Discover 10 unique data centers in the world

Data center or data center is where many servers, storage systems and related components are located.

The world's most unique data center

The data center is especially sensitive because it contains important data of businesses and organizations, as well as operating server systems are located here so only a small failure can make customers centers cost millions of dollars. And to minimize that risk, 10 data centers in this article have been designed in very special ways.

1. Pionen White Mountain Data Center - Stockholm, Sweden

Bahnhof is a Swedish Internet service provider born in 1994, and one of their most unique data centers is Pionen because it is located in a nuclear bomb bunker 30m deep in the granite mountain of White. Mountain built during the Cold War. Because it is located in such a certain place, this center is hardly afraid of being affected by external impacts. Pionen is also the server site of WikiLeaks after this site was kicked off Amazon's server system in 2010.

But that is not the most unique point of Pionen. The 1,100-square-meter center also includes a fountain, a greenhouse, and the ability to simulate daylight with a large saltwater lake for fish farming. In addition to the standard UPS for continuous operation during a power outage, the center also has two diesel-powered submarine engines manufactured by Maybach to generate electricity when needed.

2. Bahnhof Lajka Space Station - Kista City, Sweden

Bahnhof's first data center outside Stockholm is here. It is located in the technology complex of the city of Kista, and the impressive point is that the shape of this data center simulates a space station made entirely of steel. The reason why this carrier chose this kind of architecture has not been disclosed, but according to their website, "If we don't do it, who else will we do?".

3. Green Mountain DC1 - Norway data center

The DC1 facility was built in an old ammunition depot by NATO, it is located on a small island in Norway. Powering the servers here is a hydroelectric system. Because it is 75m far from the sea level, the designers of DC1 to take advantage of this water area to cool the servers and keep them always at 8 degrees Celsius all year round. This facility is also fully sealed so that the air is not in series, while the oxygen inside is maintained at 15% to avoid the possibility of fire. And also because there is no fire, the damage caused by the chemicals produced during the fire is also minimized. Green Mountain DC1 is also known for its environmental friendliness with absolutely no emission of CO ₂ into the environment.

4. OVH RBX-4 - Roubaix, France

OVH is a French hosting company and they have built a data center without air conditioning, instead creating a square with hollow core in the middle to dissipate heat. The server is cooled by liquid. Remarkably, RBX-4 was built in just 6 months and can accommodate up to 35,000 servers. OVH also promises that if a server is broken at 4 am, one of their engineers will be available to fix it in about 15 minutes, when "the customer has not even checked the error message. ".

5. Yahoo's server stall - Lockport city, New York, USA

This data center was designed by Yahoo to adapt the shape of industrial chicken houses to simplify the cost of cooling the server. 99% uptime of data center will be cooled by natural methods, in addition it also has an evaporative cooling system in case you need to reduce the temperature more than normal. This facility uses the main energy source from a hydroelectric plant located near Niagara Falls.

6. Center for supercomputers Barcelona - Barcelona, ​​Spain

This center contains MareNostrum, a supercomputer dedicated to genetic research (besides some other things). MareNostrum is capable of handling 63.8 TFLOPS, using PowerPC CPU and in 2012 it ranked 465 among the world's most powerful supercomputers. There is also another supercomputer that is placed here with 103.2 TFLOPS and running newer Intel Xeon chips.

The highlight of this center is that it is located in an old chapel named Torre Girona of the University of Catalonia. MareNostrum's outer covers are large walls made of transparent glass. The central operating coalition includes the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology (51%), the Government of Catalonia (37%) and the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (12%).

7. CyberBunker - Netherlands

CyberBunker is also built in a NATO nuclear shelter that has now been dissolved. This tunnel was originally designed to be able to operate continuously for 10 years without contacting the outside world. In a dispute between the city government of Goes and CyberBunker on the operation of the center, officials tried to use specialized vehicles with hydraulic tools to break the door and break in. However, that effort only ruined the door and stuck this door. According to CyberBunker, the cost of the city to repair the door is about 35,840 USD according to today's inflation rate. There was also a time when a SWAT group tried to infiltrate the tunnel but failed. After many litigation, the city of Goes decided to give up the case and CyberBunker continued to operate normally.

8. PCextreme - Middelburg, Netherlands

The external architecture of this data center is quite normal, and the remarkable point is on the servers here. In addition to traditional servers, PCextreme also leases a place to place systems based on Raspberry Pi with only 3 Euro per month. The power consumption of this system is only about 3-5W, while the traditional mid-range servers can account for 75-150W. It is known that PCextreme has also set up a number of boards to mount multiple Pi and create a rack server. The company is also working to improve this design to save space. Of course, the Raspberry Pi server will not be as powerful as the server, but sometimes the need is just that much.

9. HavenCo - Body of Sealand kingdom

The Kingdom of Sealand is a country not recognized by the United Nations, located in the east of England, 10 nautical miles from the British Isles. It was essentially a fortress built in 1942 to serve the 2nd world war. After that, the HavenCo company came here to put a data center, literally an isolated data center outside. offshore. However, by 2008, this trial program ended. In 2013, HavenCo reopened it but only to store less data only.

10. Cloud & Heat - Germany

Cloud & Heat uses specially designed server enclosures and places it in office buildings or even residential homes, instead of leaving them in separate data centers. The heat emitted from the server inside the bin will be used to boil water or warm the air. Cloud & Heat cloud system is also smart enough to move the calculation and processing to the most favorable climate. For example, if the temperature in the city of Bonn is cooler than the city of Stuttgart, the heavy tasks will be transferred to the server in Bonn, this way will ensure that heat is still generated for people to use. Cloud & Heat is currently under limited testing in Germany.