Facebook Suffers Actual Cloud In Oregon Datacenter 83
An anonymous reader writes "The Register carries the funniest, most topical IT story of the year: 'Facebook's first data center ran into problems of a distinctly ironic nature when a literal cloud formed in the IT room and started to rain on servers. Though Facebook has previously hinted at this via references to a 'humidity event' within its first data center in Prineville, Oregon, the social network's infrastructure king Jay Parikh told The Reg on Thursday that, for a few minutes in Summer, 2011, Facebook's data center contained two clouds: one powered the social network, the other poured water on it.'"
Re:Where are the Pics? (Score:4, Informative)
This is one of those RFA to get to the RA type stories.
The link next to the quote is the one you want :-
http://www.opencompute.org/2011/11/17/learning-lessons-at-the-prineville-data-center/ [opencompute.org]
Re:Obligatory (Score:5, Informative)
Sure, if you think 10.4 inches [usclimatedata.com] yearly average is a lot. East side of the state's actually quite arid; the west side is quite soggy in the Coast Range and seaside but the Willamette Valley where most of the population lives isn't exceptionally rainy, it's that it's subject to never-ending spells of overcast weather; other parts of the country actually have higher annual precipitation.
Re:Obligatory (Score:3, Informative)
WTF 80 deg F (approx 27 deg C) is quite warm in a Data-centre especially in a "cold aisle" and 95% humidity is criminal.
You're used to classic datacentres, where the goal was "shove as much cold air into them as possible", i.e. "the lower the temperature the better". It all depends on how the datacentre was built, how its cooling system is/was engineered, and an almost indefinite number of variables. References for you to read (not skim) -- the study in the PDF will probably interest you the most:
http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2011/03/10/energy-efficiency-guide-data-center-temperature/ [datacenterknowledge.com]
http://www.geek.com/chips/googles-most-efficient-data-center-runs-at-95-degrees-1478473/ [geek.com]
http://blog.schneider-electric.com/datacenter/2013/05/06/getting-comfortable-with-elevated-data-center-temperatures/ [schneider-electric.com]
http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~nosayba/temperature_cam.pdf [toronto.edu] (PDF)
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/data-center-temperature-and-humidity-range-recomme.html [dummies.com]
TL;DR -- 80F is not "quite warm" for a datacentre designed/built within the past 10-11 years.