Aerial Photos of Apple's Oregon Data Center Site - MacRumors
Skip to Content

Aerial Photos of Apple's Oregon Data Center Site

Following up on its aerial tour of Apple's North Carolina data center earlier this year, Wired has again taken to the skies to get a glimpse of Apple's data center site in Prineville, Oregon.

prineville data center site
While construction on the first of two 338,000 square-foot buildings planned for the site is just getting started, Apple's initial "tactical data center" is already in place.

Apple finished this building earlier this year, but just south of it, you can see what will be the site of its much larger 338,000-square-foot data center. Apple wants to eventually build two of these monster data centers on the 160-acre site, but right now, there’s no sign of the second facility.

prineville tactical data center
Apple's tactical data center in Prineville

The photos also show the close proximity of Apple's project to Facebook's twin data centers. Facebook's first 330,000 square-foot data center opened last year, and the second one is nearing completion.

Apple has been working quickly to expand its data center capacity, opening its North Carolina data center last year and earlier this year announcing both the Oregon project and another one in Nevada as it seeks to support the rapidly growing needs of its digital stores and iCloud.

Popular Stories

Apple Event Logo

Apple's Next Era Begins September 1

Thursday May 7, 2026 10:36 am PDT by
Apple recently announced that Tim Cook will be stepping down as CEO later this year, after 15 years of leading the company. Effective September 1, Apple's hardware engineering chief John Ternus will become the company's next CEO, while Cook will become executive chairman of Apple's board of directors. In his new role, Apple said Cook will assist with "certain aspects" of the company,...
Instagram Feature 2

PSA: Instagram Encrypted Messaging Ends on Friday, May 8

Tuesday May 5, 2026 8:24 am PDT by
Instagram will remove end-to-end encryption for direct messages between users from May 8, 2026. When the date comes around, Meta will potentially be able to see the contents of all messages between users on the social media platform. Encrypting messages has been an optional feature in Instagram since 2023, but in March of this year the social media platform quietly updated a help page to say ...
macbook neo launch day

Apple May Drop Base $599 MacBook Neo as Chip, DRAM Costs Climb

Thursday May 7, 2026 4:55 am PDT by
Apple is considering dropping the cheapest MacBook Neo configuration as one possible response to the rising cost of building the popular laptop, according to Taiwan-based tech columnist and former Bloomberg reporter Tim Culpan. The Neo currently starts at $599 for a 256GB model, with a 512GB version at $699. Writing in his latest Culpium newsletter, Culpan says cutting the entry-level...

Top Rated Comments

175 months ago
Is this on Hoth?
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
175 months ago
@topic: I think it is very good this datacenter uses 100% renewable energy. What will Greenpeace say now?

Lots of squirrels are now homeless.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
175 months ago
What's a 'tactical data centre'?

Wondering the same thing.

As opposed to a strategic data centre? Who knows?

It's a temporary/popup datacenter. If you look at the closeup of it, you'll notice you've got one main (Rather temporary looking) building, and shipping containers along the side of it. Each of those shipping containers is kitted out a a mini datacenter.

The trailer parked up behind those, will likely be the backup generator for the temporary server farm.

They are fairly common now, however really shouldnt be used for something as important/mission critical as iCloud IMO. I've seen a few providers resort to using these only to have it all go tits up when anything happened weather wise.

I guess it's all down to how well built they are. Quite a few companies make and use these now. HP, IBM, Sun, Google, Cisco, Toshiba to name a few.

Sun provide a bunch of great videos showing their 'Project Blackbox' datacenter in a shipping container: //www.youtube.com/watch?v=svLdboZdfQ0
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
175 months ago
seriously, who cares. just make the damn things work and provide an excellent user experience.
This is part of the strategy to 'make the damn things work'. If the structure of how they are doing that does not interest you that's cool. I am a longstanding geek who is very interested in how they plan on providing the services they promise. I also grew up in Oregon so this is doubly of interest to me.

So I care, that's who.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
orbital~debris Avatar
175 months ago
What's a 'tactical data centre'?
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Shearwater Avatar
175 months ago
If they have used Apple Maps this may not even be Oregon!!...:eek:
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)