Comments on: The ultimate geek road trip: North Carolina’s mega data center cluster

By: Perez123

Perez123 — Sat, 29 Sep 2012 20:48:19 +0000

Its great news hearing that Facebook has built a massive data center in my county.New companies like Horsehead,Valley Fine Foods are coming to this area because of the exposure of lands a huge popular company.Lets just hope that more jobs will come to places like Rutherford county.

By: Lenoir citizen

Lenoir citizen — Sun, 16 Sep 2012 19:02:28 +0000

I have lived in Lenoir NC all of my life, with the exception of the time I spent in college. Growing up here was like living the middle class dream, everyone had jobs, and everyone had the money to live a decent and good life. The furniture factories outsourced all of the jobs over the past decruinous area was left in economic ruin.

I was in high school when google was talking about coming here. They had people from the local community college give grand talks at our school saying how google was coming and that anyone who wanted a job there could take a class at the college and get one. Everyone was optimistic about the supposed tons of jobs it would bring, especially after a decade of hard times and lost jobs, and our politicians gave them an arm and a leg. They received massive tax breaks, and our property taxes were raised 22.4 percent. I just don’t see how that can be received as a good idea, when everyone I know is already struggling.

Well, the deal goes through and all the promises turn out to be lacking of truth. With the exception of a few local hires for staff and maintenance, and temporary construction, very few benefits have been seen. I’m aware of the benefits of the few people that were relocated here putting money into our economy, but they are minimal at best considering the massive concessions made to get the data center here. There was actually a lawsuit from a group in Lenoir against google concerning the lack of jobs provided, but I can no longer find that link on google, the case was dismissed. And to the concern about the area taking up land needed for agriculture, the data center was built on the outskirts of town where old factories were.

By: Long

Long — Sat, 15 Sep 2012 14:50:11 +0000

I wonder if Apple used American made solar panels or imported them from China?

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 15:20:38 +0000

As an admittedly biased fan of nuclear power, I disagree with you lumping coal and nuclear together as “unclean” power. Coal is dirty, but nuclear is extremely clean — no carbon, no pollutants into the environment.

By: Paul Michniak

Paul Michniak — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 17:03:12 +0000

We also house Cisco, EMC, Network Appliance and IBM in the RTP area, just to name a few…

By: Paul Michniak

Paul Michniak — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 17:01:40 +0000

Sandeep – the Facebook DC is within 200 yards of Hwy 74 and is MASSIVE!!!

By: Paul Michniak

Paul Michniak — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 16:59:52 +0000

Hi jeremy – valid questions for sure. One thing that is unique about the area is that a) the textile industry has been severely (and I mean, life support if at all) damaged and b) tobacco is no longer grown as the big cash crop as it once was. So any industry, particularly big names, are welcomed by local folks. Unlike some areas, NC is very pro business of any kind. Katie is correct in saying that the municipalities have prepared the sites in hopes of landing a good tenant. This includes power, water and sewer. From what I understand, those counties have an abundance of all those resources. It would be nice to add some Engineering to those towns. Western North Carolina would be a great place for creative software and hardware engineers to live, work and play. Cheers! datamichniak@twitter

By: Everett Thompson

Everett Thompson — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 04:17:35 +0000

No. Carolina is getting a lot of attention. It makes sense for a variety of reasons, including the economic base there…Charlotte is the second largest financial hub in the US. Outside of NC and Oregon, Colorado and specifically Colorado Springs is another large DC market – Walmart is building a 40 MW site there, following other firms such as HP, FedEx, Progressive Insurance, Agilent Technologies and others. The Spings is also recognized by the Federal Gov’t as an urban renewal area, entitling sites recognized in the census to Federal incentives, in addition to the typical state and municipal incentives of Oregon and NC.

By: Lewis Lightner

Lewis Lightner — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 18:48:12 +0000

A data center in itself is not a mother load in terms of ROI and adding to a local economy. However the high-tech ecosystem created by these sites has proven to be a driving incentive to court data center construction in North Carolina. Support companies want to locate in close proximity to their customers. The data center is the dangling carrot to lure these smaller companies that add to the ROI and economic growth of the area. So the focus isn’t necessarily on the data center itself but rather on the bigger picture of building the complete ecosystem.

By: Sandeep Kamat

Sandeep Kamat — Sat, 14 Jul 2012 15:08:42 +0000

Great Article.
Always wondered what these datacenters for google, facebook, apple etc looked like.
I am surprised by the small number of employees needed to run the Datacenter operations. Just 60 to 67 for a 24X7 operation ?. I think they must only be the employees needed to do the physical on-site work for the datacenters. for e.g replace a failed server or hard disk do the physical cabling etc .
Most of the other operational staff (which could be large)required to monitor, system admin, trouble shoot etc must be remote even offshore maybe ?