Iceland Data Center Market

Just a quick post about an interesting documentary video on the Iceland Data Center Market (link from the Green Data Center blog). I know there have been many skeptics about this area being good for data centers, but they certainly have a lot of things coming together recently that make a case for them.

Iceland - A Green Data Center Hub -- Maybe!

Maybe I spoke too soon in my last post about Iceland. I ran across a few things that might counter some of the arguments made against the country. First, there is news that the economic / banking crisis in Iceland is being resolved. This may take a while, but it at least looks like they will come out of the crisis favorably.

Second -- there are some new stories I've found that may dispell any negatives about connectivity to Iceland. Capacity magazine reports that "subsea cable operator E-Farice has said that the final leg of its Danice cable system is underway." When complete some early next year, it will provide the country with a huge volume of additional capacity and full redundancy.

"The Danice system will comprise a four-fiber pair link between Iceland and Denmark, with initial capacity of 100Gb and full potential capacity of 5.1Tb. Using DWDM, the system will support the transmission of 128 10Gb wavelengths on each pair.

This press release from Tyco Telecommunications explains the venture as well. Some other Iceland-related things I ran across include this article from Mary Jander at Internet Evolution and the Data Centers in Iceland page at Invest in Iceland Agency.

ABC News also has a nice article on Iceland -- Iceland's Path to a Green Future

Iceland - A Green Data Center Hub?

We've heard the stories in recent months about activities in Iceland and the potential for locating data centers there. The geothermal resources and cold climate make it attractive for a power-hungry data center. The 2008 Icelandic Financial crisis may have some of those big companies that were "looking", thinking twice.

An article at Greentech Media is what had me thinking about Iceland again. The CEO of EYP made some comments about Iceland at a recent round table with reporters. According to the CIA World Factbook, Iceland is slightly smaller than Kentucky, has a population similar to Pitsburgh, and lists natural hazards of earthquakes and volcanic activity. The most interesting part of the article was these two lines:

"So in the future, large companies could roll them from center to center around the world and take advantage of low nightime electricity rates. Some HP customers and HP itself is already examining ways of shifting computing loads with the clock"

Not rocket science in terms of the concept, but it does reinforce the #1 site selection factor of cheap power, and #2, renewable energy possibilites in the area. I think in the end Iceland will loose out to Ireland as far as a European hub for data centers. Who knows though...... maybe Microsoft, Cisco, Google or others will build a cheap skeleton of a facility in Iceland where they could deploy containers quickly/easily -- and then pull them out just as easy to another location if economic problems in the country persisted.