Facebook's data hubs are designed primarily for storing the countless amount of information from the social network's own website. Perhaps, Facebook data hubs are the closest to the regular user because they store our photos, private messages, and videos that we share throughout our lives. In Facebook data centers, the amount of data to handle is impressive. On average, 1.62 billion people log onto the website daily, and 300 million photos are uploaded into social networks each day. In addition, Facebook supports millions of websites and thousands of applications that are connected through the Facebook Connect platform. The company's servers work together to store the data from the Facebook page of each user. When the company was first launched in 2004, it relied upon leasing storage from third-party wholesale providers. While continuing to develop, Facebook mastered its engineering capacities to create its server farms. What differentiates Facebook from Google and Amazon are the unique innovations applied in its data hubs.

Geography of Data Hubs

Most of Facebook data centers are located in the United States. The company has server farms in Oregon, North Carolina, Iowa, Texas, and New Mexico. Some of the latest locations of Facebook data centers in the United States are in Virginia, Nebraska, Ohio, Georgia, Utah, Alabama, and Louisiana. The company's European data hubs are located in Sweden, Denmark, and Ireland. The center that serves the Asian segment of the market is situated in Singapore. The company admits renting its data center space in Virginia and Singapore. Facebook chooses the locations for its new data centers based on local infrastructure, talent pool, and potential for partnerships with local companies.

Shareable Innovations

Since 2017, Facebook has been using Open Computer racks in all of its data centers. The representatives of the company design many technologies that are exclusively used in Facebook data hubs. For example, the company uses air from the outside for cooling in its Oregon location. In recent years, the company has been striving to create data centers that are fully energy-efficient. For example, The Newton Data Center in Georgia is entirely powered by renewable energy. With projects like this, the company is planning to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 75 percent by the end of 2020. Social networks' new data hubs run on patented hyper-effective hardware.

Fiber-Optic Communication Driving Success

Just like data centers of other tech giants, Facebook hubs rely on the fiber optic cable system. The company invests in new long-haul fiber routes every year. Facebook is believed to have one of the highest capacity of terrestrial fiber networks in the United States. In 2017, it increased the efficiency by 50 percent with its new network coming from Los Lunas data center in California. The company has two separate backbones of the fiber optic system. One is known to connect its data centers, while the other connects each data hub to the Internet.

Recently, Facebook reduced the costs of deploying fiber optic cables by creating open optical broadband access networks in countries around the world and providing open access to fiber at adequate prices. Pairing a fiber-optic network with electrical distribution grids is one of the ways to achieve this goal. In the United States, Facebook is planning to allow local and regional companies to purchase excess capacity on their fiber in order to save a significant amount of energy.

If the company does not have the resource capacity of Facebook and other tech giants, investing in fiber-optic communication might be a tough challenge to consider. However, if the financial capacity allows it, security and the quality of connection of fiber networks are hard to outmatch. Loose tubes, tight-buffered cables, and ribbon cables from Nassau National Cable make for a great investment. After all, even Facebook did not build its fiber-optic network in one day.

Reinventing Single-Mode Fiber 

Facebook openly shares innovations related to its fiber-optic network. In particular, the company gives open access to the information about optical interconnects inside the data centers so that other companies can learn from this experience. The switch network inside data hubs consists of structured cabling with trunk fibers. Most of the distance in data centers are covered by using multi-mode fiber, but single-mode fiber lasts through countless evolution cycles and reduces the issues with modal dispersion. However, single-mode transceivers were known for conceiving a lot of power, so the company had to redesign its transceiver technology to meet the needs of its data centers. 100G single-mode optical transceivers represent an efficient solution to the issue of energy consumption. The project of these transceivers is shared through the Open Compute Project so that everyone can benefit from it.

Subsea Cable Network and What's Next For The Company

Just like its competitors, Facebook turns to the undersea cable network to connect data hubs to the Internet all over the world. However, the company is a relatively new actor when it comes to building undersea networks. In Africa, it is currently working on undersea cable Simba designed to link different parts of the continent in an efficient way. The company has an effective case of collaboration with Google on undersea cable networks. The HAVFRUE subsea cable is a joint project of two companies that connects Northern Europe and the United States. Facebook owns the MAREA cable that connects Spain to Virginia with Microsoft. The cable has recently achieved record transfer speeds of 26.2 Terabits per second. 

In the United States, the company faces a conflict with the community of Tierra del Mar, Oregon. The people are protesting against the placement of ultra-high-speed cable in their town because of the possible damage caused by drilling. Hopefully, the company will be able to solve this conflict in the nearest time while maintaining its dedication to sustainability.

Innovative data centers of Facebook keep terabytes of personal data safe while maintaining technological transparency with its contribution to Open Computer. The company also has a dedication to sustainability that currently exceeds the efforts of its competitors. The network of Facebook data hubs will likely continue to develop at a faster pace because the company has many projects that are still in the works. In the next blog, we will reveal what differentiates data centers of Microsoft, some of the oldest and most respected players of the big tech.