Facebook has been ever expanding with a huge user base. Currently with more than 850 million users, the social network naturally requires more data centers to cater to the huge traffic activity. Facebook has been working on a new data center in North Carolina and now, it has been reported that data center is finally functional.
The project started back in 2010. The immensity of the project can be gauged from the fact that it required a total of 1.2 million hours of labor from 2,000 workers to complete. The center completed just now and Facebook is already serving the social network’s traffic through the facility.
The interesting thing about this data center is that it is situated in the rather warm climates of North Carolina. In a way, this is an experiment by Facebook in which it is using Open Compute Project’s outdoor-air cooling designs, which are definitely required to keep things cool in the rather humid and high temperatures of the region.
The facility also makes use of v2 Open Compute Project web servers utilizing Intel’s Sandy Bridge processors. This is the first major deployment of the said system and can act as a litmus test for its effectiveness on a large scale.
Also, this is the not the last data center of its kind. Facebook is also working on a second data center building in the same region which is expected to become functional by some time later this year.
[ttjad]
