Rare Photos Take Us Inside Facebook’s Futuristic Arctic Data Center

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Back in 2013, Facebook opened its first data center outside the United States. Located in Luleå, Sweden, the 900,000-square-foot complex — about the size of 11 football fields — looks like something out of a science fiction film. New photos now offer a rare look inside.

“[The data center is] a key part of our global infrastructure, and it uses a variety of local natural resources to increase efficiency and save power,” says Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who shared the photos on his page yesterday.

The subarctic environment allows the data center to have minimal cooling expenses while running on stable, low-cost electricity that’s 100% obtained from renewable resources (12 hydro-electric plants at nearby rivers). Employees sometimes commute to the building while braving temperatures as low as -30°C (-22°F).

The exterior of the building is futuristic, with wood and art of the area accenting the otherwise minimalist architecture.

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Giant fans draw frigid air from outside into the data center to cool the tens of thousands of servers. When temperatures are -30°C outside, the heat from the servers also help to warm up the building a bit for employees.

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“I love this shot because it looks like a sci-fi movie,” Zuckerberg writes.

150 work in the data center, but the giant halls are often completely empty. Only 1 technician is needed for ever 25,000 servers at the location, and they zip around in the spaces using scooters due to the distances they need to cover.

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The servers are minimalist as well, running just the basics so they’re cooler and more efficient. While repairing a server required an hour a few years ago, that time has been reduced to just 2 minutes in this data center. Everything is clean and extremely organized.

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Servers found in the data center never leave the secure site. Once a server is old and obsolete, they’re physically destroyed so that user data remains private.

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