Week Seven

Rick brought us to Phoenix NAP; a data center containing hundreds of servers from multimillion dollar companies such as COX kept safe by high-level security systems and ex-military personal. Thanks to Mike Berry for being our tour guide throughout the morning. The cables that powered each server were suspended along the ceiling. Each server along a row were aligned in order to keep the heat to one side, letting the ceiling vent it out while cool air was blasted from the bottom. They of course had a generator to power the whole set up, but in order to keep the servers from shutting down, they had another to back it up. If that fails and somehow all forms of electricity were shut down, a 24 hour fuel generator quickly turns on. All the servers contain information that are valuable to each individual company, if the servers shut down, money is potentially lost. The best thing about Arizona for data centers is that fact that natural disasters rarely happen here. Sure the cooling price might be steep, but that cost is a whole lot better than losing millions all because of nature.