On the surface a data centre is, as you say, dull. They're just big noisy sheds full of racks and wires. Some things that make them interesting:
1) Some people don't know just how noisy a data centre can be.
2) Some people just like seeing a rack with a caption saying "48 TB across X drives in Raid Y"; or lots of cat 5 / 5e / 6.
3) Innovative solutions for heat, aural noise, electrical noise, power, security, bandwidth, etc.
Most people on HN aren't going to be in group 2. But there's so many smart people on HN, and I'm surprised that this stuff feels so (and I know this is the wrong word) "backwards". (Maybe "stagnant" is better?)
Energy has cost, and reducing that cost is a space for making money.
I worked at a well known government agency for a year, and spent some time in one of the data centers. It was poorly designed so the main air conditioning vent was directly above... the cubicles and desks. Instead of the servers.
So it would be blasting full cold all day and all night, and we were miserably cold. Nothing like wearing three jackets to work in the middle of August in Maryland.
So one day, we brought in a few refrigerator boxes, attached them to the ceiling to make a make-shift vent, and then we shunted all the cool air to the "server" side of the room.
1) Some people don't know just how noisy a data centre can be.
2) Some people just like seeing a rack with a caption saying "48 TB across X drives in Raid Y"; or lots of cat 5 / 5e / 6.
3) Innovative solutions for heat, aural noise, electrical noise, power, security, bandwidth, etc.
Most people on HN aren't going to be in group 2. But there's so many smart people on HN, and I'm surprised that this stuff feels so (and I know this is the wrong word) "backwards". (Maybe "stagnant" is better?)
Energy has cost, and reducing that cost is a space for making money.