Facebook Opens Its Green Data Center to Scrutiny

Facebook (News - Alert) plans to come clean – er, green – about its new energy-efficient data center, wrote the BBC news. The company's much discussed data center in Prineville, Ore., long a topic for conversation in the green tech arena and sometimes a target for environmental group Greenpeace, will open itself up for greater scrutiny so others wishing to go green with their data centers can learn a few things and in turn help save electricity across the country.

The data center, which is estimated to use about 38 percent less electricity than a standard data center of comparable size, is Facebook's first custom-built facility and was reported to cost about $188 million to build. Working under the title Open Compute Project, Facebook will release specifications and mechanical drawings of the building and its servers.

“It's time to stop treating data centers like Fight Club [do not talk about them],” said Jonathan Heiliger, Facebook's vice president of technical operations. His comments are likely to be interpreted as a dig at other Internet firms, such as Google (News - Alert), Twitter and Amazon, which have kept their own data center designs secret, says the BBC.

The Prineville facility, among other green tech innovations, makes extensive use of outside air to cool servers naturally, lowering the need for artificial air conditioning, one factor that makes standard data centers so energy-intensive to run.

“The best way to reduce CO2 and improve the environment is to cut energy consumption and that is what we are doing,” said Heiliger. Facebook has also stripped out nonessential parts, paint, logos and stickers, which the company says saves more than six pounds of materials per server.

Greenpeace has called Facebook out for the data center in the past, saying the company skipped the most important element of a green data center: locating it in a geographic region that generates a significant portion of electricity from renewable sources. The issue set off a spat between Facebook and Greenpeace that continues intermittently to this day.