Facebook yesterday announced its plans to build a custom data center in Prineville, Oregon—a first for the popular social networking company that began its humble operations in a Harvard dorm room. In order to meet the demands of a growing user population that has reached more than 350 million users worldwide the new data center will provide enough computing and storage capacity to handle both current and future operations.
“Along with making sure Facebook operates quickly for you, we wanted to minimize the environmental impact of our new facility and its energy costs,” wrote Jonathan Heiliger, Vice President of Technical Operations at Facebook.
The new data center will use several energy-efficient technologies, including an evaporative cooling system, airside economizer and a proprietary uninterruptible power supply (UPS) technology to provide power to servers. The new UPS technology will reduce electricity usage by as much as 12 percent.