In pictures: The world's coolest datacentres

Data centres need to be secure, temperature controlled, spacious, redundant, reliable – nothing sexy. But that doesn't mean they can't be. Here are a few that rise above the crowd and take advantage of the possibilities.

Facebook's Prineville, Oregon, data centre's green design includes 150,000 square feet of space and operates with 40% less power consumption that similarly sized conventional data centers. Part of the savings comes from pumping filtered ambient air through server rooms to cool the machines. Four rooms are dedicated to housing thousands of filters - much like those used in home heating/cooling systems. The downside of these rooms is that changing thousands of filters is a huge job, the company says. The design of the facility complies with Facebook's Open Compute Project, which shares the company's data centre designs publicly so other businesses can learn from their experience.

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