Credit: Microsoft

Inside Redmond Ridge 1, Microsoft's new centralized R&D server lab building.

Microsoft's engineers have always liked to keep their servers for testing and building software close at hand, in the buildings where they work. But the company has begun to change that practice -- opening a new facility eight miles from its main campus where it plans to shift much of that computing workload.

The company says it wants to save energy, and space, by consolidating the servers into one facility designed from the ground up to be efficient. Old-school Microsofties might be tempted to drive to the facility to fiddle with their servers in person, but the new setup is meant to let them restart, administer, test and debug servers using remote management tools, from the main campus or anywhere else.

"It was kind of a challenge to get people to start making that shift -- that the machines could be physically remote," acknowledged Bill Laing, corporate vice president for the Windows Server division, which is the "anchor tenant" in the new facility. Apart from the environmental benefits, he said the building provides the Windows Server team a testing ground for remote management, virtualization and other technologies.

Company executives say there's no negative impact on the development process when development and test servers are shifted away from the main Microsoft campus, but I haven't had an opportunity to discuss the issue with any developers or engineers on the ground, so let's leave that an open question for now.

The building opened in July, and the final phase is slated to be completed next year. Microsoft opened the facility -- dubbed Redmond Ridge 1 -- to a small group of reporters today but didn't allow photos or video, citing security concerns. (Microsoft provided the accompanying images.) Here are some of my notes from the tour, which was led by Jim Osborne, product manager for Microsoft Managed Lab Services; and Glen Beyer, manager of lab systems planning in the real estate and facilities group.

Credit: Microsoft

Facility size: More than 50,000 square feet in all, about the size of a small supermarket. Not large compared to most traditional data centers. It's a lab space, not serving end users, so it doesn't need as much redundancy. Capacity will ultimately be about 35,000 to 50,000 computer servers.

Cost: Microsoft representatives declined to say how much it spent to build the facility, but it was constructed by stripping back an existing warehouse to the walls. The company expects to recoup the cost of the building over time through energy savings and other efficiencies, Osborne said.

Cooling system: The facility was built to be cooled using air handlers that bring outside air into the server "pods" -- enclosed sections of servers -- eliminating the need for traditional chillers. An evaporative cooling system is used when it gets particularly hot. Taking into account that and other factors, Microsoft says the end result is that servers in the facility will require a third less energy than if they were placed in traditional office buildings.

Practical impact: Given the frequency with which groups move across the Microsoft campus, keeping the servers remote means that groups don't have to worry about relocating their labs at the same time. In addition, the central facility gives Microsoft a standard way of disposing of servers at the end of life, following environmentally friendly practices. The facility itself uses natural light and other energy saving tactics, and the fact that it's designed for the purpose means it can handle more servers per square foot than a regular office building can.

Environmental impact: With the facility at capacity, Microsoft says its carbon footprint will be 12,000 metric tons less than if the same servers were in office buildings. Microsoft has estimated that its carbon footprint was 936,000 metric tons of CO2 in 2007, and it wants to reduce that total by 30 percent by 2012.

Future vision: For now, servers in the facility are mostly dedicated to specific product groups, but over time, the idea is to move away from the idea of "ownership" to let servers be shared across different groups, leading to more efficiencies and less idle capacity.

The most significant impact is the change in mindset represented by the new facility, said Rob Bernard, the company's chief environmental strategist. "It changes the behavior radically, in my opinion, especially for people like me who've been at the company more than a decade," Bernard said. "I see today as a real transition point in our company's culture, as much as anything else."

Credit: Microsoft

Artist's rendering of the Redmond Ridge 1 facility