Yahoo Planning a Large Data Center Improvement and Expansion

March 22nd, 2011

Yahoo is planning to invest around $500 million to further expand and improve their data centers and thereby shift their operations to a newer and much more efficient infrastructure. In addition to this, Yahoo is also in the process of creating a new data center design, which will be the blueprint for a series of cutting-edge facilities that they plan to build in the next two years. At these new facilities, most of the infrastructure will operate with minimal generator support and UPS.

As Scott Noteboom, the head of data center operations at Yahoo, said, “We are in essence rewiring the entire infrastructure of Yahoo,” and “We’ve gained approval to invest half a billion dollars to build new data centers. We’ll be migrating the entire footprint of Yahoo to these more efficient facilities.”

This is all part of Yahoo’s attempt to revamp their existing infrastructure, so as to reduce the cost of operating its data centers. For example, in 2010 Yahoo presented the Yahoo Computing Coop with its innovative design that uses factory-built components and which is cooled by fresh air and not by mechanical means.

Yahoo is currently in the process of constructing five data centers, which includes the expansions at their existing U.S. data centers in Buffalo, Omaha and Washington State, as well as the new facilities in Singapore and Avenches, Switzerland. The latter will be the first of Yahoo’s data centers to be improved, or retrofit, with the Yahoo Computing Coop design. In 2012 the company plans to launch a new phase of construction, which will be targeted towards improving their existing infrastructure. In addition to this, Yahoo also plans to launch around 20 so-called “edge pods,” which are actually small data centers able to store content closer to users. Currently Yahoo has 17 such edge pods that are primarily used to support caching and content delivery.

These new designs are the results of Yahoo having been exploring ways that would allow them to build data centers without generators or UPS, as well as use their network to route, or shift production to other data centers in the event of a power outage at an individual facility. To this end they have also come up with the so-called Flex Tier Data Factory designs. These will separate the data center into segments of differing reliability levels, with most of the infrastructure running on conditioned utility power. These are, according to Noteboom, Yahoo’s plans for data centers of the future.