Internet search giant Google has opened a new, cool data centre in Hamina, Finland. The site used to be a paper mill, but in 2009, Google purchased the 60-year-old pulp factory with a mind to construct a data centre that would significantly reduce its impact on the environment. Data centre servers are usually kept cool by blasting cold air at them, an inefficient process that requires vast amounts of power. Last year Google is reported to have used 2.26 terawatt hours of electricity, the same amount of electricity that would be used by 200,000 average American homes.
At the Hamina data centre, Google has used a renewable resource at the heart of its cooling system — seawater. There was existing seawater intake tunnel underneath the paper mill, and it was repurposed to provide cooling to massive banks of servers. The new water-to-water exchange system pumps in frigid water from the Gulf of Finland through the intake, and it travels through a myriad of pipes in the data centre to cool the components. That water is then piped to another building, where it is mixed with an incoming stream of sea water, so it is cooled before it is returned to the Gulf of Finland.
This new power-efficient data centre cost €200 million to build. Take a quick look into the inner workings.
[via Wall Street Journal]