Microsoft's data center in Quincy, Washington kicked off a data center building boom in central Washington, and is hailed as a key advance in the company's move to energy efficient megascale computing. The facility's infrastructure includes a lot of big numbers, which the company reviewed at a recent for data center architects. The Microsoft Quincy data center includes:
- 1.5 tons of batteries
- 3 miles of chiller piping
- 300 miles of electrical conduit
- 600 miles of electrical wire
- 1 million square feet of drywall
- 13.5 megawatts of renewable hydro power (first phase only)
The first building at the Quincy site (which may ultimately include three huge data centers) took 252 man-years to build, according to Microsoft, which completed the project in 11 months and had as many as 500 workers on site at a time. That compares to about 158 staff years for Yahoo's Quincy data center.