Nuclear Bunker Houses World's Toughest Server Farm 152
Lanxon writes "Deep inside the Swiss Alps, a former nuclear bunker is now the ultimate hiding place for the world's most sensitive secrets — the Swiss Fort Knox. In a lengthy feature, Wired gains access to the server farm designed to survive a full-scale military attack. From the article: 'As we punch our codes at the checkpoint, the yellow door opens into what looks like a city of server towers, their green LEDs flickering as a technician in a white jumpsuit runs diagnostic checks. [Later], we are in a dimly lit tunnel next to what looks like a metal oven door carved into the side of the rock. "These are expansion rooms in case you have an atomic explosion outside," Christoph Oschwald, a retired Swiss paratrooper turned contractor, says. The thinking behind the rooms, he explains, is that if there were a nuclear explosion, the rush of high-pressure air would fill them through vents in the opposite side. Then, the vents would snap shut, trapping the air before it had a chance of damaging the fortress. "There is a lot of protection you can't see," he says. We stroll past an intricate network of insulated pipelines that carry water up from the underground glacial lake to the cooling system.'"
What secrets do the Swiss have? (Score:5, Funny)
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Also watch making secrets, cu-cu clock secrets, chocolate making secrets, and porn.
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Re:What secrets do the Swiss have? (Score:4, Funny)
Or Nazi gold...
I always thought Nazi Gold was a right-extremist radio station?
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Ah, there's your mistake; "Nazi" stands for "National Socialist", so the Nazis were left-wing, not right. Of course, the current crop of lefties would VERY much like us all to forget that part.....
Hoping you're trolling, but anyway - National Socialist was just a _name_ as the Party was born out of the German Labor movement, indeed like a lot of left-wing parties. That's where the connection begins and ends however - you certainly can't call many of the Nazi policies "left wing": - extermination of disabled / homosexuals / Jews / Gypsy(Roma) - promotion of idea of _one_ perfect race - class system that discriminated against particular groups ... and that's just for starters. Pray tell, apart from hav
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Interestingly their official party program was socialist, it's just that they decided they didn't want to implement it as they were quite happy with the bribes they got from the industry sector and they were much more interested in the racial purity and imperialism anyhow.
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He hates the actual left-wing groups, *and* he hates the Nazis (mostly because they weren't Christian enough)... What more connection do you need?
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100% correct, the Nazi eugenics and ethnic cleansing programs were just extensions of the theories the American Left were pushing in the 20s and 30s.
Richard Rhodes book, Masters of Death: The SS-Einsatzgruppen and the Invention of the Holocaust is a great source on the subject and not political like say, Goldberg's Liberal Fascism.
National Socialism was a leftist movement, a little right of the Communists, which is why they were such bitter enemies in Germany, but not at all a Right movement.
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You do know that the Fascist party was Italian and the National Socialist German Workers' Party were German right?
And the nations, while allied, had entirely different political systems.
Politically they were on the far Left, but made many alliances with the Right and far right.
They took leftist policies and threw in the far right German racial theories that had been forming over the 100 years before the rise of the National Socialists.
Look at their 25-point program - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_So [wikipedia.org]
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Visitor......What's in these rooms with the big steel doors?)
Guide.......trapped high prezzure air.)
Visitor......riiiiight! What you gonna do with it?)
Guide.......Ve are lookink for buyers!
Wait. (Score:4, Interesting)
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You wouldn't steal a car...
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Well, David Brin's book Earth posited a future where transparency had become such an accepted norm that the developed world went to war with (and nuked) Switzerland for attempting to maintain secrets (secret bank accounts and such). Probably far-fetched, but at any rate, the more relevant question is whether the server farm would stay connected to the Internet if Switzerland were nuked. A server farm doesn't do you much good if the cables leading in are cut, especially given that you'd have to send someon
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If I don't survive, tell my wife, "Hello".
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Yes, but they only have to store the schematic for this one [thinkgeek.com]. It is the Rosetta Stone of Swiss army knives, from which all the others can be made.
Not so tough... (Score:5, Funny)
Might survive a nuclear attack, but not some script kiddie and an admin that likes pictures of Pam Anderson.
