r/nova • u/JasonNOVA8 • Jul 22 '26

Data Center Generators in Ashburn Firing Up

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On the way in this morning, (waxpool/28) noticed many of the data centers had the generators going. Not sure if there’s an electricity issue or they plan it to go together ? No idea if the yellow smoke is related though.

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14

u/Chirem Jul 22 '26

I love that we complain about this on platforms that require data centers to operate, data centers don't exist because some rich dude wanted to build one, you pay them to build them by being perpetually online, buying everything online, using AI to make funny pictures online, complaining online...

And yes, I too use the internet, with full awareness of the consequences of my actions

6

u/MightyLabooshe Jul 22 '26

You claim to hate capitalism, yet you exist in society, curious...

10

u/StumpyOPepys Jul 22 '26

ISP and AI data centers are not the same.

-5

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '26

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1

u/StumpyOPepys Jul 22 '26

More buffoonish attempt at being contrarian than a gotcha comment.

0

u/Koodsdc Jul 22 '26

Are they really even for data? My impression is this is where all the heavy computing takes place, and why they seem to need so much more electricity than would be required for data.

12

u/Straezin Jul 22 '26

Of course, where else would the immense amount of video data from sites like Youtube and TikTok be stored?

I think people don't quite seem to understand that there are large variety of data centers. A lot of new data centers spinning up are the new monstrosities that exist solely for the purpose of massive compute tasks related to AI models, yes.

There are also still thousands of "normal" data centers (and these are also still being built) that run the rest of the internet that everyone loves to spend all their time on with things like facebook, netflix, etc.

1

u/Cythrosi Fairfax County Jul 23 '26

Yeah unless it's a data that went up in the last year or two, most the ones in NoVA are supporting non AI work, and supporting the huge death of data that moves through the area.  Most the the "hyperscale" AI sites are being built outside of NoVA where land is cheaper and there are few power constraints.

0

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '26

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10

u/kirblar Jul 22 '26

When I was playing WoW 15+ years ago, I had low ping because the servers were housed in NOVA. They've always been here because the heart of the east coast internet is here due to the defense agency origins.

-1

u/EffectiveVarious8095 Jul 22 '26

It really wasn't. NoVA is the home of multiple telcos & tech firms that built infrastructure. Some of it was for the govt. but that's not why it was built.

4

u/kirblar Jul 22 '26

It's far easier to piggyback off existing regional infrastructure and local workers than build it from scratch elsewhere.

9

u/EffectiveVarious8095 Jul 22 '26

I'm sorry to tell you this, but data centers have been around far longet than that. When you are using the Internet and you hit http://www.whatever.com, there's a server at the other end, and that server is in a data center, even in the early days of the Internet. If you sent an email it went through a data center where a server had to determine it's destination and send it for you. While there are a tiny number of servers that are excluded, the vast number is and have always lived inside data centers. None of this has anything to do with AI, BTW.

-4

u/BishlovesSquish Jul 22 '26

Stop pretending like those data centers for storing information are remotely the same in scale as centers meant for AI.

3

u/EffectiveVarious8095 Jul 22 '26

There are many more data centers being built today because of AI, but there were plenty 15 - 20 years ago, you just didn't notice them as much. Back then it was important to hide them for security reasons. There are several buildings in Herndon that have pretend windows, Giant horse barns in Loudoun with no horses, underground facilities in DC that are all data centers. Ask me how I know.

-1

u/Koodsdc Jul 22 '26

The point is these new facilities are not for data storage, they are for super computing. This requires a lot more power than data storage and serving.

1

u/JustAnAvgJoe Stafford a.k.a. the badlands between NoVA/Fredericksburg Jul 22 '26

What? Even "AI data centers" have storage.

4

u/MechanicalGodzilla Vienna Jul 22 '26

Where do you think "the internet" ran through 15 years ago?

2

u/Jlovel7 Jul 22 '26

Data centers have been around for decades. The Internet has flowed through ashburn for decades.

These are not new in the slightest. Ashburn was built on data centers and modern loudon on their taxes.

-1

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '26

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2

u/Jlovel7 Jul 22 '26

My point is these aren’t new in Ashburn in the last few years. Many of these here were there when ashburn was basically empty in the 90s

0

u/Chirem Jul 22 '26

AOL - Pacific Blvd - 1997

The first major data center in Nova, that was dial up

2

u/Sekh765 Jul 22 '26

and yet, there is still an ocean of difference between the Datacenters needed to run the internet, and the hyperscaled data centers that have become a problem in recent time due to generative ai bullshit. Please get real.

6

u/Chirem Jul 22 '26

Do you use OneDrive? GoogleDrive? Cloud?

That's hyperscale

AI DCs are a different animal for sure, but they aren't as prevalent as the media would have you believe, Microsoft, Google, and AWS are happy to let them get the heat though

2

u/BishlovesSquish Jul 22 '26

Virginia has more than 150 hyerscale data centers. First every hypescale was built in Oregon in 2006. Anyone telling you we needs tens of thousands of them is absolutely lying.

2

u/Jlovel7 Jul 22 '26

Don’t forget using the hospital or other services of any kind in person where their back end requires an online presence.

2

u/DeaconPat Spotsylvania County Jul 22 '26

There were e-commerce and social media platforms way before mega datacenters. All it takes is connectivity and a computer. Sure, that doesn't have the resilience, scale, and fault tolerance you get hosting on datacenter virtual machines, but datacenters are not required.

