#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. International cloud provider RUVDS, as part of a program to test server equipment in extreme conditions, installed a data processing center (DPC) on a drifting ice floe in the Arctic.
The equipment is installed in the Barneo ice camp and will operate throughout its existence for a month. The data center’s main task is to maintain communication between the company’s spacecraft and transmit current telemetry to it.
Camp Barneo is a comprehensive high-latitude Arctic expedition, annually organized by the expedition center of the Russian Geographical Society. This is also the name of the drifting ice camp – the base of the expedition in the immediate vicinity of the North Pole. The base is created every year for only a month and a half, most often in April with the polar day onset, when the sun has not yet melted the ice, there is no strong wind and the temperature is not lower than minus 30 degrees.
An ice airfield is being built at Barneo, which will accommodate regular An-74 flights, two Mi-8 helicopters, and install 12 heated residential modules, two wardrooms and several technical rooms. Until 2010, helicopters from the Norilsk Aviation Enterprise operated at Barneo.
According to RUVDS representatives, the experiment results can be used not only to improve the data center operation, but also to develop more efficient methods of working in extreme conditions.
A separate website will be launched to monitor the Arctic data center’s work, reports the Regions of Russia publication.
Two years earlier, they decided to build a data center in Norilsk on the site of the former nickel plant.
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Text: Denis Kozhevnikov, photo: Nikolay Shchipko