Re:Not so tough... (Score:5, Informative)
Reminds me of the Simpson's episode, where Mr. Burns and Smithers go through a series of complex doors to get to the control room, just to discover that someone left the BACK DOOR open, a screen door, flapping in the breeze. Proverbial "a chain is only as strong as its weakest link".
will it survive a backhoe cutting the data lines? (Score:3, Funny)
will it survive a backhoe cutting the data lines?
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Wordpress (Score:2)
Would it survive a Wordpress installation?
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Hmmm (Score:4, Interesting)
Is the infrastructure getting data to/from these servers going to withstand a nuclear blast? Do the servers run Linux?? Does anyone know if their "Apocalypse Level" technical support package is for the hosting customer only or will they extend it to site subscribers as well???
MR burns will just cut back on that part (Score:2)
MR burns will just cut back on that part
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Interesting)
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They also offer online backup at the same location: http://www.mount10.ch/english/index.html [mount10.ch]
Their web design sucks, though.
I imagine the courier thing is for exceedingly sensitive information.
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Somehow I get
What good is it if you can't get to it? (Score:3, Insightful)
(*SNIP!*)
Glacial lake for cooling? (Score:5, Funny)
Underground glacial lake for cooling?
I thought it was the CO2 that was melting the glaciers in Europe, not farmville.
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Underground glacial lake for cooling?
I thought it was the CO2 that was melting the glaciers in Europe, not farmville.
I don't understand this fascination for bunker server farms, besides the Neil Stephenson geek factor. There's no way you can evacuate the heat from those servers while deep underground. The only option is to run long pipes to suck air in and out, and that takes lots of energy. And if you close the vent because the apocalypse/rapture/singularity has arrived, then your server will overheat in seconds. But maybe here they found the solution thanks to this underground water flow...
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What do you mean? Whatever the temperature of the surrounding earth, it should be able to sink a nearly unlimited amount of heat. Are you sure you're not confusing "underground" with "outer space?"
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Really, it takes years for thermal energy to travel through stone?
The thermal conductivity of stone is actually greater than that of water, about 1.7 W/(mK). (That's why it feels cold to the touch, unlike, say, wood.) If what you are saying were true, then geothermal heat pumps for building HVAC wouldn't be possible at all. But, they seemingly are.
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They are using the lake for cooling, as stated in the summary. Heat is probably carried away to the lake via underground pipes.
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And it probably helps melt the glaciers and kill us all.
Think of the polar bears!
Exactly how often are we going to hear this? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is deja vu all over again. First off, if it's not a chain of similar setups you have a single site problem - BLAM goes your redundancy. Secondly, define "nuclear attack". If that means "survive the EMP from a nuclear blast" there would be some value in it, but that's going to be a tad hard to prove without seriously upsetting neighboring Gstaad with radiation :-).
However, most importantly, this stopped being news several years ago - if this is a new setup it's just yet-another-one, if it's not it's not news either. Some of these setups are quite cute, but the idea isn't exactly novel.
Ah, got it. The hint is in the article: "Rauber and his team, a public-relations representative" - who paid who for what here?
Yawn.
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But surviving the strike itself? Only if it's a relatively small nuke. Once you get into the tens of MEGAtons that your typical ICBM is going to be carrying, having a mountain on top of you isn't going to matter much. Specially when all the datalines feeding this place are only 6 feet underground. Even if the data inside survived, all the connections would be severed, any tunnel leading in would be filled with molten rock and any workers ins
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However, if I were designing such a bunker, I'd have a tunnel boring machine on the inside and/or a back exit some hundreds of km away.
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Aha! So THAT's what the new Gotthard tunnel is for.. :-)
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Actually a mountain is a pretty damned good way of defending yourself against a nuke.
Your average nuke will go off mid-air to create most havoc, this will destroy most things above ground, but it sure as hell won't remove a mountain.
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Specifically, this one is much cooler. [slashdot.org]
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Oh yes. If I ever get rich I'll get that guy to design my own bunker. No idea if I'll use it, but hell, it's even fun to just use for paintball :-)
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This is deja vu all over again. First off, if it's not a chain of similar setups you have a single site problem - BLAM goes your redundancy.
