On Monday September 20th Yahoo opened a brand new data centre in Lockport, New York state. Its location was especially chosen to further the companies goal of creating the most environmentally friendly facility of its kind possible.

Nicknamed the "Yahoo Computing Coop", the facility is designed with the decidely low tech techniques of a chicken coop in mind. The data centre is made up of a series of buildings emulating the shape and style of a chickens run, allowing the buildings and their often burning to the touch contents to be cooled by the naturally chilling air flow of the region.

In addition, it is planned for all power for the facility to be provided by nearby hydroelectric plants.

Most interestingly in the facilities PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) rating. This rating expresses what ratio of power going into the facility is actually used on running the computer infrastructure, rather than cooling it. The Yahoo chicken coop scores 1.08, compared to a US average of 1.92, indicating that almost all of the power used by the facility goes towards running the machines themselves.

The official Yahoo! press release is available here.

+ Back to blog home

Posted in: General, Inspiration, What's New