Google raised a few eyebrows when it purchased a Finnish paper mill back in 2009 — what, the world, wondered, would the king of cloud services want with reams of tree guts? Space for a data center, of course — and a seawater-cooled one at that. Google’s Joe Kava told GigaOm that, when it launches in the fall, the center’s temperature will be regulated by a quarter-mile of seawater tunnels inherited from the building’s past tenants. One of the hardest parts of getting the system up and running has apparently been figuring out a way to clean corrosion from salt water without taking the system offline. Google’s also working to limit the center’s impact on the surrounding ecosystem, making sure that the water itself is cooled down before being pumped back out. Between this and those wind-powered data centers, it looks like Captain Planet’s always got a cushy IT gig at Google to fall back on, should he ever fall on hard times.
Google opening seawater-cooled data center, finally glad it applied for that Wave trademark (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 May 2011 19:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
