[HN Gopher] From nuclear fallout shelter to data center (Paris)
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       From nuclear fallout shelter to data center (Paris)
        
       Author : juliendorra
       Score  : 36 points
       Date   : 2021-09-13 17:38 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (blog.scaleway.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (blog.scaleway.com)
        
       | gregschlom wrote:
       | Fun fact: Xavier Niel, founder of Scaleway, is a cataphile and
       | used to hang out in Paris' catacombs quite a bit back in the day.
       | Apparently he even enjoys a private access to the catacombs from
       | the basement of the building he lives in.
        
       | dylan604 wrote:
       | "we mixed the resin with silica to prepare the surface for the
       | next step, which was the laying of the tiles for the metro. For
       | this operation, over 3,000 square meters of tiles were required!"
       | 
       | Do they provide any benefit other than look? At first glance, it
       | seems like a big expense to garnish the walls of a data center.
       | So I'm curious if the ceramic tiles provide any other benefit, or
       | is it all just eye candy for tours of potential
       | investors/customers?
        
       | gregsadetsky wrote:
       | Does anyone have (development/production) experience using
       | Scaleway? Are they roughly comparable to Digital Ocean..? How's
       | price/reliability/support?
       | 
       | Thanks!
        
         | mthld wrote:
         | They aren't even close to Digital Ocean in terms of quality of
         | service, support, performances or documentation. They are more
         | like OVH, another french provider.
         | 
         | A lot of software limitations of their products aren't
         | documented, an example: don't expect to put more than 40k files
         | in one single object storage bucket. It's written nowhere and
         | when you'll start encountering strange errors with your apps
         | you'll have to deal with the support team. First you need to
         | pass the triage level where people have no clue about whatever
         | is technical, then after a few days you will go higher in the
         | chain and finally be redirected at someone in charge of the
         | production who will announce you that kind of limitation.
         | 
         | Disclaimer: I've been a customer since the very start of
         | Scaleway (attracted by the low prices), then got dissatisfied a
         | lot and asked my account being deleted last week.
        
           | gregsadetsky wrote:
           | That's unfortunate. The OVH / low cost comparison (as in the
           | sibling comment) is not encouraging. I'll stay away for sure.
           | Thank you
        
           | markvdb wrote:
           | Scaleway get the benefit of the doubt from me, but OVH? Shame
           | on me for needing to see _two_ nightmare scenarios unroll
           | before fleeing from OVH...
        
         | tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
         | They used to be very low cost, with many rough edges.
         | 
         | I think the rough edges got fewer, they started offering a lot
         | more managed/PaaS services, and de facto raised prices (mostly
         | by cutting a lot of the low-cost offerings and/or making them a
         | lot less attractive, plus some actual price increases).
         | 
         | I am still using them for hobby projects and didn't have issues
         | with my running instances, but did occasionally run into issues
         | when stopping/starting them (e.g. resource exhaustion, long
         | delays, etc.).
         | 
         | They really like obfuscating the actual price by showing
         | everything in hours instead of months, so you're paying "zero
         | point zero something" with no easy way to see what the actual
         | cost per month is. It's possible to find the information but
         | they really push the hourly price.
        
         | gregoriol wrote:
         | They are more like OVH, they come from low-cost bare-metal and
         | have created other offerings around cloud services.
        
           | gregsadetsky wrote:
           | Thanks, I appreciate it
        
       | jve wrote:
       | Hello and welcome to the underground data center I work for :)
       | http://tour.deac.eu/Grizinkalns.html
       | 
       | Located in Riga, Latvia, that is now underneath a city park. It
       | was once a nuclear shelter in times of CCCP / USSR. Visitors of
       | park were once interviewed do they know where do those doors in
       | the park lead and what is currently there... people didn't know
       | :)
        
         | dnautics wrote:
         | maybe it's not a good opsec to be so public about your backup
         | power generators?
        
         | iJohnDoe wrote:
         | Very cool! Super jealous!
        
       | dhd415 wrote:
       | Interesting -- this reminds me of the the Greenbrier Bunker[0]
       | which was a secret fallout shelter intended to house Congress in
       | the event of a nuclear strike on DC. It was also decommissioned
       | in the early 90s and ~20yrs later repurposed as a secure offsite
       | data storage facility. It's worth the $40 tour if you're ever in
       | the area.
       | 
       | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Greek_Island
        
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       (page generated 2021-09-13 23:01 UTC)