Actually, it looks like it is a chain of similar setups. They have a second facility under a different mountain [mount10.ch].
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I don't believe anyone without proof, but give me some time to move out of the way first :-)
It's nice to know (Score:2)
It's nice to know that my servers will still be running after a nuclear holocaust.
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Yeah not much use if all upstream connectivity is toast and the people that maintain the facility are all be dead. Or at least worrying about saving themselves more than replacing fans in your server. :/
Ahem... (Score:4, Insightful)
World's toughest server farm that you know about.
It's not nearly as secure now that we all know that it exists and where it is...
Nothing is impentrable (Score:2)
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Is the '$deity' thing written to be religiously non-specific ($deity == Jesus OR Allah OR Shiva OR Buddha OR Krishna, etc.) or is the dollar sign an indication of what kind of Almighty we're talking about?
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Sure it can survive a nuclear assault... but does it run farmville?
Obligatory (Score:1)
"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the war room!"
Pointless (Score:4, Informative)
Proper availability is generally achieved through redundancy, not silly stunts like this.
Re:Pointless (Score:4, Insightful)
Proper availability is generally achieved by multiply-redundant, geographically distributed, block-replicated silly stunts like this. Who says it's just one bunker?
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If the client choses to have this site as one of their on-/off-line backup areas, then more power to them for realising the importance of redundancy. That's not offered by this company, though.
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I think the point is redundancy+secrecy rather than just redundancy.
Way down on my list (Score:5, Insightful)
If things get so bad that Switzerland is getting nuked, then my data will be one of the least of my worries.
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If things get so bad that Switzerland is getting nuked, then my data will be one of the least of my worries.
If a nuclear war has you stuck in a bunker for ten years, you're going to want your porn stash.
Cold-War Era Bunker...I've seen this before. (Score:2)
So let me get this straight...
They hide secrets here.
It's a server farm in a nuclear bunker.
With data retention and servers?
Is it by chance called Crystal Peak?
Ah no matter Skynet isn't controlled by a central location anyway...
sooo... (Score:2)
I guess the "full scale military attack" doesn't include a couple privates beating the shit out of some nerds until they get the access code?
Can we find the bunker? (Score:2, Interesting)
The article states "Wired has been instructed not to disclose its exact whereabouts." However it also gives a fair amount of info about it's location. I'm not familiar with the Swiss Alps, but there's probably at least a couple of people on the Internet who are.
What we know is:
It's in or near the "tiny village of Saanen, in the canton of Bern."
You have to "pass a Tissot boutique abutting a tractor dealership before the road dives into dense forest and follows a stream."
It "appears to be nothing more than a
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Yes (Score:2)
Saanen is a very small town. I looked at it on the satellite maps. It only has one stream, which runs strait through the town.
How about someone else find the tractor dealership? I tried Google maps, but couldn't find it.
I've figured it out finally! (Score:2)
2. Put Server Farm in Nuclear Silo
3. Wait for Free Promotion of Services to Appear on Slashdot, Because They Run a Batcave Article Like This Every Few Months!
4. Profit!!!
well... (Score:2)
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The Doctor is regenerating right now; however, K9 has been tuning the servers for optimum performance and doing touch-and-goes in the Tardis.
Relation of this to nuclear survivability -- Zero.
Website reads like a Chinese instruction manual (Score:1)
With all the money spent on this, you'd think they'd be able to hire a decent English translator. I'm assuming this [swissfortknox.ch] is their website.
Disappointing... (Score:2)
That article about all of this awesome tech in a sweet facility...and the only picture they can muster up is a generic panorama of some foothills? I want to see caves full of servers! I want to see giant ice sheets being melted for the purpose of cpu cooling!
People still don't get electronic security. (Score:2)
Safekeeping data and safekeeping material goods ARE ENTIRELY DIFFERENT THINGS.
A physical object must be kept in a secure vault with physical access protection, because there is only one of it. Information can be kept orders of magnitude more safely simply by storing redundant copies of it. Even if you are after keeping the information secret rather than protecting its integrity, encryption is more effective than steel doors.
Or maybe you're after ensuring that the computers remain connected to the internet?
