InfoBunker

The lure of underground data centers

Subterranean facilities provide security and energy savings — and they’re cool, too.

By Drew Robb - Tech Page One Aug 26 2014


Every evil genius deserves his own subterranean bunker with a supercomputer to plot world domination. The economy being the way it is these days, however, most can’t afford to build their own lair. Fortunately, there are plenty of underground facilities that you can share with other businesses and organizations. There is a coolness about these locations, and not just because the ground temperature is in the 50s year round.
“There is a certain James Bond allure to the underground data center,” said John Clune, president of Cavern Technologies. “Many of our customers utilize the location in their marketing to show how seriously they take data storage and protection.”

One of TelecityGroup’s five data centers in Helsinki, Finland, is housed under the Uspenski Cathedral. Credit: Shutterstock

Here are four companies in the U.S. and Europe that are running underground data centers.

Unorthodox location

London-based TelecityGroup operates five data centers in Helsinki, Finland. One of them is located in a former bomb shelter 100 feet below the 150-year-old Eastern Orthodox Uspenski Cathedral. By using sea water and a heat exchanger, it uses 80 percent less energy for cooling than a typical data center. But not all the heat is sent to the sea. The water first circulates to a heat exchanger serving the city’s district heating system, with the servers providing enough heat for 500 homes. The data center won an Uptime Institute Green Enterprise IT award in 2010.

Data mining

 

Cavern Technologies built a 50-megawatt, 300,000-plus square-foot data center in a former limestone mine near Lenexa, Kansas. Being 125 feet underground means that the site is secure from the tornados, ice storms and hail that can hit above-ground data centers in the region.
“From day one, we have a hardened F5 tornado-proof [261 to 318 miles per hour] structure,” said Clune. “Above ground, it costs up to $150 per square-foot for a hardened shell. On a 100,000-square-foot building, that is a cost savings of $15 million that we can pass on to our customers.”

Secure storage

 The Green Mountain Data Center is a Tier III+ facility located in a former NATO ammunition storage facility on an island in western Norway. Three-hundred-foot-long tunnels connect the data center rooms to the outside world. Although the site is physically remote, high-speed connections mean it is only 4.5 milliseconds from Aberdeen, Scotland and 6.5 milliseconds from London.

One of the main advantages of the site is its energy efficiency. Located on the shoreline, it draws 46- degrees -Fahrenheit water from a fjord, an arrangement that allows a 200-kilowatt pump to produce 26,000 kilowatts of cooling. The system is designed for high-density computing, up to 60 kilowatts per rack. Since it is deep underground, the cooling system never has to offset heating caused by the sun striking the walls and roof. In addition, Norway has abundant hydropower, so the data center operates without greenhouse gas emissions and the power costs about 40 percent less than it does in London.
“We wanted to build the greenest data center in the world and being underground helped in so many ways,” said Jonathan Evans, Green Mountain’s international accounts director.

Cold War bunker

When InfoBunker went looking for an ultra-secure location for a high-availability data center, it wound up taking over a building that was already designed for high-tech applications: a former military communications center near Des Moines, Iowa, that was built to survive a direct nuclear hit.
“From a functionality standpoint the building is performing exactly the same services it did while under military control, only now geared towards the private sector,” said Jeff Daniels, InfoBunker’s executive vice president. “From a cost perspective it was also far less expensive than a greenfield data center project as we could make use of almost all the existing base infrastructure and our [capital expenditure] was limited to upgrading/modernizing systems and building the actual data floor into what was essentially white-box space.”
Although at just 25 feet deep it is much closer to the surface than some of the other underground data centers, the amount of steel and concrete used gives it strength. Daniels said that to replace the building today, with all its hardening and critical systems would have cost over $100 million. But it did also require additional work to drill holes for pipes and conduits.
“The floor is two foot thickness of 6,000 PSI-rated concrete and has steel reinforcing bars the size of your wrist all through it,” said Daniels. “It eats core drill bits like popcorn.”
The facility is designed for 10 kilowatts per rack and uses outside air-cooling nine months of the year, using the heated air to warm the offices. The building stays at about 55 degrees Fahrenheit year-round and can act as a buffer to absorb some of the heat if the HVAC goes down. Waste heat from the servers is used to keep the office spaces comfortable.

Zombie apocalypse

Data centers such as these are even being touted as a place where people could potentially survive a “zombie apocalypse.”
“Despite advertising ourselves as a 20-megaton nuclear-hardened data center we do not anticipate ever being nuked,” said Daniels. “InfoBunker was however nominated one of the top six ‘zombie-proof’ green data centers worldwide.”

Deep underground in Butler County, the Iron Mountain National Data Center functions like its own little city. With more than 3,000 badged employees, the former mine has its own fire department, restaurant, transit systems, water treatment center, and medical center. (Justine Coyne/Pittsburgh Business Times).

But what may be most surprising about this unique facility, located outside of Pittsburgh in Boyers, is the treasures that are stored inside.
Formerly a limestone mine owned by United States Steel Corp. (NYSE: X) in the early 1900s, today the mine houses everything from original prints of classic motion pictures, to data storage for more than 2,300 business and government agencies across the U.S.
Located 220 feet underground, Nick Salimbene, director of business development for Iron Mountain, said what makes the facility so unique is that it is virtually impervious to natural disasters. Salimbene said being housed underground also provides a stable environment that naturally maintains a temperature of 52 degrees.
Of the 145 acres that are developed, Salimbene said about 70 percent is used for physical storage. But demand is shifting toward more data storage. He said the demand for data storage has been increasing between 20 percent and 30 percent annually in recent years. Today, he said about 80 percent of what is coming into the center today is data.
For the privacy of its customers, Iron Mountain does not disclose who uses the Boyers facility by name. But it includes many big names. One tenant Salimbene could discuss is Corbis Corp., which houses its collection of over 20 million photographs .
"There's a little bit of everything here," Salimbene said. "But the most important thing for us, is that our customers feel secure having their items located here."
Obviously, with such valuable objects in its facility, security is very tight at Iron Mountain, with armed guards keeping watch 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
"We have companies trusting us with their most valuable assets," Salimbene said. "That's not something we take lightly."

