If the New York Times story about Microsoft's Quincy, Washington, data center is real, you know now why I gave up voting years ago.
The New York Times ran a rather dubious story on Sunday concerning the power consumption of data centers that has left many tech journalists shaking their heads in disbelief, mostly because it was so damn inaccurate.
The story depicts data center operators as irresponsible power wasters and callous polluters, emphasizing the low utilization of the thousands of deployed servers in larger data centers.
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Which would be a great story if it was 2005. As it is, the Times opens with an anecdote from Facebook’s data center from back in 2006. The IT industry has charged forward with all due expedience to improve data center efficiency. They obsess over getting their PUE rating down as much as possible with each new data center.
One of the stories told is simply incredible if true, and I preface that by saying the story is out of date but not necessarily wrong. It involves a data center built by Microsoft smack in the middle of a farmland town called Quincy in central Washington. The company bought 75 acres in 2006 to build a data center that would utilize the hydroelectric power available in the area.
Hydro is widely used in the Pacific Northwest, which is why Microsoft, Google and Facebook all have data centers there. There’s lots of land and lots of cheap, reusable cooling, all in a cooler environment.
But the Times tells a baffling story. Microsoft was facing a $210,000 penalty to the local power utility for underestimating its power use. So, faced with a use-it-or-lose-it contract, Microsoft proceeded to simply waste millions of watts of electricity to cut down the fine, according to the Times. The company burned up 5.5 megawatts of power in one month just to cut down the fine.
The mind just boggles. When Microsoft came in under the projected need for power, the utility should have thanked them and cut their allocation for the next period going forward. I really can’t fathom the logic of a penalty. Someone explain it, please.
Wait until they start telling your doctor how to do business.
(Ok, I’m done)
Quincy is experiencing some growing pains from having five massive data centers dropped on the quiet farm town in just a few years. So I can see this being a bit of a challenge. But the sheer lack of common sense on display from the Grant County Public Utility District, which owns the hydro dams Microsoft used for power, amazes me.
In this case, the villain isn’t Microsoft, unless you want to be hard line about it and say yes, it should have taken the full penalty hit. Microsoft is making quite an effort to go green.
To me, that Microsoft was actually given this option shows the utter stupidity of government and the total lack of sense. You have to fault local government for a) presenting Microsoft with such a ludicrous out, and b) letting them use it.
Years ago I came to the conclusion that government employs the castoffs and throwaways from private industry. Nothing I’ve seen since has convinced me otherwise.