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Even if you are after keeping the information secret rather than protecting its integrity, encryption is more effective than steel doors.
Well, at least with steel doors you have a good chance of knowing when your security has been breached. With encryption, you have no such luxury. You're just relying on the fact that no-one has been clever enough yet to break your particular encryption method, and you don't even know if that is a fact still.
Top Secret Photoshop Files (Score:2)
X5 class solar storms (Score:1)
Bah (Score:1)
Prove It (Score:2)
I worked in a similar setup outside Toronto in the 1990s. It was a nuke bunker built for NorTel, which supposedly was designed and built in the 1960s to withstand a direct hydrogen bomb hit on Toronto. It housed NorTel and Bell Canada switching equipment and servers, but also rented out cabinets to anyone paying for a contract. Nevermind the ease with which I could have left a big box of explosives wired up to a detonator triggered over its Internet connection. But even though I had to pass through a half d
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Of course, it's not possible that NorTel and Bell Canada could have installed paging equipment in the bunker. It's not like those were two big phone companies that know a thing or two about paging. No, it has to be because the paging signals could penetrate it.
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No, it's not possible. I was told by operations that pagers wouldn't work. When I asked some executives why my pager worked, they didn't know why, and wished I hadn't asked. There was no paging equipment installed. At least not officially, since part of their official security regime was that the only telecom allowed people inside the bunker was through their managed firewalls, including the NorTel landlines installed for that purpose. And if it was installed unofficially, they have a different kind of secu
OMG! (Score:1)
How much for colo? I could so use a safe space for my porn collection!
Dandelions (Score:2)
It's been said before but I'll say it again :)
Redundancy and distribution are the only viable solutions for long-term persistence of information.
Bunkers are bunk. Major problem that we all know where this one is now.
Cynic from Switzerland here (also a link) (Score:2)
TFA doesn't seem to have a link: Swiss Fort Knox [swissfortknox.ch]
Don't get the wrong idea - it's as much a marketing gag as anything. During and after WWII, the Swiss determined that their best defense was to be able to retreat to - and then attack from - the mountains. In the last couple of decades, the Swiss military has been reducing the number of bunkers that it uses. This company picked up an army-surplus bunker and decided to market it as the safest place to store your data.
So, sure, the bunker was originally designed
Security isn't the only criteria (Score:2)
My company has its website hosted from a nuclear bunker. Very secure, reliable, etc etc. Actually getting the guys there to DO anything for us, (like upgrade MySQL), is an exercise in frustration, to the point that it is a real limitation on our ability to develop our product.
So, when looking for hosting or backup, don't allow 'OMG Mega Nuke-proof Security' to distract you from also evaluating all the other relevant criteria (such as responsiveness and know-how).
I'm happy to know ... (Score:1)
This Tempts The Intel Analyst In Me (Score:2)
I think I found it, and am tempted to brag. But no good would come of it, and only harm.
So you'll just have to suffer.
(Oschwald, you owe me. One paratrooper to another. Next time I'm in Switzerland, a bier, hear?)
Gnomes (Score:2)
What, no references to gnomes?
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I imagine he is...which is why he offers this service. One of the services mentioned is off-site backups in a secure location. I can't imagine a location much more secure than under a mountain in Switzerland.
I doubt that his facility would be used for the sole storage of data, but as a secondary site for backups. Then again, CrashPlan/Carbonite/Mozy offer sufficient security and redundancy for most people's needs for a lot cheaper, so I don't think there's a huge market for nuclear-hardened data centers. I
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There are probably a lot of nuclear bunkers in the US. Norad is the best, but it is occupied atm (and an interesting target in and of itself).
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Well sir, as the others said, this place is a data store, its not for live front-end servers, in fact TFA even states that they receive a lot of data via hand delivery (bonded courier, etc).
So in summary, no, no one cares about the access to the servers, they only care that they are still there and the data is retrievable somehow.
I will go further to point out that their most secure areas are just safes that not even the staff of the place are allowed to enter, only the "owner" of the particular safe, and a
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Congrats on reading the bolded test at the top of the page :)
Now, if you read further down:
As for your tone, I take my meds every day that stop me from being a perpetually angry arsehole (crohns), why haven't you taken some?