in a ceiling.

You'd get the sense of just how similar a layout 1960s telephony stuff was to a modern data centre. Only with a hell of a lot more clicking relays and moving parts:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lAkv_F1G3g

eir / telecom eireann last generation of non-digital local switching being taken out of service in 1999.

These things were the grandaddy of modern data centres in many ways. Vast, arrays of relay logic, modular racking and structured wiring.

Mainframes more than likely took their layout from 1950s switching systems.

All of this kind of layout's been done for 70+ years in various eras of tech.

Likewise, many of the power and cooling issues were dealt with decades ago too

... Much reinventing the wheel going on by modern data centre designers lol

The "data centres" of the mid 20th century : huge Dutch 1960s / 70s Ericsson electromechanical switch also being put into a skip in the 1990s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tjkc0yGFbZE

Although unlike Ericsson in the 1950s, I doubt any modern data centre specifies Parquet floors...

Oafley Jones · 20-09-2015 7:44pm

dubhthach wrote: »

I'd actually bet that the main reason why Athenry site was chosen as oppose to somewhere in greater Dublin area was precisely due to the Mayo Fibre cable..

I've a friend who's an Apple Engineer who's spent more than enough time in setting up these centres. The stability and the extremely predictable nature of the local climate was what sealed the deal for the site.

StonyIron · 20-09-2015 7:56pm

Oafley Jones wrote: »

I've a friend who's an Apple Engineer who's spent more than enough time in setting up these centres. The stability and the extremely predictable nature of the local climate was what sealed the deal for the site.

Ireland's weather and environment is EXTREMELY predictable.

Sits within a narrow, coolish temperature band, lots of rain, no tornadoes, hurricanes, volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunami risks

Iceland is trying to attract data centres but has a huge downside - seismically and volcanically unstable

plodder · 20-09-2015 8:59pm

4ensic15 wrote: »

I said nothing about climate change. These centres are being located whre they are because of the ambient moderate climate. technical development will mean that the ambient climate will not be a factor. When that happens other factors will emerge and its bye bye Athenry.

Ok, but you referred to Moore's law. Moore's law is causing an increase in demand for power, which gets converted to heat that needs to be dissipated.

So, I'm not sure what other technical developments there might be that will make this data centre obsolete.

the_syco · 20-09-2015 9:17pm

Victor wrote: »

A bit off-topic, but Intel handles it's own water, certainly it's own waste water and if I'm correct also it's own fresh water.

I'd say they've built a few wells as well, over the past few years. I'd say the electricity that the hyrdo dam could produce was a factor for picking Leixlip.

dubhthach wrote: »

though perhaps with couple wind turbines on sight to keep the hippies happy

The funny thing is, the wind turbines seem to be upsetting the local hippies.

I wonder if the outages that they're afraid of would be those that happen during storms, thus the thinking could be that said storms would provide the wind power needed?

dubhthach wrote: »

Given there are proposals to lay a cable from Ireland to France (bypassing Britain)

Cork to Spain, with a split to France; Q1 of 2017 seems to be the planned date, but it seems fairly close. Seems they're also thinking of Cork to Asia, but not sure how'd that work?

dubhthach · 20-09-2015 10:00pm

the_syco wrote: »

Cork to Spain, with a split to France; Q1 of 2017 seems to be the planned date, but it seems fairly close. Seems they're also thinking of Cork to Asia, but not sure how'd that work?

dubhthach · 20-09-2015 10:05pm

IFC-1 (Ireland France Cable?)

the_syco · 21-09-2015 1:44am

dubhthach wrote: »

IFC-1 (Ireland France Cable?)

This site looks nice; http://www.submarinecablemap.com/#/submarine-cable/copacoma

dubhthach · 21-09-2015 10:10am

the_syco wrote: »

This site looks nice; http://www.submarinecablemap.com/#/submarine-cable/copacoma

Nice, it be interesting to see if this cable to Bilbao with branching unit to Nantes goes ahead. I see the same crowd (PiPiper) also have proposed Cork to Netherlands Fibre right up the English channel on that page. That would be very interesting cable option as it would allow for connectivity into Amsterdam (one of top three peerings sites in Europe) without having to go through Britain.

StonyIron · 25-09-2015 9:09am

One thing is since the Snowden leaks, Apple and Google have both been openly hostile to the idea their data pipes were being tapped.

I could see them opting to not route unnecessarily through the U.K. as it's very fibre tap happy.

afatbollix · 25-09-2015 3:17pm

Most of Europes data flows through Cornwall who have alot of listening stations in the area for every fibre that lands in Cornwall. The UK law states that they have 2 weeks to process it before it is deleted.

Ive just read this http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/sep/25/facebook-datacentre-lulea-sweden-node-pole?CMP=fb_gu

Its about a new data centre in Sweden for Facebook. They said its not just about the buildings but has started a boom in computer companys coming to the area and graduates studying IT.

This could be a great start for Ireland, Wind energy is plentiful and we have the capacity to cover any lull in the wind.

MayoSalmon · 25-09-2015 3:27pm

afatbollix wrote: »

Most of Europes data flows through Cornwall who have alot of listening stations in the area for every fibre that lands in Cornwall. The UK law states that they have 2 weeks to process it before it is deleted.

Ive just read this http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/sep/25/facebook-datacentre-lulea-sweden-node-pole?CMP=fb_gu

Its about a new data centre in Sweden for Facebook. They said its not just about the buildings but has started a boom in computer companys coming to the area and graduates studying IT.

This could be a great start for Ireland, Wind energy is plentiful and we have the capacity to cover any lull in the wind.

We sure do but that is not efficient and you end up paying more for your energy. It's clean and green but costs more..go figure!

26-09-2015 5:07pm

Regarding tapping into lines and eavesdropping by GCHQ, the data doesn't have to travel through the UK lines. All lines go through the ocean, and all lines get tapped into

The system was designed to provide the agency with “either (a) a web browsing profile for every visible user on the Internet, or (b) a user profile for every visible website on the Internet.”

https://theintercept.com/2015/09/25/gchq-radio-porn-spies-track-web-users-online-identities/

have2flushtwice · 09-11-2015 1:19pm

anyone from this thread going to the data centre exhibition in the RDS this week?

Youngblood.III · 09-11-2015 1:23pm

Perfectly good IDA green site in Oranmore, on the N18 just up from Maldron Hotel. Roadway and landscaped entrance there already. Rail and motorway with 1 mile.

Victor · 09-11-2015 4:47pm

Youngblood.III wrote: »

Perfectly good IDA green site in Oranmore, on the N18 just up from Maldron Hotel. Roadway and landscaped entrance there already. Rail and motorway with 1 mile.

What gas, electricity and internet connections does it have?

Carawaystick · 09-11-2015 5:40pm

The grid connections all connect at Cashla, about half way between Athenry and Oranmore.

Youngblood.III · 09-11-2015 6:12pm

Victor wrote: »

What gas, electricity and internet connections does it have?

It's appears that it is serviced right up to the green field site, esb, water etc...as for internet, there is a exchange in Oranmore village, Cisco have a big building right beside Maldron, also Zimmer are opening a plant there too.

Apple Data Centre Athenry = Middle of Nowhere.

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