In pictures: Mondo datacentres

Think you have to manage a lot of IT gear? These massive facilities - each at least 100,000 square feet and most much larger than that - house thousands of servers and process millions of documents, images and videos every day.

Microsoft - Quincy, Wash.

Around the size of 10 football fields, this Microsoft data center is actually two buildings. The first is 500,000 square feet and the second -- below and to the right of the main building -- is built from modular units and weighs in at another 93,023 square feet. Microsoft would not disclose the total number of servers in the main data center, but the second facility houses between 400 and 2,000 servers on a regular basis; the number changes depending on processing needs.

Both facilities cost about $520 million, and they use about 40 megawatts of power. Together they have a PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) of between 1.2 and 1.5. The main building draws hydroelectric power from the nearby Columbia River.

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