Microsoft copies Yahoo!’s chicken coop with tractor shed.

The following blog post is written by Kevin Timmons, ex-Yahoo data center executive.

When Phase 1 opens in Quincy it will be located adjacent to our existing 500,000-square-foot facility.  However, the new datacenter is radically different.  The building will actually resemble slightly more modern versions of the tractor sheds I spent so much time around during my childhood in rural Illinois. 

Tractor shed in my home town of Mt. Pulaski, IL

The building’s utilitarian appearance belies its many hidden innovations. The structure is virtually transparent to ambient outdoor conditions, allowing us to essentially place our servers and storage outside in the cool air while still protecting it from the elements. The interior layout is specifically designed to allow us to further innovate in the ways that we deploy equipment in future phases of the project. And, like any good barn, the protective shell serves to keep out critters and tumbleweeds. Additional phases have been planned for the Quincy site and will be built based on demand.  Those phases will incorporate even more cutting-edge methods to deploy servers and storage in ways that have never been seen before in the industry. 

Scott Noteboom, VP of Yahoo data centers worked for Kevin Timmons and has been pitching the Yahoo Chicken Coop.

Yahoo is Ready for A Data Center Revolution

June 9th, 2010 : Rich Miller

Scott Noteboom of Yahoo during his keynote presentation Wednesday at the 7×24 Exchange conference in Boca Raton, Fla.

Scott Noteboom , the head of data center operations at Yahoo, sees 2010 as a moment of historic opportunity for the data center industry. As growing Internet adoption requires infrastructure everywhere, he says data center builders would do well to note the early history of the automobile industry.

The Yahoo Computing Coop
The end result was the new Yahoo data center in Lockport, N.Y., a suburb of Buffalo. Lockport features the first  implementation of the Yahoo Computing Coop (YCC), which operates with no chillers, and will require water for only a handful of days each year. The YCC units are prefabricated metal structures measuring about 120 feet long by 60 feet wide. Each of the three coops has louvers built into the side  to allow cool air to enter the computing area, allowing the entire building to function as an air handler.

If you are interested in the approach’s the Yahoo! gang approach you can go to Megawatt Consulting’s KC Mares.  KC worked for Kevin along with Scott and has been busy designing green data centers for others.

KC has provided data center operations and acquisition services to Google, as well energy and renewable energy options. KC led data center strategy, procuring all data center services and developing several large data centers while leading the charge to reduce energy consumption and costs, achieve carbon neutrality goals and develop large wind and solar projects.

KC MaresKC Mares - MegaWatt Consulting Founder

The Data Center industry is a small world, and people are moving between companies faster than ever.  We’ll see who makes the big career moves in 2011.