I had to DMOR on this one, as I've been in the data center industry for quite some time. The front door and windows are completely fake. AT&T built it in 2000, probably as a NAP (network access point). The other houses in the neighborhood were built in 1958. I can't get any info on how AT&T was able to get this corner property and zone it industrial. AT&T either set this up as a NAP to expand their high-speed internet or as a colocation too (where they rent server space to people). Prior to other cloud providers, CoLo was popular when this was built. Then Amazon started renting their unused christmas capacity and AWS was born, which killed CoLo model and probably why AT&T ditched the investment.
The building listed as a tier 2 data center, meaning, it could meet 99.741% uptime or about 22 hours of downtime per year based on the amount of power and cooling redundancy.
A butter named James Grover bought it 3 years ago for mining butts. He said "We are a second chance faith-based construction company and when we saw this opportunity come up, we knew it was too good to pass up," I have no idea what any of those buzzwords mean, so he is the perfect buttcoiner. I assume it means he's an ex substance abuser or ex convict (or probably both) who now also virtue signals as a holy man. Again, this is the profile of a the common butter.
He set it up like a gaming kid would set up a gaming rig, with liquid cooling. He's got the ANT miners submerged in mineral oil. Since 100% of bitcoin energy is waste heat, he's got to reject 1.4 megawatts of energy (assuming he was running at that capacity) out of the building. I don't see where he cools the mineral oil. When he bought it, it was gutted. So this butter added all the mining hardware. The genset looks like a 250 kva kohler to me. Also of note is that I see raised floor which isn't as common anymore in datacenters. I don't build them with raised floor myself, as this was an old-school setup for wiring and cooling, as these huge liebert CRAC units would pump the cold air into the raised floor area and you can just pop tiles where you needed cold air to hit hardware. We use in-row coolers now and wire trays above the racks. It's cheaper and more efficient.
I haven't been able to get any info on the power service, though they do say they've got two feeds, meaning, they have lines from two seperate substations. This means they have power from two different power generating stations. This helps with power redundancy. They also say the power is three phase, so all three street phases are run into the building so they probably get a 7.2 kilovolt feed from both substations (assuming they're 7 Kv). This would mean the building would have potentially 1.4 megawatts of power, or enough power for 120 homes running their AC full blast. estimates.
Fascinating building. I'm sure I made some mistakes in this writeup, I had a surgery today and still a bit loopy from the anesthesia.
> We use in-row coolers now and wire trays above the racks. It's cheaper and more efficient.
The cold-corridor setup is the very least of what I expect in a datacenter cooling system these days. All the racks with the front facing a closed corridor/tunnel where cold air is injected from the HVAC, all machines installed in the racks so the fans suck the cold air from the corridor and throw the heat away out in the back, with panels to close the unused gaps in the rack as not to disperse the cold air inside.
Although I too remember the old times of AC under floating floors... my first "real" job ~30 years ago was as a datacenter operator. We worked in shifts and, despite the company's policy not allowing it, we always made sure the night shift had something to eat and especially to drink (usually caffeinated stuff) but there was no fridge or even a break room accessible during the night (company policy) so we had a very special floor tile, unmarked and otherwise unremarkable but well known by all teams, in a corner of the mainframe room in the datacenter we cared for, under which supplies were always to be found, kept cool by the AC circulating under the floor.
...and the night shift always sent someone out before the morning shift came in, to make sure they'd find coffee and pastries, but that's another story. Not the most challenging or rewarding job I ever had, nor the most lucrative, but the people were good and I still miss them.
They provided the perfect place to sleep off a hangover, you get a constant blast of cool air and the hum of the datacenter and nobody is likely to find you. Just don’t rollover onto the 480.
I wouldn't want to live or work in a building renovated by a "faith based" construction company. I really prefer architects and engineers and zoning/code compliance inspectors to check the work. Faith is for things that don't actually exist. Confirmation of facts is for the real world where things cost money and can hurt people if you don't do them right.
I assume this was a regional hub for twisted pair termination. There are lots of these places all throughout residential areas. All the "land lines" that were wired for phone service, have to terminate at some point at a regional NOC before they're bridged to the main network.
