Comments by "" (@ronjon7942) on "The Big Data Center Water Problem" video.

  1. Yep. The only thing that will make less thirsty data centers is less demand. Not happening. Demand for compute will only increase, probably forever.
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  2. The youngsters gotta leep track of the cardashipusses
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  3. Back in the day, our hospital moved to a new data center, and when we were 100% operational, we lost a chiller followed by the backup (a rag stuck somewhere?? and evidently failover wasn’t tested? Anyway…). It got really hot, and really humid, really quick. It was at the end of the day, so fortunately a lot of us sysadminsmwere still there, shutting down hundreds of vms, the hardware, disk storage…etc, all in an effort to keep our AIX Epic EMR servers/storage up. The AIX was a giant p690 and the storage was a full rack of spinning disk - with two of them for redundancy (in the same freakin’ room!! We lost that battle, but got them geographically dispersed later.). When the air temp hit 120deg, I was cleared to shut them down but then the chiller came back online. The point: we were losing disk all over the place, often at the start but gradually back to normal after over a year. Oh, yeah, this happened in Wisconsin in the late fall. Not like we had windows to prop up some box fans, but still ironic a bit.
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  4. If it helps, they do use recycled water thats not to human consumption standards. But…there are a LOT of courses in AZ.
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  5. Tax breaks, geologically stable, lots of electricity (nuclear plant), a HUGE pool of tech talent - although not much needed for a remote dc, admittedly, and I think recycled water is a thing, as we’ve a boatload of golf courses and a bazillion backyard swimming pools. Plus, AZ has a surprising amount of farming. I was stunned to see an enormous orange grove on the way to Saguaro Lake, east of Tempe/Phoenix, to go tubing, of all things. Water management is a major (and touchy) issue here. This is only my opinion (as in, I have NO idea), but even though we want as many tech companies to come here, I’d be pretty stunned any politicians would ruin their careers if a data center just dumped its waste water down a dry creek bed.
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  6. Tax breaks, geologically stable, lots of electricity (nuclear plant), a HUGE pool of tech talent - although not much needed for a remote dc, admittedly, and I think recycled water is a thing, as we’ve a boatload of golf courses and a bazillion backyard swimming pools. Plus, AZ has a surprising amount of farming. I was stunned to see an enormous orange grove on the way to Saguaro Lake, east of Tempe/Phoenix, to go tubing, of all things. Another advantage is the climate is fairly consistent throughout the year, and humidity is really low. Data center specialists may prefer the consistency there vs, say, Wisconsin, with large temperature fluctuations from summer to winter and really high humidity - although the Great Lakes might be an asset. Water management is a major (and touchy) issue here. This is only my opinion (as in, I have NO idea), but even though we want as many tech companies to come here, I’d be pretty stunned any politicians would ruin their careers if a data center just dumped its waste water down a dry creek bed.
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  7. Oh ya, I just replied to a comment about this very thing when our dc lost BOTH of its condenser units. Drives failed in our strg systems for well over a year, til things finally stabilized.
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  8. How deep are we talking? Doesn’t the temperature underground actually increase, or is this for much deeper depths?
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  9.  @czerskip Explain?
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  10. Heh, just you wait until AI thinks the same thing about us.
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  11. Tons of earthquakes and volcanoes in Iceland, too. But yeah, you make excellent points, especially with the Great Lakes scenario. I wonder if data center consultants prefer a more steady state climate throughout the year, though, like Arizona, as opposed to a place like Wisconsin, with wild swings of temp and humidity during the same time frame.
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