http://www.amazon.com/Society-After-Doomsday-Bruce-Beach/dp/0919553206

http://www.radmeters4u.com/beach.htm

 http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/12/04/doomsday-preppers-bruce-beach-interview_n_2237404.html

 AMERICAN BLACKOUT, Nuclear EMP Attack, Nuclear EMP--The Ultimate Cyber Threat, The Sun--The Inevitable Cyber Threat, A Real Life Nightmare Nearer Than You Think.

National Geographic is to be applauded for American Blackout which is essentially a training film to educate the American people about the very real threat posed to their lives by a cyber attack on the electric grid.  If there is any fault or unrealism in the docudrama, it is that the blackout lasts only 10 days, and recovery is achieved so quickly.
In real life, terrorists or rogue states would probably not limit their attack on the nation's electric grid to computer viruses or hacking, as implied in the docudrama.  They would also use other more destructive means--that could cause a protracted national blackout lasting months or years.          
Moreover, Mother Nature can inflict a potentially protracted national blackout.  Regardless of how one weighs the threat to the national grid from terrorists or rogue states--the Sun will, sooner or later, hurl toward the Earth a geomagnetic super-storm, with catastrophic consequences for the national electric grid.  

The only one of its kind out there,

John Galt

May 22, 2013

As a collector of survivalist books and scenarios thru out the years I know the outlines of most are basically along the same lines of thinking which is prepping, how to's and other topics. This book has a different theme which is a Noahs Ark type of book and manual on reconstructing afterwards. If you had to rebuild society from scratch in a scenario like the hero in H.G. Wells 'The Time Machine', in which he had only 2 books to choose from to take with him, which ones would you choose? That question remained but now here is one of the books.

I would recommend getting the CD as well and I have subscribed to the free online newsletter sent as well which I find very informative for news that is related and unreported elsewhere to keep me informed. The dedication this author provides in detailed analysis and his time involved is evident. Not motivated by receiving reward, but promoting his idea of survival for humanity as a whole selflessly at cost to himself in doing so and hassle's from the system, result in an unbiased and serious exercise in discussion in this area that is a first of its kind.

http://www.amazon.com/Society-After-Doomsday-Bruce-Beach/dp/0919553206

 Elizabeth Joyce "Writer - Spiritual teacher"  This book is tragically necessary as a guide for what to do after a major catastrophe, including World War III. Society seems to be in a great age of denial, and not many want to discuss much less think about this subject. Unfortunately we must face the possibility of a situation such as this, and be prepared. If not, we'll be dead, period! How many of us have suffered minor losses, such as electricity, or damages after Katrina and Sandy, hurricanes, flooding, tidal waves, or tornadoes? What and who do we rely on in those times? "The guys" right? You know - the ones who fix the lines, rebuild our homes, or repair our damages. Them - out there - the ones we pay for. Well, in a true Doomsday there may be be no one, it will be up to you and the other survivors.

The dedication this author, and the other researchers involved, provide in a detailed analysis of preparation for what may come, is invaluable. Not motivated by receiving rewards, but the author is similarly promoting his idea of survival for humanity as a whole brings a result in an unbiased and serious exercise in discussion in this area of restarting the world from scratch. That is a first of its kind, for who would truly know how? Your politicians? This book should be a requirement for everyone's book shelf! 

Juan Felipe The author tackles a subject that many people refuse to consider or think about -- the destruction of modern society, most likely precipated by nuclear war, EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse), pandemic, or widespread environmental catastrophe.

Unlike many other "gloom and doom" prognosticators, however, he believes not only that it will be possible to reconstruct society, but that eventually the result may actually be preferable to the one we live in today. He emphasizes that the focus is on "reconstruction" and not "restoration", since "restoration" would eventually result in the same sort of problems that society faces today.

From Chapter 10: "It is my fervent hope that humankind may learn from its mistakes and develop an attitude of universal charity and concern towards all of humanity, regardless of race, religion, culture or other coincidental distinguishing feature."

And a little later: "The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens."

"The purpose for this book is to be a _How To_ manual for use in a post-cataclysmic recovery period by those who wish to reconstruct society in a just manner to _Build a Better World_ (the slogan of Ark Two)."

The heart of the book is the detailed explanation of LERNs (Local Economy Recovery Networks); how they are formed, what are their functions, and how they interact with other LERNs.

A couple of minor quibbles -- the e-book would be more readable with a consistent font size. Most of the boxes with definitions and supplemental information have a miniscule, almost unreadable font compared to the main body of text. That's probably because they are graphics which do not scale up when the main text size is set to a more readable size. And even within the main text, the font size often changes mid-sentence, although only by a point or two.

By 

Gary E. Weller
Imagine if, one minute from now, a lot of person on Earth disappeared. All maybe 6 billion of us. Doomsday. What would happen to the world without a lot humans? How long would it be before our nuclear power plants erupted, skyscrapers crumbled, and satellites dropped from the sky? What would become of the household pets and farm animals? And could an ecosystem plagued with years of pollution ever recover?

In this book, Bruce explore a world you will never want to see--a world without a lot of people. You are in control. Experience the Aftermath. Rebuild, start over, reboot society, farming, food, life with Bruce Beach on survival after disaster scenarios.

Some people are gonna die and there isn't a whole lot we can do about it.