Currently, Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) has over 240 billion user photos. Unfortunately, only a small percentage of those photos are accessed on a regular basis. For the older and rarely used images, Facebook is building three new cold storage data centers specifically to keep these files. The new data centers will open in Prineville, Oregon and will open this upcoming fall.
Unlike some of the traditional storage options that are always powered on and ready to go, these data centers will be on standby. These new centers will have eight times the capacity than the traditional servers.
And since it uses one-third less energy than traditional server centers, it will provide a more eco-friendly alternative. The one downside to this change is that it will take a little bit longer to access less popular photos. Fresh photos will remain on the servers for awhile where they can be accessed faster. The good news is that the time change will be miniscule and users won’t really know a difference.
Michael Kirkland, Facebook’s communications manager, said, “The principle will be so that it doesn’t impact the user experience. So think about a matter of seconds, or milliseconds.”
Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB)’s decision to build new cold storage data centers prove the the company is thinking about the future. They want to plan for the future of their company, while utilizing energy-efficient technology.
This is some good news for the company since its recent bug issues. Facebook recently admitted that the company faced some bug issues when trying to speed up its data for iOS and Android.
Facebook accidently removed a significant amount of data for news feed posts by Pages, which in turn caused Pages Insight to show inaccurate reports. This had the administrators think that their reports reached a lower number of people than they did. Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) has since rolled out bug fixes.