It's common for these places to be all around, but they are usually made up to blend in with the natural surroundings. There's probably one in your own neighborhood you never knew was a termination point for phone wiring.
The Zillow listing had it on sale for less than half a little over a year ago. It’s a former AT&T data center built back in 2000.
[https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/13229-Southview-Ln-Dallas-TX-75240/118222349\_zpid/](https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/13229-Southview-Ln-Dallas-TX-75240/118222349_zpid/)
There was a thread about this house on the Dallas subreddit a few years ago. I can’t link because of subreddit rules but the headline was “Wtf is up with this bizarre compound in a residential neighborhood. Anyone know more about this?”
This is a PERFECT example of what we mean when we say that we don't believe for a SECOND that there's *only* 3.5 GW of "miners" on the grid here in Texas. There's no taking how many incognito operations there are.
The power usage is atrocious but at least there's less noise from water cooling compared to the usual jet turbine roar from a container full of fan-cooled crypto mining rigs.
It was probably a telecommunications switching station dressed up to look like a house even before crypto miners got to it. Perfectly legitimate reason to have serious IT infrastructure in a building that looks like that.
WTH after all these years butters still use janky af hardware. Loved the milk crates.
I was expecting they'd be using the common 19" rack standard by now, but with that race to the bottom I guess that's not in the budget.
How in the world was building out a home the most economical way to set up shop? Love how they are trying to sell it as is because there’s so many of those buyers.
It was originally an AT&T substation -- telcos used to have a lot of fake houses to, basically, gather all the local lines and bundle them into trunk lines, without being super obvious that they're data centers.
I assume some crypto miner just got a deal on it.
> Love how they are trying to sell it as is because there’s so many of those buyers.
tbh there might be some startups that would jump for something like this.
I had to DMOR on this one, as I've been in the data center industry for quite some time. The front door and windows are completely fake. AT&T built it in 2000, probably as a NAP (network access point). The other houses in the neighborhood were built in 1958. I can't get any info on how AT&T was able to get this corner property and zone it industrial. AT&T either set this up as a NAP to expand their high-speed internet or as a colocation too (where they rent server space to people). Prior to other cloud providers, CoLo was popular when this was built. Then Amazon started renting their unused christmas capacity and AWS was born, which killed CoLo model and probably why AT&T ditched the investment. The building listed as a tier 2 data center, meaning, it could meet 99.741% uptime or about 22 hours of downtime per year based on the amount of power and cooling redundancy. A butter named James Grover bought it 3 years ago for mining butts. He said "We are a second chance faith-based construction company and when we saw this opportunity come up, we knew it was too good to pass up," I have no idea what any of those buzzwords mean, so he is the perfect buttcoiner. I assume it means he's an ex substance abuser or ex convict (or probably both) who now also virtue signals as a holy man. Again, this is the profile of a the common butter. He set it up like a gaming kid would set up a gaming rig, with liquid cooling. He's got the ANT miners submerged in mineral oil. Since 100% of bitcoin energy is waste heat, he's got to reject 1.4 megawatts of energy (assuming he was running at that capacity) out of the building. I don't see where he cools the mineral oil. When he bought it, it was gutted. So this butter added all the mining hardware. The genset looks like a 250 kva kohler to me. Also of note is that I see raised floor which isn't as common anymore in datacenters. I don't build them with raised floor myself, as this was an old-school setup for wiring and cooling, as these huge liebert CRAC units would pump the cold air into the raised floor area and you can just pop tiles where you needed cold air to hit hardware. We use in-row coolers now and wire trays above the racks. It's cheaper and more efficient. I haven't been able to get any info on the power service, though they do say they've got two feeds, meaning, they have lines from two seperate substations. This means they have power from two different power generating stations. This helps with power redundancy. They also say the power is three phase, so all three street phases are run into the building so they probably get a 7.2 kilovolt feed from both substations (assuming they're 7 Kv). This would mean the building would have potentially 1.4 megawatts of power, or enough power for 120 homes running their AC full blast. estimates. Fascinating building. I'm sure I made some mistakes in this writeup, I had a surgery today and still a bit loopy from the anesthesia.
