Seen few data centers: - biggerst cages are about 500 servers, may be you can pack 1,000 servers; - ok, how many cagses in the medium size building? I''d say, 100 - 200 (may be less). So, 1 building can handle 50,000 - 100,000 servers. A very big building, I guess, can handle 450,000. But what for? You can put it al together, but how you deliver input data and ship output data from 450,000 servers? ----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Loftis" <mloftis@wgops.com> To: "Alex Rubenstein" <alex@nac.net>; <nanog@merit.edu> Sent: Friday, June 16, 2006 3:32 PM Subject: Re: WSJ: Big tech firms seeking power
--On June 16, 2006 5:24:27 PM -0400 Alex Rubenstein <alex@nac.net> wrote:
But wait, there is more. Just a point of comparison -- Oyster Creek Nuclear Power generation plant, located here on the Jersey Shore, produces 636 megawatts. You'd take one-tenth of that capacity -- in a bulding that would sit on a 10 or 20 acre chunk of land. I put this into the 'unlikely' category. The substation alone to handle stepping 68 mwatts from transmission to 480v would be probably 4 acres. And, 68 megawatts of power at 480 volts 81,888 amps. A typicall 200,000 sq-ft multi-tenant office building has 1600 amps of service; this would be the equivalent of 50 buildings.
Having fun yet?
I happen to know that a very large power line project was just finished in that area :) (I have family that works for the company that did the job). It's a huge amount of power that's for sure. I'm not sure what the exact route was, nor the endpoint right now, but when I did ask him at the time it didn't make sense....Now it might. I'll talk to him again.