Facebook data centers said to be 100% powered by renewable energy
In a Jan. 24 blog post, Facebook announced it will build its second European data center in the small town of Clonee, County Meath, in Ireland.
VP of infrastructure Tom Furlong said the new project builds on Facebook’s European presence, which already includes a data center in Lulea, Sweden. In the U.S., Facebook operates data centers in Oregon and North Carolina and leases space in several other Silicon Valley-area facilities, according to Data Center Knowledge.
“The facility will become part of the infrastructure that enables billions of people to connect with the people and things they care about on Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and more,” Furlong wrote.
Facebook has had its international operation headquartered in Ireland since 2009; Furlong said the new build “will continue Facebook’s significant investment in the country and in Europe.”
“Clonee will be packed full of cutting-edge technology, making it one of the most advanced, efficient and sustainable data centers in the world,” Furlong explained. “All the racks, servers and other components have been designed and built from scratch as part of the Open Compute Project, an industry-wide coalition of companies dedicated to creating energy- and cost-efficient infrastructure solutions and sharing them as open source.”
Facebook is seen as a leader in the white box hardware movement, which is a major trend in data center space. The company uses – and contributes to – open source specifications, which allow for deployment of customized, purpose-built hardware that’s designed to be less expensive than off-the-rack solutions from equipment vendors.
As for renewable energy, Ireland has robust investment in wind energy, which Furlong said would provide power to the new data center. “This will help us reach our goal of powering 50% of our infrastructure with clean and renewable energy by the end of 2018.”
