For HackerNoon, Bruce Li gives readers a detailed look into the systems of the Internet Archive, the San Francisco-based nonprofit tasked with preserving the digital history of human civilization. Li traces the evolution of its physical infrastructure as the web has become increasingly dynamic. Despite its legal and financial hurdles, the Internet Archive is “a technological behemoth, operating at a scale that rivals Silicon Valley giants, yet it is housed in a church and run by librarians,” writes Li. “It is a fragile institution . . . yet it is also the most robust memory bank humanity has ever built.”
One of the most ingenious features of the Archive’s infrastructure is its thermal management system. Data centers are notoriously energy-intensive, often spending as much electricity on cooling (HVAC) as they do on computing. The Internet Archive, operating on a non-profit budget, could not afford such waste.
The solution was geography and physics. The Archive’s primary data center is located in the Richmond District of San Francisco, a neighborhood known for its perpetual fog and cool maritime climate. The building utilizes this ambient air for cooling. There is no traditional air conditioning in the PetaBox machine rooms. Instead, the servers are designed to run at slightly higher operational temperatures, and the excess heat generated by the spinning disks is captured and recirculated to heat the building during the damp San Francisco winters.
More picks on the internet’s physical footprint
Say Goodbye to the Undersea Cable That Made the Global Internet Possible
“History was unmade last year, as engineers began the massive project of ripping the first-ever transoceanic fiber-optic cable from the ocean floor. Just don’t mention sharks.”
Memory Machines
“Data centers have proliferated across Ireland, at great cost.”
The Cloud Under the Sea
“The Ocean Link was one of a small number of ships that maintain the subsea cables that carry 99 percent of the world’s data.”
