Unique Datacenters

ComputerWorld has an interesting article about building data centers within unique environments and the challenges they face in doing so. These include churches, places like the artic circle and within the mountain fortress that serves as the main technical facility for NORAD. There are some interesting notes about the types of problems one faces remodeling old churches and mines including, humidity, temperature and dust. Juan Jose Porta, chief architect for high-performance computing at IBM’s Boeblingen Labs in Germany who worked on Barcelona’s MareNostrum supercomputer mentions the following challenges.

There were dual challenges. First, the designers had to figure out how to control humidity, temperature and even dust. Second, the architects had to “integrate the new technology into an old building,” he says.