Apple reportedly looking to double size of Oregon data center
Although Apple's Prineville, Ore., data center is still being built, the company is reportedly looking to purchase more land at a nearby location that will purportedly be home to a second structure of equal size.
According to a report from The Oregonian, Apple is considering a 96-acre plot near Prineville to serve as a twin extension to its 338,000-square-foot data center that is currently under construction. To put that into perspective, Apple's server building will be 65 percent larger than the biggest Costco outlet.
Crook County assistant planning director Phil Stenbeck told the publication that an industrial user named "Project Pillar" has expressed interest in the land. The official refused to identify the company behind the apparent alias, but The Oregonian claims it is "plainly Apple."
For one, the property, which Crook County is trying to bring within city limits for industrial zoning, holds the same tax exemptions as Apple's current Prineville land.
It was reported in April that Apple will pay some $150,000 each year to the governments of Prineville and Crook County in return for a 15-year property tax exemption. Attached to the arrangement is a promise that the data center will be staffed by 35 people, some of whom will receive wages up to 150 percent higher than the regional average.
Further, Stenbeck said Project Pillar was once called Maverick, a code name Apple used when it purchased the first Prineville plot, which is believed to support Apple's growing iCloud services.
Officials said they had no guesses as to Pillar's timetable for acquiring and developing the land. If the company behind the curtain is indeed Apple, the vacuum of solid information will likely remain firmly in place, as is standard operating procedure for the Cupertino tech giant.
According to a report from The Oregonian, Apple is considering a 96-acre plot near Prineville to serve as a twin extension to its 338,000-square-foot data center that is currently under construction. To put that into perspective, Apple's server building will be 65 percent larger than the biggest Costco outlet.
Crook County assistant planning director Phil Stenbeck told the publication that an industrial user named "Project Pillar" has expressed interest in the land. The official refused to identify the company behind the apparent alias, but The Oregonian claims it is "plainly Apple."
For one, the property, which Crook County is trying to bring within city limits for industrial zoning, holds the same tax exemptions as Apple's current Prineville land.
It was reported in April that Apple will pay some $150,000 each year to the governments of Prineville and Crook County in return for a 15-year property tax exemption. Attached to the arrangement is a promise that the data center will be staffed by 35 people, some of whom will receive wages up to 150 percent higher than the regional average.
Further, Stenbeck said Project Pillar was once called Maverick, a code name Apple used when it purchased the first Prineville plot, which is believed to support Apple's growing iCloud services.
Officials said they had no guesses as to Pillar's timetable for acquiring and developing the land. If the company behind the curtain is indeed Apple, the vacuum of solid information will likely remain firmly in place, as is standard operating procedure for the Cupertino tech giant.
Comments
What content and services require such a huge footprint from a hardware company?
people looking at the 5s and thinking all the money is made at the HW end%u2026 my guess is by the end of the decade, online services will eclipse iPhone profits.
Apple should focus on making P2P file transfers for large files like iOS 7's ipsw available instead of creating more storage farms. Even if they grow the capacity, they'll still run out of bandwidth and this would fix people's issues with downloads that fail because the end users connection could fail and no relapse would be there to pick it up on Apple's side, so It's best if they make every file they release for OS X and iOS to be P2P Based when users devices are in sleep mode.
But… that’s not sleep, then.
Crazy amount of space. Hard to fathom that many servers, that much storage. That much cyberspace.
It does look like a lot of space out there, of course, but if it just to house servers why not stick a second floor on the existing data center? Just musing. Rhetorical question. I know this really isn't the right forum to ask these kinds of questions.
It does look like a lot of space out there, of course, but if it just to house servers why not stick a second floor on the existing data center? Just musing. Rhetorical question. I know this really isn't the right forum to ask these kinds of questions.
Reasons of structural, cooling, and wiring impossibilities.
Yeah, you can pick up the cooling hardware on the roof, and yeah, you can rewire what was once ceiling into floor, but that’s crazy expensive. And even if you do it and want to build that second story, the entire existing structure would have had to be built to support it initially or you’re looking at near the same price of building a new one to reinforce it.
…
Right, structural engineers? We have a few of those here, yeah?
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"Why build one when you can have two at twice the price?"
--S.R. Hadden, on Mir.
Reasons of structural, cooling, and wiring impossibilities.
Yeah, you can pick up the cooling hardware on the roof, and yeah, you can rewire what was once ceiling into floor, but that’s crazy expensive. And even if you do it and want to build that second story, the entire existing structure would have had to be built to support it initially or you’re looking at near the same price of building a new one to reinforce it.
…
Right, structural engineers? We have a few of those here, yeah?
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I'm electrical but I agree with TS. That many servers and cooling equipment would weigh quite a bit and to double everything by adding a floor is probably not cost effective. The earth is the best structural member.
Akamai started doing that, about 6 years ago
No, it means your dictations time out twice as fast ¡