A week ago Microsoft opened up its latest data center – this time in Texas (so reports Seattle PI). The facility is on a 44 acre site and will use 8 million gallons of recycled water a month. It also sports solar panels on the roof.

It came in at a cool $550M, which is of course nothing when you’ve got $23.5 billion in  cash and short term investments on hand.

The first of two buildings on the site went live last Monday. What a great feeling it must be to power up something like that. And imagine having to reboot the whole thing.

It will be running the Microsoft Live Search Engine, Windows Live and Microsoft Office Live products.