Microsoft to establish its first datacenter region in New Zealand

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#2477848 6-May-2020 14:06

Zepanda66:

Apparently it still needs government approval but I dont see why it wouldn't get it.

That tends to indicate its a $100 million+ project and has tripped the Overseas Investment threshold,

That would be the only "government" approval I would think was likely required, local council resource consents aside.

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rb99

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#2477857 6-May-2020 14:31

Excuse the ignorance, but how would a (fairly) ordinary bloke in NZ, such as myself, benefit from this ?

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Oblivian

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#2477858 6-May-2020 14:35

rb99:

Excuse the ignorance, but how would a (fairly) ordinary bloke in NZ, such as myself, benefit from this ?

Gaming/Website/Server responsiveness can go up

Local CDNs (cached stuff you watch online) can improve

Redundancy measures. Cheaper hosting

cyril7

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#2477873 6-May-2020 14:45

Hi, the main advantage to the everyday user (assuming they are consuming o365 and Azure product) is improved responsiveness due to reduced latency. Currently most o365 and Azure services for NZ come out of Sydney.

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frankv

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#2477876 6-May-2020 14:47

Dynamic:
This is positive news, though I'm honestly surprised that Microsoft are bothering. Their top 20 states by population have a greater population than our country. I wonder if this may be to help grease the wheels of NZ Government cloud adoption?

Absolutely. One of the concerns about Cloud is whose jurisdiction the data location falls under, due to privacy and security concerns. Normally government data can't be stored overseas. But currently, government departments have a dispensation to use Australian data centres for Cloud. That could be dispensed with if there's a New Zealand data centre available.

blackjack17

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#2477878 6-May-2020 14:51

cyril7:

Hi, the main advantage to the everyday user (assuming they are consuming o365 and Azure product) is improved responsiveness due to reduced latency. Currently most o365 and Azure services for NZ come out of Sydney.

Cyril

So things like onenote and word online sync would be faster?

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cyril7

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#2477883 6-May-2020 14:58

blackjack17:

cyril7:

Hi, the main advantage to the everyday user (assuming they are consuming o365 and Azure product) is improved responsiveness due to reduced latency. Currently most o365 and Azure services for NZ come out of Sydney.

Cyril

So things like onenote and word online sync would be faster?

Hi, yes, 35mS we typically experience seems not like a lot, but on a recent trip to NSW I was surprised how much snapper my work o365 services were.

Cyril

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#2477885 6-May-2020 15:00

DjShadow:

If it were up to me I'd put it in Hamilton. No volcanos, quakes super rare, weather is hardly interesting, etc. Land is cheaper too.

Datacom already have a big data centre at Te Rapa (Datacom Kapua Data Centre, 14 Simsey Place, Te Rapa Park, Hamilton)

It ought to be able to get really diverse long-haul comms too, as the Tasman Global Access cable (Spark, Vodafone and Telstra) comes ashore at Raglan. However I heard some time ago that Spark at least are only offering transit at Mayoral Drive Auckland which is a big pity.

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#2477892 6-May-2020 15:03

PolicyGuy:

DjShadow:

If it were up to me I'd put it in Hamilton. No volcanos, quakes super rare, weather is hardly interesting, etc. Land is cheaper too.

+1

Datacom already have a big data centre at Te Rapa (Datacom Kapua Data Centre, 14 Simsey Place, Te Rapa Park, Hamilton)

It ought to be able to get really diverse long-haul comms too, as the Tasman Global Access cable (Spark, Vodafone and Telstra) comes ashore at Raglan. However I heard some time ago that Spark at least are only offering transit at Mayoral Drive Auckland which is a big pity.

Agree Kapua is well located for optimal national transit, and minimal natural disasters. As for Spark only providing international transit via MD, one would assume a partner in a $100M+ venture can make such limitations dissapear if they were important.

Cyril

rb99

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#2477893 6-May-2020 15:04

Any thoughts on ETA. A year ? 9 months to get resource consent or whatever its called, 3 to actually build it. Too optimistic ?

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” -John Kenneth Galbraith

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#2477900 6-May-2020 15:10

Zeon:

Build close to power generation and somewhere with cool temperatures - Southland could be a good option.

As a layman it seems that for this kind of application, A location optimized for latency is favored over cheap power and cooling.

If it were a criptomine (where loads of power and cooling is needed, but data bandwidth & ping is less important), southland would be a decent pick.

NZ has 4 [edit] international cable landings:

Takapauna (Southern Cross)
Whenuapai (Southern Cross)
Mangawhai Heads (Hawaiki)
[edit] Raglan (Tasman Global Access cable (Spark, Vodafone and Telstra))

It seems that pings to overseas are valued (perhaps because pings within NZ from an NZ based data center are already acceptable regardless of the location), this would indicate that somewhere in the Auckland Region (or Mangawhai) would be desirable. Those location are also pritty good to serve the "golden" Auckland, Hamilton, Tauranga triangle where roughly 50% of NZ's population lives.

Will be interesting to see where it does end up, and how much resilience from natural disasters (earthquakes) is called for in the design, and if that influences the selected location.

[Edit] The raglan cable could make the greater Hamilton region more desirable. Physically closer to the center of NZ, cheap land, closer to hydro power, lower natural disaster risk etc.

Jiriteach

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#2477904 6-May-2020 15:12

rb99:

Any thoughts on ETA. A year ? 9 months to get resource consent or whatever its called, 3 to actually build it. Too optimistic ?

More likely 1-1.5 years before we see it operational. Took them ~ a similar time for the Australian region.
Awesome news for the country!

A potential issue will be dealing with demand when they launch as I can see many wanted to migrate workloads from Australia to NZ.

-- opinions expressed by me are solely my own. ie - personal

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#2477905 6-May-2020 15:13

rb99:

Any thoughts on ETA. A year ? 9 months to get resource consent or whatever its called, 3 to actually build it. Too optimistic ?

I did idly wonder if they might just buy an existing DC and tweak it to their standards. Because of our size, building a facility may not be worthwhile economically. That may be why the OIO is involved, due to the purchase of existing critical infrastructure?

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#2477906 6-May-2020 15:15

I don't think it's really going to matter where it is - assuming somewhere between the North shore and Hamilton.

Datacom's Kapua and Orbit are practically in the same building latency wise, so would assume Microsoft could easily achieve the same results back to places like Mayoral Drive.

rb99

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#2477918 6-May-2020 15:23

Dynamic:

rb99:

Any thoughts on ETA. A year ? 9 months to get resource consent or whatever its called, 3 to actually build it. Too optimistic ?

I did idly wonder if they might just buy an existing DC and tweak it to their standards. Because of our size, building a facility may not be worthwhile economically. That may be why the OIO is involved, due to the purchase of existing critical infrastructure?

Is it that expensive ? Have seen $100million+ mentioned. Same price as that Costco place, which is just an overgrown shop.

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” -John Kenneth Galbraith

rb99

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