Obama Administration Closing Recently Opened Datacenters 262
An anonymous reader writes "After quadrupling the number of government datacenters over his first three years, Obama's Administration is reversing course and closing the most recently opened datacenters. With one datacenter reportedly the size of three football fields, my question is what happens to all those recently purchased servers? Will the government hold a server fire sale? Count me in!"
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Fire! Ready? Aim.
FTFY
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The Government is off its meds.
Only that could account for the schizoid policy decisions.
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You have heard of the Republican party - right?
There's a reason they're off the meds - its cos the republicans have cut medicare
Strange, I thought GWB was the president who signed Medicare Part D into law. ;-)
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Of course what the Affordable Care Act cut in Medicare was the subsidies for Medicare Advantage plans that cost 10-20% more than just straight Medicare. In the future, after a phase out period, those people choosing Medicare Advantage won't be subsidized above what regular Medicare recipients receive.
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It's also Obama who signed the recent debt deal.
What's the point in voting for a Democrat when they're just going to do the exact same thing as a Republican? (Or maybe worse: when Bush was Pres, 6-year-olds didn't have to worry about being molested at airports.)
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There is a bit of a mandate at the moment to reduce government debt/growth. There's far too much dysfunctional, ideological infighting to do this effectively or efficiently.
Since we apparently can't reduce ANY spending to the military (a few less $1B planes?) or on a variety of wars, and our economy would collapse if we ended recent tax breaks on the rich, the money has to come from SOMEwhere. One of those places is IT spending. Another is NASA. Another is medical research grants. (And a variety of sci
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There is a bit of a mandate at the moment to reduce government debt/growth. There's far too much dysfunctional, ideological infighting to do this effectively or efficiently.
Since we apparently can't reduce ANY spending to the military (a few less $1B planes?) or on a variety of wars
Talk to Leon Panetta about that one.
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Wrong. $350 billion was just cut in the BCA, with about 600 billion more if other cuts are not agreed on by the deadline. Far too little, of course, but a start. An average of $35 billion a year is, indeed, 35 of your planes.
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If they got rid of two of the tires on each gov't vehicle, I bet they could save a lot of money.
Hey, I just made my first car anthology!
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You just made a short story collection on the theme "cars"?
Or perhaps you meant car analogy?
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Hey, I just made my first car anthology!
You always remember your first.
Muffins for all!
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Sure, cuts are on the table these days. But how silly is it to spend millions to build datacenters only to shut them down? I just hope they sell them at a market price or rent them out. Maybe hire a management company to put customers in there. What a waste it would be. This is real money from everyone's pocket that's used to build a datacenter that will sit dormant. None of us would build a house just to let it sit empty.
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Nah - FEMA wouldn't use that much air conditioning.
Timing... (Score:5, Informative)
The wording of this post makes it seem as though the data centers were initiated via policies of the Obama administration. However, the reality is that the data center expansion occurred during the policy of the previous Bush administration with funding requested in 2006, approved in 2007 and implementation initiated in 2008 a full year before the Obama administration took office. The Obama administration approved the continuation of the policy in 2009 and 2010 and are currently altering the data center strategy.
Re:Timing... (Score:5, Insightful)
idk, I'm all for specificity, but that seems a bit nitpicky. Either way, they're cutting the data centers now, which is a great move for cutting waste since they're running at 27% utilization. Sad that it means cutting the jobs associated with those data centers, but at least it's a step in the right direction.
Re:Timing... (Score:5, Insightful)
To that end, it's entirely possible that these datacenters were planned during the Bush years based on policy decisions made in the Clinton era, which were in turn affected by the Reagan/Bush1 years. Wings of a butterfly and all.
The point of the GP was not, as far as I can tell, "BUSH BAD OBAMA GOOD!", but rather, "This is not an example of a bad decision made in haste and reversed in haste."
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Troll me if you want, but I am tired of this back and forth nitpicky. Get the fuck off your high horse and look at the individual, not the party.
Know your history, party centric nations oriented in pride and blind following lead to bad things. You should all know the wars that were fought, and continue
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Try and figure out how to make healthcare affordable enough that you don't need the government or some other insurance company to pay for it for you?
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You're to reasonable. GTFO before you ruin /.
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People have in universities and think tanks and other places across the land forever. Google it. There's enough ideas already out there to cobble something together that's a fair mix of public and private and actually works as well as you're ever going to achieve.
The good ideas exist, but good ideas and hope and rainbows and morning dew are not going to make a dent.
