Tag:telecom=data_center
 telecom = data_center
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| Description |
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A building used to house computers and network equipment. 
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| Group: telecom |
| Used on these elements |
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| Useful combination |
| Status: in use |
| Tools for this tag |
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A datacenter is a building (or area within a building) used to house computer and network equipment.
Datacenters can range in size from rooms to huge multi-building campuses housing hundreds of thousands of individual servers. Large organisations may operate their own datacenters, but smaller companies frequently rent space from a colocation company such as Equinix. These providers may, in turn, sub-lease part of a larger datacenter from a wholesale supplier.
Items tagged with telecom=data_center are not rendered on the main carto map, but can be viewed on NewCloudAtlas or Open Infrastructure Map.
What to tag
In most cases, it's best to tag the building which houses the datacenter with telecom=data_center. In this case, the building can also be tagged building=data_center.
In cases where a datacenter is known to be constructed, but satellite imagery isn't yet available to map it; or where there is a very large datacenter site without any information on the buildings within it, it is acceptable to tag the whole area as telecom=data_center. Avoid doing this if possible as it is useful to be able to calculate the importance of datacenters by their ground area.
Tagging
| Key | Value | Comment | Recommendation |
|---|---|---|---|
| telecom | data_center | mandatory | |
| operator | <operator> | The operator of the datacenter. In the case of a corporate datacenter, this will be the organisation which owns it. In the case of a colocation facility, this will be the colocation company. | recommended |
| name | <name> | The name of the datacenter. | recommended |
| ref | <reference> | The operator's reference for the datacenter (usually a three or four character abbreviation). | recommended |
| owner | <owner> | Some datacenters are constructed and owned by one company, but long-term leased in their entirety to another company to operate. Organisations which commonly do this include Digital Realty or CoreSite | optional |
As with other locations, contact:*=* and addr:*=* tagging is always handy.
Identifying datacenters
Datacenters, especially large ones, are usually quite easy to identify from satellite imagery by the following clues:
- Large number of air conditioning chillers and generators, either on the roof of the building or next to it in a fenced-off compound.
- Small amount of parking in relation to the floor area.
- Proximity to electrical substations.
Possible tagging mistakes
See also
- building=data_center - A building which was built as a data center
- Larger datacenters are frequently constructed adjacent to electricity substations.
- WikiProject Telecoms