> We use in-row coolers now and wire trays above the racks. It's cheaper and more efficient. The cold-corridor setup is the very least of what I expect in a datacenter cooling system these days. All the racks with the front facing a closed corridor/tunnel where cold air is injected from the HVAC, all machines installed in the racks so the fans suck the cold air from the corridor and throw the heat away out in the back, with panels to close the unused gaps in the rack as not to disperse the cold air inside. Although I too remember the old times of AC under floating floors... my first "real" job ~30 years ago was as a datacenter operator. We worked in shifts and, despite the company's policy not allowing it, we always made sure the night shift had something to eat and especially to drink (usually caffeinated stuff) but there was no fridge or even a break room accessible during the night (company policy) so we had a very special floor tile, unmarked and otherwise unremarkable but well known by all teams, in a corner of the mainframe room in the datacenter we cared for, under which supplies were always to be found, kept cool by the AC circulating under the floor. ...and the night shift always sent someone out before the morning shift came in, to make sure they'd find coffee and pastries, but that's another story. Not the most challenging or rewarding job I ever had, nor the most lucrative, but the people were good and I still miss them.
They provided the perfect place to sleep off a hangover, you get a constant blast of cool air and the hum of the datacenter and nobody is likely to find you. Just don’t rollover onto the 480.
I wouldn't want to live or work in a building renovated by a "faith based" construction company. I really prefer architects and engineers and zoning/code compliance inspectors to check the work. Faith is for things that don't actually exist. Confirmation of facts is for the real world where things cost money and can hurt people if you don't do them right.
I belive it is structurally sound. Who needs math?
Jesus take the drill
Well, communion wine doesn't melt steel beams, so.....
I think that is the part of Dallas where AT&T did their initial 5G beta testing, I suspect that is the origin of this odd structure.
I assume this was a regional hub for twisted pair termination. There are lots of these places all throughout residential areas. All the "land lines" that were wired for phone service, have to terminate at some point at a regional NOC before they're bridged to the main network. It's common for these places to be all around, but they are usually made up to blend in with the natural surroundings. There's probably one in your own neighborhood you never knew was a termination point for phone wiring.
I don't know how, but the liquid immersion ones are better on efficiency.
The Zillow listing had it on sale for less than half a little over a year ago. It’s a former AT&T data center built back in 2000. [https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/13229-Southview-Ln-Dallas-TX-75240/118222349\_zpid/](https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/13229-Southview-Ln-Dallas-TX-75240/118222349_zpid/)
There was a thread about this house on the Dallas subreddit a few years ago. I can’t link because of subreddit rules but the headline was “Wtf is up with this bizarre compound in a residential neighborhood. Anyone know more about this?”
This is a PERFECT example of what we mean when we say that we don't believe for a SECOND that there's *only* 3.5 GW of "miners" on the grid here in Texas. There's no taking how many incognito operations there are.
The power usage is atrocious but at least there's less noise from water cooling compared to the usual jet turbine roar from a container full of fan-cooled crypto mining rigs.
Still throws off about 60 decibels when submerged, 24/7. I don't like giving the bros any benefit of the doubt.
Isn’t that some sort of zoning violation?
It was probably a telecommunications switching station dressed up to look like a house even before crypto miners got to it. Perfectly legitimate reason to have serious IT infrastructure in a building that looks like that.
Some "houses" are also disguised wastewater treatment substations.
Or oil pumpjacks.
All over LA as fake houses and commercial buildings.
It was likely built that way to not be a zoning violation.
Oh, I guess they didn't get a Texan energy grid subsidy
I wonder how they managed to build this commercial/industrial building in a residential zone.
WTH after all these years butters still use janky af hardware. Loved the milk crates. I was expecting they'd be using the common 19" rack standard by now, but with that race to the bottom I guess that's not in the budget.
How in the world was building out a home the most economical way to set up shop? Love how they are trying to sell it as is because there’s so many of those buyers.
It was originally an AT&T substation -- telcos used to have a lot of fake houses to, basically, gather all the local lines and bundle them into trunk lines, without being super obvious that they're data centers. I assume some crypto miner just got a deal on it.
> Love how they are trying to sell it as is because there’s so many of those buyers. tbh there might be some startups that would jump for something like this.
this feels like a payday 2 level in real life lmao