The problem is that you're up against forces that can see either a politician's funding cut off, or heavy funding going to his main opponent. Bo
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Look for ways to fund education.
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Or maybe you're just advocating ideological indoctrination of children. Nah, no one would ever get away with that...
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We are USA, we are individuals coming together for a common goal, to live free from oppression and tyranny. Yet governanced by the majority (supposed to be). Remember your individuality before you "tow the line".
All right! Let's start stringing together propagandistic boilerplate into poorly constructed, meaningless sentences!
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Excuse me...aren't you guilty of the same thing right now?
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Republicans dont care if Bush started it, in their eyes anything Obama does is bad, even if it is along their beliefs or party lines, or what Fox News said they should do previous to him actually doing it.
You're correct, but that cuts both ways. Allow me to demonstrate:
Democrats dont[sic] care if Clinton started it, in their eyes anything Bush does is bad, even if it is along their beliefs or party lines, or what MSNBC said they should do previous to him actually doing it.
Troll me if you want, but I am tired of this back and forth nitpicky. Get the fuck off your high horse and look at the individual, not the party.
I'd rather not be trolled either, but I too am tired of the back-and-forth bickering. I'm also tired of the feigned outrage and rhetoric that both sides utilize. The Republicans claimed the Democrats were going to kill grandma with death pa
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Republicans dont care if Bush started it, in their eyes anything Obama does is bad, even if it is along their beliefs or party lines
Were that a fair accusation to level as broadly as you have-- and its not fair-- I would remark that it would be a kind of tit-for-tat for everything Bush has taken the blame for that isnt his fault.
For example--
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you just gave me a great idea.
We'll make a party line of congresscritters (with rope or something that does not depend on one individual's structural integrity to maintain the line) and we'll tow it behind my hybrid* truck down the interstate as fast as I can go.
Thus we will "Tow the line".
-nB
*My truck runs on hydrogen atoms, conveniently packaged by holding them with carbon chains, polar bears, baby seals, and hot air from Prius owners.
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Stuff like this is largely out of the hands of a President. It's part and parcel of the whole Ship of State thing. The Captain only gets to point which way to go. Things go on below desks that he has no clue or real control over.
We are being ruled by bureaucrats.
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The alternative is that at each change of president, we halt all government activity for 3 years and have everyone twiddle their thumbs while new policies are written, and then run those policies for the 4th year.
Any incoming president is obligated by logistics/reality to make carrying on with whatever was happening before the default state. It's highly doubtful that even a 2 term president could find time to review the entire federal government before leaving office even if that was the only duty of the of
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over the last 2 years WAS from the obama administration's continuation of the policy, but they didn't start the policy?
Just like the Bush tax cuts, wars in Iraq & Afganistan, and massive military spending.
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Too bad Obama wasn't in the Senate to influence these decisions... Oh, wait... [wikipedia.org]
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They get a vote.
Timing: Consolidation Began Two Years Ago (Score:2)
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When has that ever stopped political finger pointing.
Logic and politics have nothing to do with each other, its all about finding the crazy excuse to support your guy. Who may or may not have anything really to do about any of the problems.
During the Clinton Years The Right was saying how Clinton was befitting from all the long term improvements that Bush Sr and Reagan did years back. And now after a much prolonged recession the Left is still saying it was all Bush Jr. Fault, even after a period of Democrat
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Seems that, for the most part, economic booms aren't tied to specific government intervention, manipulation, etc. Shocking.
(i.e., the government can influence and manipulate the economy, but that doesn't appear to be the best way it happens; good economies seem to come not from government policy but from private enterprise and people creating goods/services that other people want...)
Cloud First (Score:4, Insightful)
This is probably related to the "Cloud First" strategy adopted by the outgoing CIO Vivek Kundra. http://fcw.com/articles/2011/02/28/buzz-cloud-computing-and-budget.aspx [fcw.com]
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The outgoing CIO Vivek Kundra assumed his position on March, 5th, 2009 [wikipedia.org] under this administration, not Bush'43.
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The very first line of the article starts with "Over the last two years, the number of U.S. data centers has quadrupled." Obama took office more than two years ago. Just because the data centers were initiated under Bush, their quadrupling happened under Obama. You even acknowledge that Obama approved the continuation of the policy.
So really, your post is meaningless because Obama approved the continuation of the policy, and the data centers quadrupled as a result. What does Bush have to do with that?
