not really sure its a wise choice to disclose datacenters anymore publicly. Just increases attack vector and not very value adding to people. most customers care about latency and as long as you can point to a region where you are its enough
not really sure its a wise choice to disclose datacenters anymore publicly. Just increases attack vector and not very value adding to people. most customers care about latency and as long as you can point to a region where you are its enough
Surely anyone with an interest could find this through various means.
Also easily found potential military targets: power generation, water treatment, hospitals, schools, government buildings, etc.
Is it actually possible to hide the locations of datacenters? At least large ones?
Yes. They are not trivial to distinguish from other large industrial buildings. If you know a building is one, you still don't know whose.
It's local public knowledge. The buildings are registered with the county they're in and pay taxes. In the US at least, that's public info.
Odds of data centers being physically attacked at scale are low. Most of the population doesn't care enough, and the vocal minority is under a lot of scrutiny.
Except from the massive power hookup, all the cooling equipment, and the emergency generators, of course.
You can hide a handful of racks for some boring 2000s hosting. You can't hide a GW-scale AI behemoth.
You could hide them in a mine.. like Lefdal.
Finding a datacenter from aerial or space photos isn't hard if you know how to identify a heat exchanger or huge generator. Both of which are very distinctive. Then limit that search set to certain sizes of big rectangular buildings. And ones with relatively low counts of passenger cars parked during mid day times.
Yeah - they should force mapping services to blur the data center - and just the data center - on their satellite imagery. That will make it impossible for people to find them.
Lol
Kinda hard to hide them when you choose to build them in people’s backyards and ask them for a local tax break. The Meta ones near me are very visible.
There's also probably 100k people at Google who can see where all their data centers are, and it just takes one to tell someone else
Correct. The internal maps are quite thorough and detailed. At least they were.
> not really sure its a wise choice to disclose datacenters anymore publicly.
Transparency is good.
Think they're referring to the recent drone/datacenter velocity exchanges in Ukraine, Russia, and the Middle East.
Those countries are actively engaged in wars.
If the US ends up in a similar asymmetric warfare scenario, the location of corporate data centers being known is low on the priority list. Google is assuming a peacetime footing where public transparency and accountability matter.
> Those countries are actively engaged in wars
So is the US.
The United States does not currently have any military actions occurring on its home soil.
Right, but that's not what you said.
Correct. I assumed context would make it clear that "engaged in wars" here would mean "with consequences including direct attacks in US continental territory," which hasn't happened since World War II (or 2001, depending on how one identifies a "war").
The US is actively engaged in more wars than any other country in history. The only reason it hasn't got all its DCs drone struck is because they're so far away from the front lines.
Correct, I should have been more clear. The United States does not have attacks occurring on its home soil.