Facebook increases pace of Data Center build, adds 2nd building

Facebook has built a couple of buildings in Prineville and Forest City for west coast and east coast presence.  What has been surprising to some is length of time it takes Facebook to build these data centers.  The fast guys know how to get a data center finished in 12 month or less from project start. 

When Facebook announced its Altoona data centers there were a few us who were wondering if Facebook could finally achieve the 12 month build schedule.  The project was announced in Apr 2013.

Facebook is behind $1 billion data center project in Altoona, statehouse sources say

 

And 12 month later Facebook is almost done.

Almost finished with the first building. So let’s get started on another!

April 28, 2014 at 8:00am

A little more than a year ago, we announced that Altoona would be the home for our newest data center. Since then, more than 460 people, mostly from the central Iowa region, have worked every day on the project, logging more than 435,000 hours in the ongoing construction of the 476,000-square-foot building. We couldn’t be more pleased by the progress we’ve made, and we’re grateful for the kindness we’ve received from our friends and neighbors here in Altoona.

In this above announcement is where Facebook announced it is building a 2nd building which is similar so should be able to built in 12 months.  The one thing that is different beside the designs of the data centers is the contractor who is named in this post.

As we begin construction of Altoona 2, watch our Altoona Data Center page for updates. If you’re interested in working on the Altoona 2 construction project, please contact our general contractor, Turner Construction through their Facebook page or visit our Altoona Data Center page for updates. 



Construction and assembly work continues inside a data hall at Facebook's Altoona, Iowa, data center.

Construction and assembly work continues inside a data hall at Facebook's Altoona, Iowa, data center.

Inside an electrical room at the Facebook data center in Altoona.

Inside an electrical room at the Facebook data center in Altoona.

Facebook's Mobile-Only Users out number Desktop-Only

TechCrunch has a post highlighting the fact that Facebook’s Mobile-Only users out number Desktop-Only.  Now, when I build a service I try to go mobile-only, then think about how to support the Desktop users who are consumers.

The old world was desktops were for creating content, then mobile was for consuming.  For some services it has flipped.  Mobile is for content creation and desktop is for consuming the content created by a mobile user.

Facebook In The Age Of Mobile-Only

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Just 21% (268 million) of Facebook’s users access the service from desktop-only, and both that percentage and number are falling as Facebook grows, according to new stats fromFacebook’s Q1 2014 earnings report this week. Meanwhile Facebook’s mobile-only user countis now at 341 million, or 26.7% of its total userbase, and those figures are quickly climbing.

What this means is that if a Facebook feature doesn’t exist on mobile, it’s becoming less and less relevant.

144,593 People Like Zuckerberg's Call to Obama to stop being a Threat to the Internet

Mark Zuckerberg has a post with 144,593 likes after 6 hours on Facebook.

I've called President Obama to express my frustration over the damage the government is creating for all of our future. Unfortunately, it seems like it will take a very long time for true full reform.

So it's up to us -- all of us -- to build the internet we want. Together, we can build a space that is greater and a more important part of the world than anything we have today, but is also safe and secure. I'm committed to seeing this happen, and you can count on Facebook to do our part.

 
Like ·  · 6 hours ago via Paper · 

Wonder what would happen if you could wind back time to 3 years ago when President Obama sat next to Zuckerberge at a Silicon Valley dinner.  Can you imagine what Zuckerberg would say to Obama now?

A White House official described the meeting as "part of our ongoing dialogue with the business community on how we can work together to win the future, strengthen our economy, support entrepreneurship, increasing our exports, and get the American people back to work," noting prior to the event, "The President and the business leaders will discuss our shared goal of promoting American innovation, and discuss his commitment to new investments in research and development, education and clean energy."

See the photos below, followed by the guest list.


Image credit: Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

Facebook figures out the way to bring down Data Center Cost is Lean

The idea of Lean started in Manufacturing and has spread through construction.  Now Facebook has chosen to build its 7th data center with Lean Construction techniques.

Faster, Leaner, Smarter, Better Data Centers

Friday, March 07, 2014 · Posted by  at 1:30 AM

Four years ago, Facebook broke ground on its first greenfield data center project in Prineville, Oregon. In the years since, we’ve deployed six iterations of that design, culminating in the first building currently under construction at our new campus in Altoona, Iowa. With facilities around the world, we constantly challenge ourselves to improve our data center designs to maximize efficiency, reduce material use, and speed up build times.

At this year’s Open Compute Summit, we previewed what we believe will be a step change in those ongoing efficiency efforts: a new “rapid deployment data center” (RDDC) concept that takes modular and lean construction principles and applies them at the scale of a Facebook data center.

We expect this new approach to data center design will enable us to construct and deploy new capacity twice as fast as our previous approach. We also believe it will prove to be much more site-agnostic and will greatly reduce the amount of material used in the construction. And with today’s exciting news from my colleague Joel Kjellgren, we will get to test these theses: Our newly announced second building at our Luleå, Sweden, campus will be the first Facebook data center to be built to our RDDC design.

If you want to watch a video that shows the presentation you can go to this one. http://youtu.be/yu8jin33G64?t=21m50s

I found this information thanks to GigaOm’s Derrick Harris who was at the Open Compute Summit.

The first method Facebook is employing, called the “chassis approach,” is actually more similar to an automobile assembly line, where the chassis is built separately and then built upon from there. In Facebook’s case, the chassis is a 12-foot by 40-foot unit that will sit above rows of racks and house lighting, cable trays, and everything else that typically goes above a row of servers. Facebook data center engineer Marco Magarelli wrote in the blog post detailing the new methods that the company chose the chassis approach over standard containers “to avoid shipping the empty space that will eventually be occupied by the racks.”

How a chassis is built and delivered. Source: Facebook

How a chassis is built and delivered. Source: Facebook

Sample instructions for putting together the pieces in the flat pack. Source: Facebook

Sample instructions for putting together the pieces in the flat pack. Source: Facebook