Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Is Google building a hulking floating data center in SF Bay?

news.cnet.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 250 posts

Re: Is Google building a hulking floating data center in SF Bay?

#111

Post by deeths »

jongala wrote: post #107
kordless wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this actually worked, there would be boats sitting in the middle of the Atlantic and Pacific with computers on them. I have no idea if they are sitting there, but I'm pretty sure if it was an idea that worked, it would be done by now.

Just guessing here, but the geographical advantage probably requires a fiber link, which seems prohibitive in open ocean. Putting your ship in the right place probably doesn't improve your latency if you have to bounce signals off of satellites.

It doesn't help if you need to use satellites, but you cloud use microwave. Microwave is line of sight, which would usually limit you to 40miles, but if you were to have a big blimp tethered to a big barge, then you can increase the line-of-sight distance.

Re: Is Google building a hulking floating data center in SF Bay?

#112

Post by mosburger »

mjolk wrote: post #21
numbsafari wrote: post #6

Something similar is being outfitted in Portland, ME. http://www.pressherald.com/news/Clues_emerging_about_mystery... The OP is a much better article (The Press Herald is garbage). My original guess for the barge-building in Portland was a ocean-based prison facility for the government to use for interrogations. But it's seeming like the floating data center idea is much more likely.

This is somewhat of a tangent, but how is the tech scene in Portland, ME? It's my hometown and I've had thoughts at various times about returning and setting up shop.

Adding onto justinsteele and numbsafari ... I've been working remotely since 2007 because there aren't a ton of jobs up here except for large-shop Java and .net work, and that really wasn't for me. It's kinda surprising how many people live in Portland and work remotely, and it seems like I keep discovering more all the time. But as far as startups go, I think numbsafari nailed it. I worked for a smallish company back in the mid-2000s, and it's likely that things have changed, but back then the tech-related investors wanted you to move to Boston, and the local investors didn't really grasp how to value software - they were more interested in how many forklifts you had as collateral. :-/

But I do get the sense that things have improved a bit since then.

Re: Is Google building a hulking floating data center in SF Bay?

#113

Post by woodchuck64 »

joezydeco wrote: post #12

How does the data get to/from the platform? Microwaves? Can that work from a slightly moving platform? My wacky guess would have been off-shore offices for employees that can't get H1Bs.

Google's Underwater Cable Ambitions Expand: http://gigaom.com/2009/12/11/googles-underwater-ambitions-ex...

Re: Is Google building a hulking floating data center in SF Bay?

#114

Post by count »

wikwocket wrote: post #65

> putting data centers inside shipping containers is already a well-established practice. Is this true? Does anyone know why? The article seems to assume it without saying why.

http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2011/06/09/a-loo...

http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/inside-microsofts-chicago...

Everybody else is doing it...why not google?

Re: Is Google building a hulking floating data center in SF Bay?

#116

Post by panhandlr »

fibbery wrote: post #20

Great article. It's nice to see journalists do actual investigative work, even if it is for something like this. Today's "journalism" seems to be all link-bait opinion pieces mixed in with copy-pastes from twitter.

They shoulda searched craigslist: http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/off/4148978964.html

Re: Is Google building a hulking floating data center in SF Bay?

#117

Post by deeths »

kordless wrote: post #99
deeths wrote: post #90

The middle of the ocean could be a a very high margin location for IaaS hosting. Due to speed-of-light delays, some of the ideal locations for hosting high-speed trading arbitrages are in the middle of the ocean. Being half way between two exchanges would allow you to notice a small difference in price of some commodity in two different exchanges and buy and sell microseconds before your competitors on the mainland k…

If this actually worked, there would be boats sitting in the middle of the Atlantic and Pacific with computers on them. I have no idea if they are sitting there, but I'm pretty sure if it was an idea that worked, it would be done by now.

That was my first thought, too.

On the other hand there are probably cheaper ways to beat your competitors than crewing a boat, paying for fuel/electricity, havign a datacenter crew on board, dealing with the challenges of getting a high bandwidth signal hundred of miles off-shore, etc. Specifically you could invest in ever-faster custom processing in hardware or a lower latency connection will still make you faster than your competitors. You don't need to be as fast as possible, you only need to be a tiny bit faster than everyone else.

On the other hand, if someone can take advantage of economy of scale (by being a neutral provider to many brokers) and provide an advantage over everyone at a lower cost than the above options, then everyone would need to use it to compete effectively.

Re: Is Google building a hulking floating data center in SF Bay?

#118

Post by breischl »

I believe this was literally Chapter 1 (ok, maybe chapter 2 or 3) of "Avogadro Corp: The Singularity Is Closer Than It Appears" [1]. Life imitates art, I guess? Or maybe that author is more prescient than I gave him credit for.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Avogadro-Corp-Singularity-Appears-eboo...

Re: Is Google building a hulking floating data center in SF Bay?

#119

Post by breischl »

Jtsummers wrote: post #72
wikwocket wrote: post #65

> putting data centers inside shipping containers is already a well-established practice. Is this true? Does anyone know why? The article seems to assume it without saying why.

I'll try to find the link in a moment, but Microsoft was doing something like this 5+ years back. The premise was similar to Google using commodity hardware in their datacenters. Throw together "compute blocks", set them all up and when performance degrades sufficiently you remove the container and install a new one in its place. EDIT: Also, I'm surprised I got the time right, for some reason 2005-2012 is one big blu…

The newest Azure data center in Iowa(?) was going to be open air. Basically a pile of these containers in a field, with a big fence over it and a roof similar to a big car-port (no walls). They figured it was going to be better for cooling.

Re: Is Google building a hulking floating data center in SF Bay?

#120

Post by dlib »

mrb wrote: post #40

With movable data centers, Google can easily move them across oceans, as popularity and usage of different Google services inevitably shifts across countries over time, in order to be closer to wherever their users are to reduce network latency. For example an "Orkut data center" would have been very useful to Google in 2008, when they announced they were moving its operations to Brazil because somewhat unpredictably…

They would also be able to move operations to places where energy is cheaper or sea water temperature is cooler. In general, it could be used to minimize costs looking at a variety of factors. I'm still curious how they will connect to the mainland. A fibre connection would hamper the flexibility of having a boat. Employees would rather live on the mainland than on a boat. So perhaps they the boat is stationary and will enjoy the ample amount of cooling water and potential energy the waves create.
Post reply on HN