Business News

Facebook to open sustainable data centre in Clonee

By Business & Finance
25 January 2016
facebook Franco Bouly

Ireland has been Facebook’s international headquarters since 2009 and it has been announced that Clonee in Co. Meath will be the site for the company’s newest data centre.

The data centre is Facebook’s first in Ireland and the facility will become part of the infrastructure that enables billions of Facebook users to communicate on the social media site.

The new centre will be one of the most advanced, efficient and sustainable data centres in the world.

All the racks, servers, and other components have been designed and built from scratch as part of the Open Compute Project, an industry-wide coalition of companies dedicated to creating energy and cost-efficient infrastructure solutions and sharing them as open source.

It will be powered by 100% renewable energy, which will assist in Facebook’s goal of powering 50% of its infrastructure with clean and renewable energy by the end of 2018.

In a statement, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote: ‘Clonee Data Centre will be one of the most advanced and energy efficient data centres in the world. It will feature the latest server, storage and network designs developed through the Open Compute Project, and will be powered by 100% renewable energy.’

He continued: ‘One interesting engineering detail is that we’re cooling the facility with outdoor air, but because this is near the Irish Sea we’ll be using an indirect air cooling process to filter the salt from the air. We’re glad to be investing in Ireland, to become a part of the Clonee community, and to continue building the massive infrastructure that connects our global community.’

Photo: Franco Bouly