Facebook has stated they intend to set up a new data center in Clonee, Ireland, its sixth in the world and only second in Europe. The social media company already operates a data center in Lulea, Sweden, which started operating in 2013.
Facebook though has stated they will be complying with the same environment-friendly norms as its Lulea facility that runs entirely on wind energy. Such is the zeal to be 100% dependent on renewable energy that the chilly Nordic air is used to cool the data center instead of conventional air-conditioning systems.
A similar setup will be in place at Clonee too though there will be special filters in place to remove the extra salt that hangs heavy in the air around Clonee.
Construction at the new site begins soon and will be ready for operations by end 2017 or early 2018. Data centers are known to be extremely energy sapping and require an elaborate cooling mechanism to ensure the hardware components continue to function at their optimum best.
“Clonee will be packed full of cutting-edge technology, making it one of the most advanced, efficient, and sustainable data centers in the world,” said Facebook’s VP Tom Furlong.
All the hardware and software that will go into the making of the new data center will be sourced from Facebook’s own Open Compute Project. The site is just about 10 miles away from its UK and Ireland headquarters in Dublin that has been in operation since 2009. The new facility has the potential to create around 2,000 new jobs.
”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,” Tom Furlong further revealed as part of the announcement.
Facebook is already committed to power, at least, half of its operations worldwide by green energy sources. The company has also announced its other data center at Forth Worth, Texas too will be built entirely around renewable energy sources. Towards that, some 200MW of wind energy will be added to the Texas electricity grid as part of the deal for setting up the data center in the state.
With the facility in Ireland, Facebook will be joining other companies such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft that have based at least a proportion of their European data centers in the country. Apple might be conspicuously missing from the list. However, that is set to change soon with one of their two proposed data center in Europe set to come up in Athenry, County Galway, Ireland.