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FTFY. Despite the virtue of understatement, I'm not sure your obstacle-free version was making sufficient contact with the intended nerve ending. As you get older, you place less emphasis on being on the right side of the debate, and more emphasis on whether any effort is expended to move the debate
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Stimulus. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Rather than auction off the servers or try to recoup some of their cost...if my past experience happens with these...they'll just be destroyed. Sad but true...I've seen it happen more than once. Rather than just take out the harddrives and destroy those and sell off or give away the hardware, it often is all destroyed as a matter of policy.
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Somewhat like burning a $100 bill so that a crook won't get their hands on it.
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Granted what I was involved with was migrating and upgrading, but I saw hundreds of perfectly usable, 1-3 year old servers stacked in the old data center, hard drives pulled and drilled and the servers sold to a scrap company.
Complete and utter waste. I seriously doubt TFA servers will be treated any differently regardless of age.
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And that's why many people are against raising taxes. There's so much waste happening in our government from pure incompetence. And that's not even mentioning malicious fraud. Paying more taxes is like giving money to a leader in Africa: you hope that just a fraction of it will end up going where it was meant to go.
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A motorcycle analogy: we let the young and inexperienced riders buy bikes too shiny and too powerfull for them. And then they get scared of them in a light crash, we buy said bikes from them at deep discounts and end up with a brand new, albeit scratched, bike for half the price.
Typical gov't program (Score:2)
This isn't the first time some federal government facility was built and then promptly discarded... Your efficient taxpayer's dollars at work.
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Yes, the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) was an excellent example of this behavior. The James Webb Telescope may be another. Admittedly, in these cases it is due to inaccurate budget and/or schedule estimates.
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To the Cloud! (Score:2)
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The Slashdot test: Failed (Score:2)
Re:The Slashdot test: Failed (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, the article specifically says that servers quadrupled in the past two years under a policy approved by Obama (although it was started by Bush). So it was Obama who bought those servers. But, what the heck, you don't need to think when you know it's all Bush's fault!
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Obama... It was started with Bush, but a President change doesn't place the current funding blame with the previous president like Obama and his supporters would like you to believe.
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Bush got us into Iraq
Bush's Tax cut to the wealthy.
This are the 2 reasons we have suck a large deficit. Add to the the pubs won't live up to there end of the bargain and let the tax cuts expire as they where planned to do.
THIS is Bush/Cheney and the republicans fault, and it's a fucking quagmire.
Just because bush could loose all the fiscal gain Clinton got us in 2 years, doesn't mean the results can be fixed in 2 years. As the experts have been saying, the results from the Bush administration will be felt f
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Heh... You took my acerbic remark away from me there.
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federal spending increased -2.7% under Obama. So it's actually gone down, but lets not let facts interfere with your opinion.
"So we will never know."
unless , you know, bother to look into it.
I don't know what is worse, that you took this:
" Hillary Clinton is shipping US data center " from that article, or that you espouse an opinion without the larger context of her body of work.
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It's not Obama, it's the budget cuts the were forced on us.
They are being shit down because of the current republicans. They shouldn't be, and the government should be doing more of this with their data.
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Not really. If you're going to blame anybody for wasting money, it really ought to be the GOP. They're the ones that insisted that giving money to the rich in the form of tax cuts would result in increased tax receipts. Not to mention the fact that they were the ones that engaged in 2 off the books wars and numerous other accounting fixes to make it appear that they weren't overspending by as much as they were.
As far as cuts go, if the rich would pay their fair share, even if it's just proportional to the a
Pork (Score:3)
Cue yelling from Congresspeople whose datacentres are getting chopped.
"Sack someone else! Cut somewhere else!"
Converting them into Bitcoin miners (Score:2)
There's a secret government project to convert all those servers into Bitcoin Mining Rigs.
You didn't really think consumers were responsible for the shortage of high end AMD graphics cards, did you?
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Selling the DC (Score:2)
They will most likely sell the DC itself for a fraction of what it cost the taxpayers to build... Coincidentally, the company that gets the bargain new DC will probably have a few politicians on the board.
Deactivated systems will not be sold in the US (Score:5, Funny)
Due to national security, servers will be divided into those that hosted classified materials, and those that did not. Those that contained classified materials will be labeled as Securely Ensure Nonrecoverable Destruction To Ostensibly Completely Hinder Internationally Notorious Agents, but that's a bit long, so really they will be labeled with the acronym SENDTOCHINA. They will be melted down locally and then sold for scrap. Those that do not contain classified materials will be sold to China to help ease their demand for computing resources that they already build. These will be labeled Mutually Economic Lateral Trade. That too is a bit long, so the systems that should be sold to China will be labeled MELT.
