Is it time to move your data center out of the city? - by Doug Mohney

Views and Opinions on Green IT (Aug 24 2011)

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   If you have a medium-sized to large data center within a major metropolitan area, you really need to thinking about moving.  The 'burbs might sound nice, but looking for placement as far away from civilization as possible -- so long as you have a good network connection -- is more attractive every week.

   There are a number of factors making remote-lo (remote location) data centers the next big thing.

   Power is at the top of the list.  If you're running racks of servers, you're paying more per kilowatt in an city or urban area. Period. End of story.  But it's more than that.

   Within a major metro area, you're a big fish in a big pond.  Odds are, you're (physically) taxing the local power grid in some form and that can't be good for either your company (in electrical rates) or the local community (stress to the grid).  Facilities expansion may be capped because you can't get enough kilowatts at a downtown data center without spending a lot of money.   

   And then there's the whole infrastructure issue. If the local power grid is already near/at capacity, one sneeze or natural disaster mean you'll likely have to generate your own power -- adding more carbon, costing you capital.  So you're talking permits, real estate, construction costs, improvements to the power infrastructure all adding up to a multiplier because skilled labor in an urban market costs more and in an urban setting you might not have a big tract of land free for solar or a windmill.  

   Infrastructure improvements typically have to be shoehorned to fit existing buildings and spaces. If you have a data center occupying one or more floors in a high-rise building, I shouldn't have to explain this to you -- you feel the pain every time you need to pull cable between floors or have to buy "roof rights" to put up antennas.

   Heat waves are notorious for tripping power outages, as are other weather events.  In larger outages, priority for restoring power typically goes to residential customers rather than businesses.  Remember about being a big fish in a big pond?  Being big works against you when the water (power) level of the pond affects all the fish and the power company wants to keep the many little fish happy.

   As radical as it sounds, the local utility company may be willing to encourage and perhaps even assist medium and large-sized data centers to move out of the city and suburban areas.   From the utility's perspective, a data center is a constant power-sucking hole that can't be managed with smart meters or off-peak power pricing.   Being able to remove a data center from a dense urban area frees up capacity and creates relief on the grid.  Even if/when other businesses move into the space, it is less likely they will end up being 24x7 high-density power consumers on the scale as a typical data center.

   Some utilities are already willing to discuss covering/subsidizing the cost of energy-saving upgrades in order to reduce load.   It is only a matter of time before urban-based data centers start to get polite hints and incentives to relocate operations to more "grid friendly" locations.

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