Quote from: grnbrg on June 02, 2014, 03:16:25 AM

Quote from: mOomOo on June 02, 2014, 12:19:11 AM

Is it just me... or was anyone else expecting to see a "data center" when looking at these pics? All I see is someone's spare room or even living room? It doesn't really bother me too much as providing it doesn't burn down it will still produce the same hash output... But, calling it a data center makes it seem like it is in a building designed for computers with racks, secure access (theft resistance?), fire suppressant systems, proper power backups, resilient internet connections, all humidity and climate controlled... you get the idea.
To me it just looks like a decent setup in someone's house, flat or apartment. (I like the giant fans behind each wire rack!, were they turned on? Or just there in case of air-con failure?)

The locations are pretty nondescript from the outside -- industrial(ish) strip mall spaces. A "real" datacentre (with "a building designed for computers with racks, secure access (theft resistance?), fire suppressant systems, proper power backups, resilient internet connections, all humidity and climate controlled) would run in the millions and take a lot of time to build. You can rent space from established operators, but the power requirements for mining are absurd when compared to general server operations. Operating in rented rack space in an established DC host would likely (and I'm pulling a number out of my arse, here) increase monthly costs by a factor of 10.

I didn't post the pictures I took of the AC units (and I only have pictures of the interior blowers, as I didn't take exterior pictures for obvious reasons) because they're even more boring than the hardware pictures. But there is significant cooling that was added to each of the two locations. And there was a *lot* of Bitfury hardware, although it may be hard to judge. There is also an out-of-state DC that I didn't get to see that has a lot of the newer hardware.

So, for my part, not really too surprised.
grnbrg.

I wasn't expecting Labrat to build a data center... And as I said, as long as it works it makes no difference to me. But the fact that it had been called a "datacantre" made the picture in my head significantly different to what the photo's showed and I obviously made the wrong assumption he was renting rack space.
(Perhaps my idea of a data center is different to others, so as a brief explanation I am an IT consultant that deals with small to medium businesses from around 10 to 600 PC's. This has allowed me to work in a number of small and large data centers and numerous small business server rooms. Small business server rooms can range from downright crappy to quite elaborate, however all data centers I have worked in have at least visually looked quite similar with rows of server racks and the above mentioned fit outs.)