Facebook Building 'Cold Storage' Data Centers for Old Photos

All those photos that you posted to Facebook a few years back are fun to revisit every now and then, right? But chances are you probably don't look at them every day.

With more than 240 billion user photos taking up space on Facebook's servers, and another 350 million uploaded every day, the social network is now taking action to more efficiently store and manage photos that aren't in heavy rotation. According to a report from The Oregonian, Facebook is gearing up to launch three new "cold storage" data centers in Prineville, Ore. to store these older and rarely viewed images.

Unlike its traditional "hot servers," which are always on and ready to deliver data, the servers at these cold storage facilities will be asleep, awaiting a request for old material. There are a number of benefits to this approach. For starters, the cold-storage data centers will cost a third less than a standard data center.

Plus, while the facility itself will be smaller than a live data center, each rack of servers has eight times more storage, and is five times more energy efficient. Facebook already has two massive data centers in Prineville, which together used 71 million kilowatts of power in nine months ? equivalent to the consumption of roughly 6,000 homes.

It will, however, take a bit longer than normal to access these older photos. But Facebook said most users won't notice the delay. ?

"The principle will be so that it doesn't impact the user experience ? so think about a matter of seconds, or milliseconds," Michael Kirkland, a Facebook communication manager, told The Oregonian.

Facebook is aiming to have the first of three facilities operational by fall. Each of the 16,000 square-foot data centers will be able to hold an Exabyte of data, or about one million PC hard drives.

Source: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2415772,00.asp?kc=PCRSS05079TX1K0000993

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