In 2012, American homes consumed 3.65 billion kilowatthours (kWh) worth of electricity—up from 720 million kWh in 1950—more than double per household than our British counterparts, and second only to China. How did the American home become such an energy hog, despite so many advances in efficient appliances and construction? Blame the American Dream.
Data backups come in all shapes and sizes. For some, they take the form of external hard drives or a slice of the amorphous cloud. As for Facebook, its upcoming solution is low-power deep-storage hardware contained within a 62,000 square-foot building in Prineville, Oregon near its existing Beaver State data center. Unofficially referred to as “Sub-Zero,” the facility will store a copy of the social network’s data in case its primary servers need to be restored in an emergency. Rather than continuously power HDDs that are only occasionally used, the new setup can conserve energy by lighting-up drives just when they’re needed. One of the company’s existing server racks eats up around 4.5 kilowatts, while those at Sub-Zero are each expected to consume approximately 1.5 kilowatts once they’re up and running. Tom Furlong, Facebook’s vice president of site operations, told Wired that there are hopes to create a similar structure alongside the firm’s North Carolina data center. Since the Prineville project is still being planned, Zuckerberg & Co. have roughly six to nine months to suss out all the details before your photos are backed up at the new digs.
Filed under: Storage, Internet
Facebook to backup its servers with low-power storage devices at ‘Sub-Zero’ data center originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 18 Aug 2012 20:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
More Facebook news, but this time we’re back to the numbers instead of reporting on a new feature, improvement or integration. As part of its mission to swap the familiar blue for something of a greener tinge, Facebook released today its carbon footprint and overall energy usage figures for 2011. Turning bio-babble into easy visualizations, the company points out that for the whole year, an active user occupied roughly the same carbon footprint as one medium latte. Or, if you’re a fan of the tipple, a couple of glasses of wine. Impressively, 23 percent of the social giant’s energy usage came from clean and renewable sources, which puts it well on the way to its 2015 target of 25 percent or more. If you’d like more info and a complete breakdown of the stats, the full report is available at the source link below.
Filed under: Internet
Facebook releases its 2011 energy usage report, details your carbon footprint originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Aug 2012 20:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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