Japan seeks to decentralize datacenters

Japan's government has secured expressions of interest from over 100 regional centers willing to host new datacenters, as part of an effort to make the nation's computing infrastructure more resilient. As pointed out in a January EOI, over 60 percent of Japan's datacenters can be found in or near Tokyo – a city that …

[Korev]

It's interesting that Japan is trying hard to make its infrastructure more resilient by having more datacentres whilst the rest of the industry seems determined to put as much as possible into a few datacentres operated by AWS, Azure etc. We've already seen how when one of the big Cloud vendors has a problem the problems are quickly seen throughout the globe...

[deadlockvictim]

Mindset

There is in Japan the belief, not without justification, that proximity to power is power.

The idea that important infrastructure would be placed away from the centre requires one to think differently, a trait not encouraged in Japan. The nail that sticks up gets hammered down.

Two thoughts that came to mind though:

1. Japan is frequently hit by earthquakes. If a substantial chunk of the data-centres are hit by a massive earthquake, then there is a lot of damage done to vital infrastructure in one go and this will be catastrophic;

If the datacentres are geographically dispersed then there is a greater chance that one data-centre will be taken down. Is there enough resilience in the other data-centres to cope with one or two going down.

2. Data-centres require large bandwidth. With any luck, the Japanese countryside will receive nice, new shiny fibre cables and improve the connectivity of those living in the furusato.

[eldakka]

China plans a massive migration of urban datacenters to its western regions, where land and renewable energy are plentiful and cheap.

Funny what happens to land prices when you round-up all the traditional owners and either lock them up in concentration camps or shift them off to the eastern cities as indentured labour, eh?

[albaleo]

"Another 24 percent of Japan's datacenters can be found in the Kansai region, near the cities of Nagoya and Kyoto."

Nagoya is in the Chubu region. Osaka, Kobe and Kyoto are the big cities in Kansai.

[NeilPost]

U.K. should do the same

U.K. should do the same.

How much is crammed into (eye-wateringly) expensive Dockands. As reported by El Reg with Telehouse spaffing £1/4bn *just refurbing* to a DC a former Thomson Reuters building for their 5th Datacentre in London Docklands.

USA is the same with a disproportionate nimbler crammed into WV.

[TimMaher]

Re: U.K. should do the same

But... but... that might involve building them in “The North” and possibly “The West”. Which might involve some sort of levelling up. Surely not?

[TeeCee]

Risk.

Also worth mentioning that, in a recent survey, eight out of ten kaiju (that expressed a preference) said that they'd attack Tokyo.