My friend, Mary Payne, and her son Don plant sweet potatoes every year. Their “garden” space for the sweet potatoes is in their backyard. They could plant a row or two of sweet potatoes and have plenty for themselves. Instead they plant an acre of sweet potatoes and can supply sweet potatoes to the entire Dry Fork community.
If you are going to own a tractor and get it out to plow a row you might as well plow a field. If you are going to order seedling potatoes and set them out you might just as well get 1000 as 10. If you are going to grow sweet potatoes you might as well supply everyone around you with sweet potatoes.
Danville and Pittsylvania County have a long history of agriculture expertise. Our farming economy has benefited from the “economy of scale” concept. This community never intended to grow and process tobacco just for ourselves, but we have grown and processed tobacco for this country and the rest of the world.
Now we have a new economy of scale farming project- Server Farming.
A Server Farm is in part a facility, literally a building that houses servers. A server is a special computer that is designed to connect to and deliver information to other computers like your personal computer.
The Server Farm facility is entirely dedicated to keeping the servers safe and happy. The building itself will have many special features to address security, connectivity, reliability and redundancy.
Security is a central Server Farm feature. The Server Farm building may have limited access and security cameras. It will have advanced fire detection and extinguishers. The electricity coming to the building will be regulated to protect the computer equipment from voltage drops or surges. It will have redundant power sources including generator backup to insure an uninterrupted power supply.
The facility will offer “dedicated” Internet connections that are broadband and very high speed. The guarantee of uninterrupted Internet access is created by a redundant Internet access including access from multiple high tier Internet providers in various fiber or wireless internet paths.
If you are going to build one of these buildings you might as well house 1,000 computers as 10. It is the Server Farm “economy of scale.”
In this community, Virginia Tech and the Future of the Piedmont Foundation have outlined a proposal to develop the MSAP project. MSAP or Multimedia Service Access Point is a concept that involves building a Server Farm in our region.
The goal of the MSAP is to provide high bandwidth or high speed Internet access to individuals and organizations. From the home or business there will be high speed connections using fiber optic cable or wireless technology back to the MSAP architecture.
High speed wireless or fiber optic connectivity can be made available to this community because of “commodity pricing” or “economy of scale.” The MSAP will connect a lot of computers.
In general terms a business may use such a centralized facility as a true Server Farm. As part of the Server Farm concept the business would subscribe to full managed Internet connection services. The facility might use multiple servers shared among multiple customers to provide this service.
Other Server Farm customers require only co-location or “colo“. Co-location means that the business would be given space within the building to place their server, but that they would continue to fully monitor and manage the machine. The co-location customer would still benefit from the broadband connectivity and the security of the Server Farm facility.
Co-location in basic terms means placing a server somewhere you are not. The MSAP facility could bring in co-location customers from around the world. In addition to shipping out tobacco, we can bring in Server Farm customers.
Maybe we’ll throw in a bushel of sweet potatoes free to every new MSAP customer.
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