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Top 10 Data Center Stories of 2011 (Continued)

We continue with our look at the Top 10 Data Center Stories of 2011, ranked by reader interest.

6. Facebook's Oregon Data Center

The server room at the new Facebook data center in Prinevlle, Oregon, featuring a hot aisle containment system. (Photo credit: Alan Brandt)

Video: Inside Facebook's Server Room: In April we got an early look inside Facebook's Prineville, Oregon data center. Facebook Director of Datacenter Engineering Jay Park provided a tour of the facility, which we shared with out readers in two videos - the first providing a look inside the data halls housing thousands of server, and the second detailing Facebook's innovative penthouse cooling system.

7. Cloud Data Center Outages in Dublin

The exterior of the Microsoft data center in Dublin, Ireland.

Dublin Data Center Outage for Amazon, Microsoft: A local utility outage in Dublin, Ireland caused power failures at two major cloud computing data hubs for Amazon and Microsoft. The incident caused downtime for many sites using Amazon’s EC2 cloud computing platform, as well as users of Microsoft’s BPOS (Business Productivity Online Suite).

8. Microsoft's "Tractor Shed" Facility in Quincy

An air-handling unit is lowered onto the top of an IT-PAC container, which is already pre-populated with servers, at the new Microsoft data center in Quincy, Washington.

Microsoft's New Quincy Cloud Farm: In January Microsoft competed construction on its new modular "cloud farm" data center in Quincy, Washington. The design of the next-generation facility is driven by Microsoft’s use of data center containers that come packed with up to 2,000 servers. These containers, known as IT-PACs (for pre-assembled components) can be deployed faster and cheaper than traditional raised floor data center space. The modular design helped Microsoft complete the initial deployment in Quincy in just eight months. We brought our readers an early look at the modular technology being deployed in Quincy.

9. Inside Amazon's Data Centers

A look at the Amazon Perdix container, included in a presentation at Amazon Technology Day.

A Look Inside Amazon's Data Centers: Amazon Web Services doesn’t usually say much about the data centers powering its cloud computing platform. But in June the company held a technology open house in Seattle, where AWS Distinguished Engineer James Hamilton discussed the company’s infrastructure. The presentation described a modular data center design used by Amazon, which was the first official acknowledgement that the company uses modular infrastructure.

10. Microsoft's Custom Servers & Racks

Microsoft Reveals its Specialty Servers, Racks: As it seeks to slash power usage across its global cloud computing platform, Microsoft has been refining its designs for energy-efficient data center hardware. In April, DCK readers got an early look at these concept designs, which feature customized servers, a high-efficiency power distribution system and in-rack UPS units.

How do this year's top stories compare to last year's? Read Best of 2010: Our Most Popular Stories and see.