Dell opens new data centre in Slough

The first tranche of Dell’s $1bn spending on cloud services will go to Slough in the UK, where the US computer giant is setting up a new data centre. The building – which will be packed with energy-efficient modular servers – should be operational by 2012, when it will start hosting data ranging from X-ray images to business …

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha ha!

Love a bit of John Betjeman, me!

[deains]

Bad idea

If RIM's Slough data centre is anything to go by.

[Anonymous Coward]

No it is not

Dell most likely pays the Slough prevailing rate for datacenter droids. No comment about RIM.

[Piro]

Oh no!

"Environmentally friendly cooling" - this surely means it pulls in outside air if it is cooler than the data centre.

Not a good idea when you live in Slough, home of the Slough stench. You can always tell when you're passing that magical place on the M4.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ambient Air

Ambient air cooling does not simply fan outside air through the data centre, it would be an empty building if it did, nobody would want to host there!

The air is filtered, passed through conditioner units to ensure the air is neither too warm or too cold and only then blown over millions of quid worth of server hardware. I've seen the back rooms, toured more DCs than I can remember... Any good data centre has some of the cleanest air you'll find, I've taken servers from a DC for scrapping that are as clean as a whistle on the inside. The air outside most DCs is polluted, sooty horrible city air - not what you want blown over you're shiny new servers (possible exception being rural sites in old military bunkers... like "The Bunker" in Kent).

[Piro]

Fair

You could use heat exchangers too..

It is a foul stench, though. Just passed it on the m4 and had to turn the fan off.

Yay, Slough!

[Anonymous Coward]

Exchangers...

The temperature gradient could at times be not that high, sounds like the physics would rule it out to me, but I might be wrong.

[John I'm only dancing]

Power surges

If they locate to anywhere on the Slough Trading Estate, they'd better get used to power surges. Power there comes from the ultra local private generating station on said Estate. Worked there for 5 years and saw a few computers, servers, and back up servers fried.

[Microphage]

Slough finally on the map

Wasn't `the Office' set in Slough?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0290978/

--

"Come, friendly bombs and fall on Slough/It isn't fit for humans now", John Betjeman

[GrahamT]

The Office

The Office was such a good ad for Slough that they have ripped down the bus station and roundabout that featured in the opening titles. They need to get rid of the Thames Valley University (AKA Slough Tech) building next.

However some enterprising resident has opened a bar/restaurant on the high street called "Wernham Hogg" so the office wasn't all bad news for Slough.

By the way, the smell is from the sewage works at the side of the M4. It was moved nearer Slough when they needed land for Heathrow expansion a few years back. Slough's bad luck, but not its fault.