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I lol'd :-P
no wonder there is a 12 trillion + debt (Score:2)
Why shutdown the newest? (Score:2)
Surely the fiscally responsible approach is to shut down the oldest datacenters first. These will be least efficient and hence the savings will be greatest from shutting these down. The equipment in the newest ones will be the most valuable, but when selling it off, they will only get pennies on the dollar (and things like hard drives will be destroyed, not sold) so the increased revenue from selling the newer equipment will be minimal.
Only reason for selling off the newest equipment: "connected" companies
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"Surely the fiscally responsible approach is to shut down the oldest datacenters first."
you've never done this on legacy large scale enterprise systems, have you?
What make economic sense is to keep doing it and with time get rid of the older systems.
VMware (Score:2)
They virtualized it all onto a machine that the NSA has in a storage closet.
no fire sale (Score:3)
> Will the government hold a server fire sale? Count me in!"
I would guess not. Rather than dilute the server market, negatively affect server manufacturers' profit margins and chance a bad news event, (and incidentally have to admit to bad planning) they'll crush the servers.
Oh come on (Score:4, Insightful)
Obama move policy to a smarter government.
republicans cut funding
Obama's fault.
The republicans are giong after ANYHTING Obama does. Why isn't everyoen getting pissed at that? This isn't a sie of the isle complaint. Even when Republican create a bill, and then when Obama agrees and says will sign sign it, the republicans who created the bill back out. WTF?
There is a difference between having a debate and simple going against something because the president is for it.
They would rather the country burned to the ground, the Obama getting elected again.
I've been paying attention to politics since Reagan, and never has it been like this.
Add to that a bunch of people who refuse to accept the established fact that austerity during a recession never works. Look at history.
It's stupid.
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Maybe send off a quick press release off wishing the American people good luck, because they need all the luck they can get.
Of course I know this could never happen, but it makes an image that makes me smile.
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That's actually how the USA crawled out of the depression in the 1930s. If you've got another way that would acutally work everyone is interested in hearing it.
The current political tactic is to drive everything as close to the brink as possible, hope that will bring down the government and then quietly implement the same things while pretending they are different.
It's a
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Would you seriously rent a government owned machine? The problems with that idea just overwhelm the imagination.
why be a landload when you want to sell? (Score:2)
as being landload they will have to pay for upkeep. Any ways others can use the data centers from there own use.
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Everything falls under regulating interstate commerce. Everything.
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Precisely what constitutional problems would those be? If that were really the case, then the government would be prohibited from operating schools, hospitals, libraries and others things which have a private sector equivalent.
OTOH, it's a moot point seeing as we don't have a free market economy anyways.
Re:Obama wastes taxpayer money? (Score:5, Insightful)
He approved the continuation based on being told that these centers were necessary for data retention and they aren't. So they are getting closed. As any good business person would do when faced with budget restrictions.
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So what's the difference between bush being told they are necessary for data retention and funding vs obama completing construction and continuing funding?
When the administration was new, they were told these were "necessary." When they learned that was a lie, they stopped funding at the earliest opportunity. Where's the fault in that?
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The alternative (Score:2)
Leave them online and keep sinking money into their operations although they are not needed.
He's doing a good thing here. We have plenty of other datacenters throughout the world.
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FTA:
Over the last two years, the number of U.S. data centers has quadrupled, and yet they are running at only about 27 percent utilization, according to the Office of Management and Budget. The maintenance costs of these data centers, including backup power supplies, air conditioning, fire-suppression and special security devices, has been astronomical, causing them to consume 200 times more power than the typical office space. By more fully utilizing the remaining data centers, the White House hopes to mai
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Next thing we know, you'll be complaining that Obama's got buddies in the business waiting to rent/lease/buy these vacated datacenters for pennies on the dollar, and will recycle the servers for less, making this all a 'green' project. Saving the environment, tax dollars, and all.
Whatever. Well, all except those pathetic little coloc centers Agriculture got stuck with. Good riddance to the closets, really, what can you DO in 1000 sq ft? Stickhandle?
DRMO (Score:2)
If they aren't repurposed at another agency, they will be sold in lots at DRMO sales. So will the racks. Servers used on secure networks may be sold, but any storage will no longer be in them.
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113 are DoD (Score:2)
But you're right, the rest will go GSA.
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Planning a little dumpster diving?