DAILYHOSTNEWS, October 31, 2011 – Facebook intends to move towards the Arctic Circle to set up a large data center in Lulea Northern Sweden due to open in 2012.
Lulea is on the coast of northern Sweden in Norrbotten County, and it already has a strong IT presence with cabling and mobile phone companies and more than 2,000 employees in the tech industry situated there, along with Sweden’s icebreaker armada, ships that break up the glaciers to allow the town’s important trade route to remain open year round.
It is anticipated that it is setting up three server halls across 30,000sq m which will use free cooling, making the most of the cold climate at the Aurorum Science Park where it will be situated in northern Sweden.
A report by UK newspaper the Telegraph quoted Aurorum Science Park Chief Executive Mats Engman as saying the park’s running body hoped to turn it into a “Node Pole”, and that he hoped by attracting Facebook the park could also lure other tech giants. It enjoys a dense fiber-optic connectivity, much like the rest of Sweden.
On the Aurorum Science Park website the company said it hoped companies like Facebook and Apple would settle in the new technology park, in a region known for its cold climate, with averages around 2oC.
The data center itself is expected to use 120MW of power, much of which will be generated from a nearby river, also called Lulea, which Engman said can generate as much electricity as the Hoover Dam, leaving the door open for other data center developers considering the area.
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According to Facebook director of site operations Tom Furlong, the entire facility is expected to be complete by 2014, and Facebook has not ruled out the possibility of other sites in Europe.
About Facebook
Founded by Mark Zukerberg in February 2004, Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 500 million users .Website: www.facebook.com
