Like, would a skyscraper-style datacenter be practical? Or is just a matter of big, flat buildings being cheaper?

  • foggy@lemmy.world
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    6 hours ago

    This is armchair nonsense.

    Slab reinforcement in skyscrapers can literally hold fucking skyscrapers.

    If you want to call this a limit, the limit is the expense. Not the weight. That’s absurd. We’re so far past that.

    • Shadow@lemmy.ca
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      2 hours ago

      I’ve deployed substantial quantities of gear in 9 datacenters across 4 countries in my career. I’ve gotten a panicked call from Bell Canada when they realized our deployment density in an older facility, then had to work with them to provide weights of all of our cabinets. Sure though, all armchair nonsense. What’s your background?

      30 seconds searching will back me up. https://www.digitalrealty.com/resources/articles/what-floor-loading-capacity-do-dlr-data-centers-have

      • foggy@lemmy.world
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        15 minutes ago

        I’m just going to repeat myself. Ildeploying a day center isn’t building one. If you’d architected a data center I’d give a fuck about what you’re saying

        Again:

        Slab reinforcement in skyscrapers can literally hold fucking skyscrapers.

        If you want to call this a limit, the limit is the expense. Not the weight. That’s absurd. We’re so far past that.

        This isn’t rocket science. No one cares about your profession, that’s an obnoxious childish thing to flex about over the internet and doesn’t give you the credibility you think it does.

        Sincerely: literate.

    • jj4211@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      But the reason for the expense is largely the weight.

      Yes we can at great expense support massive weights. But even in skyscrapers, you aren’t expecting to just cram every floor with equipment that weighs over a ton and supported by less than a square meter of floor.

      It’s not just armchair engineering, i work in the industry and commonly you have racks preferring the ground floor and weight restrictions going up and even marked paths that the racks need to stay on when on upper floors due to limitations of the reinforcements.

      Skyscrapers are largely impractical structures done for the sake of showing off, with any value based on keeping people close to each other. No one builds a skyscraper by itself miles from anything else. This is where they build the datacenters because they don’t need proximity.