Facebook Data Center

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Facebook Data Center
Elizabeth Miles

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Elizabeth Miles

Sep 21, 2015

Here's where Facebook keeps everything you ever posted on this social network.

If you login to Facebook from your phone for just 30 seconds, your activity on it will be recorded on over 1000 servers. All that was ever posted on this social network remains stored in huge centers for data storage. Since 2011, Facebook opened data centers in Oregon, Iowa, North Carolina and Sweden. In July, Facebook began construction of the fifth such center in Texas.

They store data, while from the outside they look like huge warehouses. Servers emit blue light, and when you find yourself among them, you feel like you're in a science fiction movie.

Facebook has a unique design of server and energy sources, including uninterruptible sources of power which maintain the servers even when the main generator is turned off. In these centers all facilities are hierarchically associated with each other.

Facebook aims at efficiency, and the smallest detail matters. However,"effective" does not mean "less" when it comes to Facebook.

The first center ever made, which is located in Oregon, has 1,528 kilometers of cables. Although you might think it is an incredible amount of power required to maintain, Facebook improves its centers to be economical and to consume less power, and therefore ro reduce costs.

Because of the way the servers are connected, workers can easily identify, remove and repair all components.

What is perhaps the most important is to prevent overheating of servers. In Swedish center, air is drawn from outside and then processed in order to cool the thousands of servers. The cold air passes through a number of filters and sprinklers which further help in lowering the temperature and humidity in server rooms.

However, a special way of combining air temperature to maintain the temperature of the server is needed. Therefore, there is an entire floor above center which is used for temperature control.

So the next time you go to Facebook, imagine how your data is traveling toward these servers and centers, where they are being stored forever.

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