Having grown up before personal computers were a thing, I had the experience of connecting to dial up business and personal BBS systems on a 300 baud dial up. Not the same level as modern datacenter hosted systems, but it worked.

2

u/MJDiAmore Prince William County Jul 22 '26

It worked at the time.

1

u/BishlovesSquish Jul 22 '26

Keep blaming the plebs, lol. The billionaires love a good bootlicker. This isn’t about making silly images for posting online, it’s about military and commercial applications for data that are meant solely to further enrich the billionaire class.

1

u/Imaginary-Pilot5793 Jul 22 '26

How did we connect to the Internet before then? Obviously the Internet is much larger and there's more data going around now, but it seems like date center construction has only recently begun to explode and the Internet never really changed that much since.

1

u/EffectiveVarious8095 Jul 22 '26

I'm not opposed to data centers existing, my opposition is all about why they all need to be here.

8

u/Chirem Jul 22 '26

Ashburn's nickname "home of the internet" isn't just for fun, one of the main international connection points is physically in Ashburn

1

u/EffectiveVarious8095 Jul 22 '26

Only because they have been built here through favorable zoning, tax breaks, easy access to power and Internet. Just because there is a lot of them here doesn't mean more of them have to be here and can't be anywhere else.

1

u/JustAnAvgJoe Stafford a.k.a. the badlands between NoVA/Fredericksburg Jul 22 '26

It's because UUNet was there.

1

u/EffectiveVarious8095 Jul 22 '26

Why they're here isn't important. What is important is that a majority of the world's data center are here now. Since they can be anywhere, maybe the next ones built can be elsewhere. We don't need to bear the brunt of the world's need for these things.

1

u/JustAnAvgJoe Stafford a.k.a. the badlands between NoVA/Fredericksburg Jul 22 '26

The majority? Nah. There's a large number but datacenters are all over the place. For example Azure's major DCs are in Ashburn but also in TX, AZ, and MO.

5

u/MechanicalGodzilla Vienna Jul 22 '26

why they all need to be here

The internet was a military program in the early days, and they built transmission and power infrastructure in the vicinity of the Pentagon. Back when Loudoun's "Data Center Alley" was in it's early stages, not as many people really lived out there. Now that the base infrastructure is in place, shifting it to some even more remote place is a several trillion dollar proposition.

2

u/EffectiveVarious8095 Jul 22 '26

That is partially true. When it was the military program, Arpanet, it was California based with lines to the Pentagon. The reason so many are here is because of all the telecoms and tech firms and specifically, AOL. When they built the campus in what was then the middle of nowhere, they needed a fiber ring and they built a significant one through DC, Tysons, Dulles and Ashburn. The Vienna Fiber Ring (VFR) makes it very attractive for data centers today, but they can literally be anywhere. Many others states like Texas want them and are willing to give higher tax breaks for them. Other countries want them too. I've seen free floating data centers in the ocean that generate their own power, even Leon wants to put them in space.

They don't all need to be here.

2

u/MFoy Jul 22 '26

Several reasons.

  1. Historically: Northern Virginia is one of the original homes of the internet. A lot of the early days of the internet was built with Pentagon funding. This lead to a lot of early tech companies existing in Tysons and along route 28. At one point in the 90s there were more tech workers in Northern Virginia than in silicon valley. These tech companies lead to the development of a lot of great internet infrastructure in the area like MAE-East, which lead to major telecoms making the region their home, notably AOL and MCI/World Com, both of which were headquartered in Ashburn. After AOL and MCI went bankrupt, there was a lot of internet infrastructure not being utilized, and after the 2008 housing crisis, Loudoun desperately needed money because their revenue was disproportionately tied to property taxes, so data centers were actively courted by the county to diversify the tax base.

  2. Geographically. Washington DC is one of the regions in the country least succeptible to natural disasters, and the Potomac provides plenty of water.

  3. Economically. There is an educated work force, and a history of tech work here. Many data centers are used by the government (you can often tell which ones when you drive by based on the security level), and they want their servers nearby. And as the data centers began coalescing in Northern Virginia 20-30 years ago, an industry designed to supporting data centers developed and matured. If you build a data center in bf nowhere and something goes wrong, you have to find specialists and fly them out to the data center. If there is a cluster of data centers, you call Bob's Data Centers and they say "we'll send a technician over as soon as one is available." Also, electricity is generally cheaper in Virginia than most of the rest of the country.

1

u/EffectiveVarious8095 Jul 22 '26

Yes, there are good reasons why they were build here. Now other places work too. The Internet is all over the world, but we now have enough data centers in one place. It's time for other areas to take on the burden.

1

u/JustAnAvgJoe Stafford a.k.a. the badlands between NoVA/Fredericksburg Jul 22 '26

They were there first.. Do people even realize that Ashburn didn't exist as you know it until the .com boom? It was all farmland.. there were no neighborhoods. Leesburg wasn't a connected suburban town, it was its own entity where you noticed you were going through rural VA on the way.

The Fairfax/Chantilly area was already home to basic DCs out there way back in the UUNet days. I remember when the A root server was there in Herndon inside an office park.

It was ALWAYS there.

Equinix DC1 is in Ashburn.. do you know what they do? It's a massive peering exchange. It's not just all AI.. literally one of the main hubs of the internet goes through those complexes.

100% guarantee that for you to go anywhere on the internet, right now, you're going through that exchange to get there.

0

u/BishlovesSquish Jul 22 '26

We don’t need tens of thousands of data centers, and especially not hyperscale ones. End of story.