NY Times Magazine Spotlights Data Centers

This Sunday's New York Times Magazine will include a feature article about the growing importance of data centers, which has been posted to the Times web site. "As data centers increasingly become the nerve centers of business and society — even the storehouses of our fleeting cultural memory (that dancing cockatoo on YouTube!) — the demand for bigger and better ones increases: there is a growing need to produce the most computing power per square foot at the lowest possible cost in energy and resources," writes Tom Vanderbilt. "All of which is bringing a new level of attention, and challenges, to a once rather hidden phenomenon."

The story quotes industry executives including Mike Manos (Microsoft/Digital Realty), Debra Chrapaty (Microsoft), Jonathan Heiliger (Facebook), Chris Crosby (Digital Realty Trust), Ken Brill (Uptime Institute), Bryan Doerr and Varghese Thomas (both of Savvis), Jonathan Koomey (Lawrence Berkeley Labs) and also some guy who writes a web site about data centers.

A nice touch: author Vanderbilt itemizes the web services he uses, and all the data centers in different places that are storing or managing the data he relies upon every day. There's also a slide show with photos from Microsoft's Quincy, Washington data center (including the clearly marked EPO button) and the Savvis data center in Weehawken.