Follow William Marks, Facebook Community Development Regional Manager, as he takes us on a virtual tour of our brand-new Eagle Mountain Data Center in Utah.

Video transcript

William Marks, Facebook Community Development Regional Manager:

Hi, everyone, welcome! I'm William, part of the Facebook team at our brand-new data center right here in Eagle Mountain, Utah. We broke ground on this facility in 2018, and we're proud to say we're live. Once it's complete, this data center represents more than $1 billion in investment in the state of Utah. Today, we're going to give you the first ever public tour of our brand-new data center. Come on in. Let's see what it's all about.

Do you ever wonder how you're able to send messages, post photos, share videos with your friends on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger? It all starts with a data center. So what is a data center? The Eagle Mountain Data Center is the physical backbone of a highly advanced infrastructure that helps them billions of people around the world connect every day.

These buildings and the hardware inside them help support Facebook's mission to build community and bring the world closer together by helping people stay connected with friends and family, discover what's going on in the world, and share what matters to them. Our data centers also help us accommodate the growing number of photos and videos being shared and help us scale as we create more data-intensive and immersive experiences through live video, 360 degree photos and videos, and virtual reality.

So now that you know a little bit more about the data center, let's check out our administrative office area. We're now in the administrative office area where you can see all kinds of jobs we have at the data center, from technical operations, electricians, heating and air conditioning specialists, culinary, security, cleaning staff, and many more.

It takes years of planning and construction to build a data center before we can start working here. During construction, we've had an average of 1,250 construction workers onsite at peak, and we'll support more than 200 operational jobs. We don't just work here. We live here too. So we want to make this workspace as unique as possible.

Now, if you're not from Utah, you might not know what this means, but if you know, you know. We're also proud of our murals and artwork created by local artists that make this workspace unique and exciting. Next, let's head toward one of our data halls. Here's the exciting part. We're about to meet Mike, our site manager, and he's going to show us around the data hall.

Mike Rasmussen, Eagle Mountain Data Center Site Manager:

This is our data hall. This is where all the magic happens that makes Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus work. Facebook data centers are big. How big? Each data center building is the size of a modern day aircraft carrier, nearly four football fields long.

Once completed, the Eagle Mountain Data Center will be a nearly 2.4 million square foot campus. Our data centers have been designed from the ground up to be some of the most efficient data centers in the world. That includes our servers. In our server designs, we eliminate any material that does not serve a specific function for the hardware.

This is the Bryce Canyon. It's the workhorse of storing photos and video on Facebook.

This is the hot aisle where the hot air generated from our servers is collected and either recirculated or efficiently removed from the data center.

Marks:

Now that you've seen the data hall, we're going up to the penthouse, where we're going to meet Angela from facility operations. We're going to learn about sustainability and data center design.

Angela Santiago, Critical Operations Manager:

At Facebook, we define our data centers to be water efficient and they use 80 percent less water than a typical data center. Facebook data centers also use an estimated 32 percent less electricity than an average data center. And we are proud that the Eagle Mountain Data Center is supported by 100 percent renewable energy. We work with Rocky Mountain Power to meet that goal.

The penthouse has a few important rooms that help the data center operate efficiently. Large fans pull in fresh air, filter and condition it, and then funnel it down to the server room. This creates a workable environment for our servers and our staff. By operating our servers at higher temperatures, we are able to keep them cool without the air most of the year, using a direct evaporative system instead of energy intensive air conditioning. And this year, Facebook announced that our global operations are supported by 100 percent renewable energy and that we have reached net zero emissions.

Marks:

All of our data centers treat our land and communities with respect, source materials responsibly, and achieve high recycling rates. Keeping the data center running is important, but that isn't all we do.

We're committed to having a positive impact in supporting community vitality through volunteering, investing in our local schools, small businesses, and nonprofits. Facebook is proud to call Eagle Mountain home and prouder still of our partnership with the community and what we've been able to accomplish together. So far, we've provided more than $2 million to support a wide range of projects to benefit this community.

Thank you, Eagle Mountain City, Utah County, and the entire state of Utah for welcoming us. We look forward to a bright future together.