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Building a data center in a nuclear fallout shelter

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Re: Building a data center in a nuclear fallout shelter

#21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're building a relatively slow/cold storage archive datacenter I can think of a lot cheaper, less labor intensive ways to do it than retrofitting an underground bunker... I am assuming they either acquired the bunker for "free" or it has some purpose other than technical (marketing/sales/look how secure your data is!!!).

Not to mention, a bunker in Paris . If it's not speed-critical, it should be off in some mountain or field not an urban center.

And isn't electricity in Paris something like 18 euro cents per kWh? Now your datacenter is eating expensive electricity and requires special expensive cooling systems all year round, because even in the middle of winter there's no easy way to do free-air cooling of an underground bunker.

Re: Building a data center in a nuclear fallout shelter

#22

An ISP in Sweden has something similar https://twistedsifter.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/bahnhof-da...

Ben Laurie was probably the first to do this back in about 1995/1996:

http://www.thebunker.net/about-us/

Earliest Internet Archive mirror from 2000: https://web.archive.org/web/20000302134946/http://www.thebun...

It was a silly gimmick then, and it's a silly gimmick now.

Re: Building a data center in a nuclear fallout shelter

#23
This is something of a nitpick, but they really ought to refer to it as a nuclear bunker, not a fallout shelter. A fallout shelter is just something that can shield people from fallout radiation. You need thickish walls but nothing too special. Some places in the US you can still see the "fallout shelter" sign on schools and such. However, it doesn't offer much protection from a nuclear blast. The intent is that the survivors of a near miss would stay in fallout shelters for a few days after the explosion to wait out the worst of the radiation.

It sounds like this thing is a purpose-built bunker built to withstand a nuclear explosion, so much more robust than the title would imply, at least to me.

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