Russia, The Final Frontier For Data Centers?

http://gigaom.com/2008/07/27/russia-data-centers/

by crocus • 18 years ago

12 23 18 years ago

bprater• 18 years ago

How does latency affect users in other countries? Worth worrying about?

ruslan• 18 years ago

It's a wide-spread myth that the weather is cold in Siberia. I do live in Tyumen (West Siberia) and it's +32C here now. So, you cannot save on aircooling.

The two more myths are, that wild bears are all leaning around over here and one can drill oil right in his backyard.

There are no problems with BW, as for the past 8 years Transtelecom and Rostelecom -- both nationwide telcos, deployed a number of transcontinental fiber cables all along the TransSib (the rail-road connecting farthest east and west points of Russia). On both ends they are peering to EU and to Japan/China/Korea.

The average ping from Tyumen to my servers co-located in Mountain View is 180-200ms and the most part of it constitutes by european backbones.

tx3• 18 years ago

200ms is very slow. I wouldn't put my business on anything slower than 100ms, I manage servers at three different US data centers and ping is within 50..70ms range for all of them, including cheap slicehost.

henning2• 18 years ago

If my understanding of the commercial malware industry is accurate, operating a data center in Russia would be great, until you're muscled into being a spam operation by local organized crime.

osipov4• 18 years ago

wow...that's not even wrong

DenisM5• 18 years ago

That's only until black bears break in and steal all your vodka supply, therefore neutralizing your sysadmins.

Dude, seriously. Russia is not Somalia or wild west.

henning2• 18 years ago

No, it isn't. It's just a place where if you're a spam kingpin and you anger the wrong people, you'll get whacked.

Congratulations to everyone disagreeing with me by downmodding. Stay classy.

Alex3917• 18 years ago

I still don't understand why more data centers don't just use lake source cooling. With a relatively modest upfront investment these companies could reduce the amount of electricity they use for cooling by 90%.

asdflkj2• 18 years ago

Probably because energy used for cooling is only a fraction of total energy used, so other considerations take precedence.

DanielBMarkham2• 18 years ago

Would you really drop several hundred million in investment in a country that just decided to nationalize all of its oil industry? A country with a history of nationalizing things so that the rich plutocrats keep geting richer?

Maybe Microsoft, but not me.

osipov4• 18 years ago

>just decided to nationalize all of its oil industry

that's false. do you by any chance get your news from the Anglophone media?

tx3• 18 years ago

His nick implies, at least statistically speaking, that he lives in a informational isolation and has no access to news, unless he knows more than one language [and uses it].

For English speakers the only source of information about international affairs, IMO, is books: Internet and TV are useless. For Daniel I'd recommend "Bad Money" by Kevin Phillips.

asdflkj2• 18 years ago

In this case, it would be a pretty safe bet. The oil industry was owned by even more sinister plutocrats before it was "nationalized" by the current ones. The reason you're hearing so much more about this now is that the current plutocrats are more into long-term strategy and less into dumping their stolen wealth and retiring in London as soon as possible. This is bad for certain Western interests, hence the "Putin is the Devil" stories you see in every other issue of The Economist.

In fact, investing in Russia paid off well for many Western companies, and the Russian government never got in the way (beyond its natural tendency to get in the way due to widespread petty corruption).

DenisM5• 18 years ago

Well if you don't want to get into details that's a fine position to take. However if you always follow the crowd and never get into details yourself you will never win anything. There are nuances to Russian situation and if you figure them out while others don't you may have an advantage in certain areas. So here come nuances:

Energy industry is insanely profitable and was devoured by Putin's government. Telecom industry is also insanely profitable and was left alone. Why so?

For one, energy was originally privatized with violations (aka stolen) from the government in the 90s, whereas telecoms have mostly grown by themselves. Putin has actually offered oligarchs truce - they keep the money but return the companies back. Some agreed and live very well (Abramovich), others disagreed and are now in exile (Berezovski) or jail (Khodorkovski). Putin can be blamed for nailing them on taxes instead of original theft, but hardly anyone blames US for doing the same to Al Capone, right?

Second difference lies in nature of energy industry itself. Energy is a weapon as Putin has demonstrated us in his treatment of neighboring states. Telecom is not. So, don't hoard Putin's favorite weapon.

Then there are advantages to building DCs in Russia:

1) Energy is cheap there. At some point they actually brought aluminum ore from Africa to process in Russia and shipped it back, because energy was so cheap. Why is it cheap? Because of subsidies. EU is (was?) going nuts over it, but I don't think Putin budged. Energy subsidies are kind of important in cold climates.

2) Talent is plentiful.

3) Europe, China and Japan are close by

4) Real estate is cheap in the areas where you would typically build a DC compared to Europe or Japan.

ardit33• 18 years ago

You forgot to add, "Where the competitions is routinely "eliminated" by skilled snipers, or radiated posion". Wasn't last year that a profilic Forbes' editor got killed in Russia?

DenisM5• 18 years ago

That's nothing. Last time a president got uppity in America he got killed, too. His name was JFK. No one is safe here, you see. THEY are out to get poor little hackers, big time, so run for you life. Make sure your HN account does not point anywhere they can find you.

Or maybe start calculating risks instead. Either one will do.

Russia, The Final Frontier For Data Centers?

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