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Microsoft chooses Iowa for data center

by on22 August 2008

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42-acre site for next large scale facility

Iowa has to be pretty excited, as they are the next lucky state to get a large Microsoft data center facility. To be located in West Des Moines, Iowa, the facility will join the ranks of Quincy, Washington; San Antonio, Texas; and Chicago, Illinois as locations for Microsoft data centers.

Microsoft has not gone into much detail on what the facility will be used for or how West Des Moines, Iowa was picked over other locations beyond the obvious offering of cheap power and, of course, access to the highest levels of network bandwidth.

Microsoft will use the much talked about container approach for loading its gear into the new facility once constructed. According to reports, West Des Moines will pick up at least 50 new jobs at the facility once it is completed.

The container approach to putting servers in the data center is a very new concept. The servers are loaded and built into specialized shipping containers that arrive on trucks. The trucks offload the container and the container is hooked up to power, network and air conditioning. Once connected, the servers are used until a number of servers in the container have failed. Once they have failed, the data on the servers is migrated over to other servers and the entire container is sent back to the manufacturer for repair or replacement.

The container system that Microsoft is using does not contain traditional servers and racks. It is more specialized, and that basically amounts to motherboard populated with the components. By using this design Microsoft is able to reduce the amount of power and most of all heat that is generated and needs to be dissipated from the server themselves. This, of course, leads to lower costs which is important for a company that is said to be turning out at least 10,000 servers a month.

Microsoft sees the growing need for super massive large scale data centers to meet the needs of delivering data going forward. As the data continues to get richer and more robust, so will the needs of the backend server technology to host it.

Several states that were also said to be in the running for the new Microsoft data center facility were said to be sad to hear that they had been passed over. Several rumors suggest that Microsoft is still considering an east coast location in the U.S. for another such facility, but no timetable has been suggested as to when they will make this decision to move forward with a selection of site for another data center facility.

Last modified on 22 August 2008
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