Facebook has opened a new data centre in Lulea, a coastal town Sweden near the Arctic Circle, joining Google and other firms to set up data centres in chilly temperatures.
Said to be one of the largest of its kind in Europe, the new 323,000ft2 data centre is the first to use only servers designed by Facebook itself.
Lulea was selected for new data centre due to its renewable energy resources, with the equipment within the facility being powered by locally produced hydro-electric energy.
Facebook said in a statement that the data centre is now handling live traffic from users around the world.
"All the equipment inside is powered by locally generated hydro-electric energy," the company said.
"Not only is it 100 percent renewable, but the supply is also so reliable that we have been able to reduce the number of backup generators required at the site by more than 70%.
"In addition to harnessing the power of water, we are using the chilly Nordic air to cool the thousands of servers that store your photos, videos, comments, and Likes."
The server technology implemented within the facility forms part of Facebook’s two-year-old Open Compute Project, involving the creation on specifications for servers by the social networking firm and sharing them globally for anyone to use.
Facebook’s Open Compute Project has also developed and launched designs for server racks, storage systems, motherboards, and interconnects.
In May 2013, Facebook revealed its plans to release a design for a top-of-rack switch that can run any type of networking software, offering businesses a substitute to Cisco and the other network vendors.
