Luckily, the social media platform didn’t see any noticeable disruptions. But according to an internal memo obtained by CNN on September 12, if another data center had gone out at the same time, then many Twitter users would’ve experienced service blackouts. During this period, many companies turned off their high-power computers to prevent heat damage, according to New Scientist. To keep services running, some facilities operators have resorted to manually hosing down equipment to cool it down, Bloomberg explained. Data centers are buildings filled with powerful computers that can run a wide range of services. It’s where data from applications, databases, and more gets processed, stored, and distributed. It also has infrastructure needed for networking, power, and cooling the indoor environment. These facilities run their devices off electricity from the same grid that supplies nearby homes and businesses. Because large data centers process loads of requests, they use a lot of computing power and generate a lot of heat. So, to prevent servers from frying, many facilities have a dispersed water-based cooling system that takes up extra energy. When it’s hotter outside, these systems have to work much harder, further straining the demand on the grid. To get around the cooling issue, some companies have been building new data centers in cold-weather countries like Finland, Sweden and Iceland. Microsoft has even contemplated placing their facilities in the ocean (that project is currently still in the research phase). But the challenge there is that the computers will be located farther away from their users, slowing down the speed of certain services. Data centers have always had issues with sustainability. They’ve been criticized for their ravenous energy consumption and rampant water use. Now, with mass temperature fluctuations and increasing natural disasters brought on by climate change, many of these problems have become more pronounced. Drought-prone communities have pushed back against development of new data centers in places like California and Arizona. Energy prices and soaring temperatures will only continue to make daily operations difficult for Twitter and other corporations.
