The surging demand for data is guzzling Virginia's water

Post by cbrozefsky » Fri, May 10, 2024, 6:27 PM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #20

xyst wrote: post #13

If ISPs weren’t so stingy with providing symmetrical, >10 Gbps, connections to residential homes. Then we wouldn’t need to have centralized data centers that consume massive amounts of resources in a specific region. Instead we could have distributed these resources amongst the entire country. Create local jobs (imagine a local “data center” that serves resources to people of {city}, {state}. The internet should be d…

I don't think this would solve the problem like you hope. Case in point, Netflix has this setup already for streaming video. Tons of small racks all over the world. It's a huge pain to maintain and was only worth it because of the huge difference in customer experience. And even though they already have it, they still use AWS for all the control plane work, because it's just so much easier administratively. Admining…

Post by causal » Fri, May 10, 2024, 6:29 PM UTC

venning wrote: post #38

From the linked study: [1] Total operational water "footprint" of data centers in 2018: 5.13 * 10^8 m^3. Of that, indirect consumption through electricity generation: 3.83 * 10^8 m^3, or 74.7%. And indirect consumption related to water and wastewater utilities (non-electicity production): 4.50 * 10^5 m^3, or 0.09%. The study then does a reasonable job of discussing the concerns of building data centers in water-stres…

Post by jedberg » Fri, May 10, 2024, 6:29 PM UTC

cbrozefsky wrote: post #41

jedberg wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this would solve the problem like you hope. Case in point, Netflix has this setup already for streaming video. Tons of small racks all over the world. It's a huge pain to maintain and was only worth it because of the huge difference in customer experience. And even though they already have it, they still use AWS for all the control plane work, because it's just so much easier administratively. Admining…

How many companies need netflix scale? A handful. So much of life online is not massive scale to general public streaming video with minimal latency. The cloud centralization in massive data centers is like CAFOs for computing.

Post by Scoundreller » Fri, May 10, 2024, 6:37 PM UTC

bell-cot wrote: post #6

jedberg wrote: post #3

We really need to figure out ways to get big fat data pipes to places that are naturally cold. Like imagine if we could get big pipes to Antarctica and then build data centers there. Plenty of fresh water and cold enough that you could almost just cool it with outside air, and you can exhaust the water right back outside to freeze back up. You could also use the exhaust heat to warm up the living spaces nearby. The o…

Minor detail: The myriad megajoules of heat which any major DC has got to breathe out...were previously inhaled as electrical energy. And multi-megawatt electrical service is quite difficult to source in most extremely cold places.

Post by nickff » Fri, May 10, 2024, 6:45 PM UTC

agsnu wrote: post #33

legitster wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm fully aware. But I'm quoting the article and golf courses don't use a consistent amount of water day to day, so I am trusting readers to do the math.

Presumably the demand for golf courses isn’t growing at the same rate as datacenters.