I’ve seen the cloud…it lives in Dublin

I’m in sunny Dublin today (yep, it’s sunny here) for the grand opening of Microsoft’s first “mega datacenter” outside of the US. What you may ask is a mega datacenter? Well basically it’s an enormous facility from we’ll deliver our cloud services to customers in Europe and beyond.

I had the chance to check the place out last month and have a full tour and it’s incredible. Okay there isn’t much to see but that’s sort of the point. It’s this big information factory that is on a scale that you’ll not see in many other places in the world and run with an astonishing level of attention to detail.

It’s also quite revolutionary and turns out to be our most efficient data center thus far. Efficiency is measured by something called PUE that essentially looks at how much power your use vs the power you consume. The ultimate PUE of course is 1.0 though the industry average is from 2-2.4. Microsoft’s data centers on average run at 1.6 PUE but this facility takes that down to 1.25 through use of some smart technology called “air”. Most datacenters rely on chillers and a lot of water to keep the facility cool – because of the climate in Dublin, we can use fine, fresh, Irish air to do the job which has significant benefits from an environmental point of view. Put simply, it saves 18 million litres of water each month.

I’ve spent some time today talking to press about this place and I left them with the title line – I’ve seen the cloud and it lives in Dublin.