Apple's Oregon data center to rival size of N.C. iCloud installation
A new fiing with the city of Prineville, Ore., reveals Apple is planning to build a large, two-building data center on the 160 acres of land it purchased in February, comparable in size to the main building at the company's Maiden, N.C., facilty.
The plans, discovered by The Bend Bulletin on Wednesday, call for two large buildings that house so-called "data halls," with the structures covering over 500,000 square feet of space, reports the Associated Press.
While Apple's plans don't nail down a specific start date for construction, a previous statement from the company said the undertaking is projected to generate "hundreds of construction jobs to the area."
The Prineville data center's exact purpose remains unclear, but Apple has already broken ground with a 10,000-square-foot building expected to house a number of servers. When offices, loading docks and parking lots are completed, the project is expected to spread across 107 acres. In contrast, the company's Maiden data plant's solar farm alone takes up about 100 acres of land.
As part of the plan, Apple has agreed to help boost the capacity of the city's water system, and work is underway to tap a newly-found underground stream for that purpose.
"We will be converting those to production wells, with Apple's help, and we will reimburse them over time," said Prineville City Manager Steve Forrester. "It will give them the water they need, and it gives us ... more capacity than they are consuming. It strengthens our core system."
Facebook's Prineville, Ore., data center is said to be minutes away from Apple's new facility. | Source: Facebook
It was reported in April that Apple will pay the Prineville city and Crook County governments $150,000 a year in return for a 15-year property tax exemption. The Cupertino-based company will keep a minimum staff of 35 at the center who will be paid wages up to 150 percent higher than the Crook County average. Currently, the county is facing a 12.8 percent rate of unemployment.
In comparison to the Prineville facility, Apple's $1 billion Maiden, N.C., data center holds the same square footage in one large structure, which is flanked by a smaller 21,000-square-foot "tactical data center," a biogas fuel cell array and a 100-acre solar farm. The huge Maiden facility is home to Apple's iCloud, the iTunes Store and Siri.
The plans, discovered by The Bend Bulletin on Wednesday, call for two large buildings that house so-called "data halls," with the structures covering over 500,000 square feet of space, reports the Associated Press.
While Apple's plans don't nail down a specific start date for construction, a previous statement from the company said the undertaking is projected to generate "hundreds of construction jobs to the area."
The Prineville data center's exact purpose remains unclear, but Apple has already broken ground with a 10,000-square-foot building expected to house a number of servers. When offices, loading docks and parking lots are completed, the project is expected to spread across 107 acres. In contrast, the company's Maiden data plant's solar farm alone takes up about 100 acres of land.
As part of the plan, Apple has agreed to help boost the capacity of the city's water system, and work is underway to tap a newly-found underground stream for that purpose.
"We will be converting those to production wells, with Apple's help, and we will reimburse them over time," said Prineville City Manager Steve Forrester. "It will give them the water they need, and it gives us ... more capacity than they are consuming. It strengthens our core system."
Facebook's Prineville, Ore., data center is said to be minutes away from Apple's new facility. | Source: Facebook
It was reported in April that Apple will pay the Prineville city and Crook County governments $150,000 a year in return for a 15-year property tax exemption. The Cupertino-based company will keep a minimum staff of 35 at the center who will be paid wages up to 150 percent higher than the Crook County average. Currently, the county is facing a 12.8 percent rate of unemployment.
In comparison to the Prineville facility, Apple's $1 billion Maiden, N.C., data center holds the same square footage in one large structure, which is flanked by a smaller 21,000-square-foot "tactical data center," a biogas fuel cell array and a 100-acre solar farm. The huge Maiden facility is home to Apple's iCloud, the iTunes Store and Siri.
Comments
I'm wondering what Apple plans in the future. This data centre plus the one in Reno will leave them with excess capacity for what their current user base requires.
Maybe it's to serve up streaming video for Apple TV? To offer iCloud users more space/services? To bring out their own version of Dropbox? Maybe to store all the map data?
Quote:
Originally Posted by AppleInsider
In comparison to the Prineville facility, Apple's $1 billion Maiden, N.C., data center holds the same square footage in one large structure, which is flanked by a smaller 21,000-square-foot "tactical data center," a biogas fuel cell array and a 100-acre solar farm. The huge Maiden facility is home to Apple's iCloud, the iTunes Store and Siri.
Watch the Fandroids try to spin this as something negative.
The fact is that when you buy an Apple product, you get the benefits of their data centers and their infrastructure. You get an ecosystem that is second to none.
So much for the "Apple Tax". Fact is, you get a lot of extra value.
More space at less expensive conditions would be most welcome. IMHO
I tend to agree, considering I just read that Apple applied/received patents for a cable box. Don't really know the validity of that. Prinville is only 1-2 hours from me. I may just take a drive down to view when I can.
It would be in Apple's best business interests to have multiple data installations so a catastrophic failure at one location wouldn't halt daily operations. This is pretty standard practice for mission-critical applications for military organizations, governments, large corporations, etc.
The NC data center itself is probably a mirror of an existing data installation, but with ample room to grow, just like the OR project.
My guess is that Apple is reaching capacity at some existing data centers, and possibly having some challenges in having several data centers with various disparate databases. Moving to larger facilities probably eliminates much of the logistical difficulty (and cost) of maintaining an entire database pieced together from multiple locations.
How soon until Apple buys a satellite so that it can maintain good communications between its different data centers? It's inevitable, especially if they get into the TV marketplace.
Apple likely has a dark fiber network to connect their various data facilities. A private dark fiber network can be easily upgraded to the latest network technologies.
A satellite in orbit? Not so much.
I wonder why the media makes such a big thing about Apple's data centers. From the talk I've heard, Google's Microsoft's and Amazon's data centers are much larger and more capable than anything Apple has. I've heard that those companies cloud services are much better than Apple's so I guess Apple needs to catch up. Apple has far more money than any of those other companies, so Apple had better do some serious spending on data centers before it gets totally outclassed. I can understand Microsoft having an edge in cloud storage because it's been around for such a long time, but I guess Apple let Google and Amazon sneak past them. Apple should well be able to afford the biggest and the best data centers.
Andrew Blum in his book Tubes has a good discussion of why Prineville