The Internet's Cloud of... What?!

Gone are the days when a business could pack all of it's computing needs into one room.  Or even one building.  Today, the big boys have turned to farming as an answer:  Data Farming.  This basically entails buying up some farmland in an area with cheap electricity, getting some great tax breaks from the local small community, and putting in one or more large warehouse-type buildings packed with computer servers connected to the internet.

In one sense, this is the cloud - warehouses full of servers.

In another sense, this is the cloud: great billowing clouds of deisel smoke that go up whenever the warehouse decides to run on their own generators, instead of the power supply they bargained for so eagerly.  Once in a while, there's good reason for the data farm to switch over to generator power; the local substation will be undergoing maintenance, for example.  The rest of the time, for some unknown reason, the data farm will simply decide to run on it's own power, instead of locally supplied power.

Microsoft is one of the biggest troublemakers, when it comes to using deisel power instead of local power.  In Washington state, a small farming community thought they'd hit the jackpot when Microsoft decided to put in a huge data farm.  Overall, they did come out ahead.  Unfortunately, Microsoft isn't the best friend to the area - instead, Microsoft is one of the areas biggest bullies.

 

When they decided to move into the neighborhood with their "cloud" factory, they made deals for cheap electricity from the local provider.  Part of this deal is to make a serious estimate on how many kilowatt hours the server farm will need.  This way, the electric company is able to reserve that much power across the year for Microsoft's use, when otherwise that power might be sold to the overall power grid.  Microsoft has, at times, run their own deisel generators excessively, sending clouds of smoke over the nearby elementary school, even though the local power grid was fully capable of serving their needs.  Near the end of the year, Microsoft was going to have to pay a very large fine for not using power that was reserved for their use.  What does MS do?  They threatened to run large, electric heaters full-out during the last few weeks of the period, in order to waste electricity and bring their usage up to near the estimated levels.  Having shoved with their strong arm, the electric company fell, and reduced the fine. 

There are many other data centers around the nation that also rely on deisel backup generators.  Yahoo, practically right next door to the Microsoft facility.  Facebook and many others, as well.  These data centers typically run at 100%, 24 hours a day, no matter what the demand actually is.  The New York Times found that these data centers can waste 90% or more of the power the pull off the grid.

It's been said that if manufacturing plants were as wasteful as these server farms, they'd be out of business right away.  So... how are these data centers managing to remain so profitable, under their clouds of deisel exhaust, with such massive waste of resources?

Profits are that good?

So... is it a cloud of data, cloud of smoke, or cloud of money?  One thing is for sure:  there's a big cloud of wasted energy.


For more info, check out The New York Times' articles on the Cloud.