Dive Brief:
- This week, Facebook announced it will build a new data center in Ireland.
- Several U.S. tech companies have recently announced plans to build new data centers in diffferent parts of the U.K., hoping to “improve service and reduce the need to transfer data to the U.S.” in response to the U.K.’s increasingly stringent data privacy laws, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
- Tom Furlong, vice president for site operations at Facebook, said the company also plans to make the new data center highly energy efficient using Open Compute technology and renewable energy.
Dive Insight:
The growing popularity of cloud computing means Internet companies have had to build an increasing number of large, energy-intensive data centers. Data centers are one of the largest and fastest growing consumers of electricity in the United States, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Its second in Europe, Facebook will locate the new data center in Clonee, just outside Dublin. Facebook previously announced the creation of three other clean and renewable enrgy-powered data centers in the U.S. and Sweden, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Facebook said its new Irish datacenter will focus on energy efficiency, including Open Compute Project server and storage hardware, which was designed to improve performance while reducing power needs. The Open Compute Project is an “industry coalition of companies that share blueprints for redesigning servers, racks, storage equipment and networking components to be ultra-efficient,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
Amazon recently announced new datacenters in Ohio and North Carolina that will be powered completely by renewable energy. Amazon has a goal of 100% renewable energy use. Facebook said it hopes to power 50% of its infrastructure worldwide with clean and renewable energy by the end of 2018.
